From the narrative of Cæsar, we gather that the bulk of the population of England, Scotland, and Wales at the time of his invasion was of Celtic origin; that is, it belonged to one of the branches of the great family of nations which is commonly known as the Indo-European, or Aryan, and which includes the Celts, the Greeks and Italians, the Germans, the Lithuanians and Slavs in Europe; and in Asia the Armenians, Persians, and the chief peoples of Hindustan. Of the Aryan nations, the Celts were probably the first to arrive in Europe from the East, though the date of their migration is purely conjectural. They pushed across the great central plateau, until the vanguard reached the ocean; and at first probably occupied a very large portion of Europe, but, being driven out by the stronger Germans, were gradually confined to the Iberian peninsula, France, Switzerland, and the British isles. As it is impossible to fix the date of the Celtic migration into Europe, so it is equally impossible to conjecture the when and why of the Celtic invasion of Britain. It is pretty certain that they found other races here on their arrival; and that they did not succeed by any means in thoroughly exterminating them. It has been surmised, indeed, that the Silures, who played a prominent part in the resistance to the Romans, and who inhabited the south of Wales and Monmouthshire, belonged to some more primitive race than the Celts. After the Celts, in the same way came the Belgæ, who were of German origin, and who settled on the southern coast. But the mass of the population was, as we have said, purely Celtic, and was composed of two large divisions--the Gaels, who dwelt on the northern and western coasts of what are now called England and Scotland, and over the great part of Ireland; and the Britons, who occupied the country south of the Friths of Forth and Clyde, with the exception of what is now Hampshire and Sussex, where dwelt the Belgæ. It was with the Britons, therefore, that the Romans were chiefly concerned, and we would fain have some information of their manners and customs other than that derived from the enemy, impartial though Cæsar and Tacitus were. But there was no British historian to chronicle the mighty deeds of the Celtic warriors, or to describe the home-life of the people. The picture we are able to construct, therefore, is derived almost entirely from the Romans; nevertheless, it is a fairly complete one. They describe a tall and finely built race, recklessly brave, strikingly patriotic, and faithful to the family tie; courteous also in manner, and eloquent of speech, and very fond of novelty, especially when it took the form of the arrival of a stranger in the village. At the same time the Britons were an unpractical race, never constant to any one object, quarrelsome amongst themselves, and utterly unable to combine against a common enemy. [Illustration: PHŒNICIANS BARTERING WITH THE ANCIENT BRITONS.