During the first period of three centuries and a half the native tribes of Scotland were under the influence of the Roman power, at one time struggling for independent existence, at another subject to their authority, and awaking to those impressions of civilisation and of social organisation, the fruits of which they subsequently displayed. A period of rather longer duration succeeded to the Roman rule, in which the native and foreign races in the country first struggled for the succession to their dominant authority in the island, and then contended among themselves for the possession of its fairest portions. The third period commences with the establishment of the Scottish monarchy in the ninth century, and lasted for two centuries and a half, till the Scottish dynasty became extinct in the person of Malcolm the Second. There then succeeded, during the fourth period, which lasted for a century, a renewed struggle between the different races in the country, which, although the Scoto-Saxon dynasty, uniting through the female line the blood of the Scots and the Saxons, succeeded in seating themselves firmly on the throne, cannot be said to have terminated in the general recognition of their royal authority till the reign of David the First. The fifth period, consisting of the reigns of David I., Malcolm IV., William the Lion, and Alexander the Second and Third, was characterised by the rapid amalgamation of the different provinces, and the spread of the Saxon race and of the feudal institutions over the whole country, with the exception of the Highlands and Islands, and left the kingdom of Scotland in the position in which we find it when the death of Alexander the Third, in 1286, terminated the last of the native dynasties of her monarchs. [Sidenote: Celtic Scotland.] During the first three periods of her early history, Scotland may be viewed as a purely Celtic kingdom, with a population composed of different branches of the race popularly called Celtic. But during the subsequent periods, though the connection between Scotland with her Celtic population and Lothian with her Anglic inhabitants was at first but slender, her monarchs identified themselves more and more with their Teutonic subjects, with whom the Celtic tribes maintained an ineffectual struggle, and gradually retreated before their increasing power and colonisation, till they became confined to the mountains and western islands. The name of Scot passed over to the English-speaking people, and their language became known as the Scotch; while the Celtic language, formerly known as Scotch, became stamped with the title of Irish.