What I have here said about the nature of Gaul, is intended as a justification of Eratosthenes, a great man, who has been unjustly censured by Strabo, another very distinguished man, whom I never mention without gratitude and respect. Eratosthenes assigned to the Celts a vast extent of country: he disliked the common names of the parts of the earth because they appeared to him erroneous, and instead of them, he makes other great divisions, calling the north-west of Europe Celtica; he then places the Scythians in the north, and between these two, the Celto-Scythians (of course according to the inscription of Olbia, from which we learn that Celts had settled in the Ukraine),[70] in the east, the Indians, and again, between the Indians and Scythians, the Indo-Scythians; then the Ethiopians, and between these latter and the Indians, probably the Indo-Ethiopians, though they are not mentioned. Now, Strabo censures this view of the great extension of the Celts; and modern authors, who have written on the subject, have quietly repeated the censure, although it is quite unjust. We must not imagine that France alone was inhabited by Celts; but they occupied the extent of country described in their tradition, from the Sierra Morena, almost from the mouth of the Baetis, that is, from Lusitania in Spain to the country about the Tanais in the East; I do not, of course, here specify any particular time, but I speak in general. To confound the Germans with the Celts is an error, which, though now less common than formerly, still makes its appearance here and there. I can speak positively on this subject, because I am to some extent acquainted with the Celtic language, and because, in my earlier years, I spent some time in Scotland, where I became intimately acquainted with the language spoken in the Highlands. I have a distinct recollection of it, and know a great many of its words. I can positively assert, that the grammar has not the least resemblance to the German; its conjugation and declension by changes at the beginning of words is quite foreign to the German dialects. If, e.g., a word in the nominative begins with _m_, it forms the genitive by a _w_; conjugation is effected by auxiliary verbs, but the system is quite different from ours. It is true that a considerable number of words are German or Scandinavian; but these can be recognised at once as foreign importations, for they have no connection with Celtic roots. The Highlanders are not a wild people, and I am very fond of them, but they are unpolished. Their foreign words are for the most part such as denote domestic furniture or anything which presupposes a state of civilisation above the merest elements, such as a chair, a bench, and the like; words of this kind are generally of German or Scandinavian origin. Such foreign words can very easily be recognised in all languages. Many words, on the other hand, have a manifest affinity with Latin; this is undeniable; but I do not by any