"Professor F. W. Newman, in his little work entitled _Regal Rome_, maintains that the old languages of Italy, especially the Umbrian and Sabine, contained a striking predominance of Celtic ingredients, and he wishes to show that this is still evident even in the Latin of Cicero. His proof rests on vocabularies (pp. 19--26.), especially in regard to the military, political, and {357} religious words which he supposes the Romans derived from the Sabines (p. 61.). With regard to these lists, I have to observe, that while all that is valid in the comparison merely gives the Indo-Germanic of the Celtic languages--a fact beyond dispute--Mr. Newman takes no pains to discriminate between the marks of an original identity of root, and those words which the Celts of Britain derived from their Roman conquerors."--Donaldson's _Varronianus_, p. 64. "It is to be remarked, that almost _all the words_ of the British tongue agree either with the Greek or Latin. It is this strong similarity of features between their own language and those of Greece and Italy, that has induced so many of my countrymen to claim for it the honour of being the mother-tongue of all, and to scorn all examination which did not commence with this confession. Even the late learned Dr. Owen Pugh has, in his _Dictionary_, by arbitrarily selecting certain syllables as the roots of all Cumrian words, done much to foster this overweening conceit. The system was carried to its extreme point of absurdity by the Rev. Edward Davies, who by the help of such syllables expected to unravel the mysteries of all languages. This failure has I hope paved the way for the more sober consideration of the question, which, if worked out fairly, will in my opinion establish the claim of the Cumrian tongue, if not to be the mother of all tongues, at least to be a valuable branch of the Caucasian tree of languages. Now, had the two races, the Roman and Cumrian, remained always separate, a comparative etymology would have been an easy task; for no more would be necessary than to put the similar roots, having the same meaning, side by side. But, unfortunately for the scholar who undertakes to prove the question, the Romans were in this island four hundred years, colonised it partly, and partly gave it their own form of civilisation. As before mentioned, the inhabitants adopted with avidity the Roman dress, language, and literature. That language must therefore be supposed to have entered deeply into the composition of the present Cumrian tongue. The sceptical examiner may therefore reasonably object, that any similarity between the two languages might have originated in the adoption of that of Rome by the British provincials. In answer to this I refer in the first place to Lloyd's reasoning, quoted in the note," viz.