Of Ireland, we have no definite accounts till much later, so that, with the exception of a few details, the characteristics of the social condition of that island must be inferred from the analogy of Great Britain, and from the subsequent history of the Irish. Now a rough view of even the British characteristics is all that has been attempted in the present chapter. No historic events have been narrated, except so far as they elucidate some national or local habit; and no such habits and customs have been noted unless they could be referred to some particular branch of our populations; for the object has been specification rather than generalization, the indication of certain _Cornubian_, _Kentish_, or _Caledonian_ peculiarities rather than of _British_ ones. At the same time, the fact that all the occupants of the British Islands are referrible to the great Keltic stock, implies the likelihood of these differences lying within a comparatively small compass. The step that comes next is the history of the stock itself. FOOTNOTES: [3] The translations of this and all the following Greek extracts are from the "_Monumenta Historica Britannica_." [4] _See_ the papers of Mr. Beale Post in the "Archæological Journal." CHAPTER III. ORIGIN OF THE BRITONS.--KELTS OF GAUL.--THE BELGÆ.--WHETHER KELTIC OR GERMAN.--EVIDENCE OF CÆSAR.--ATTREBATES, BELGÆ, REMI, DUROTRIGES AND MORINI, CHAUCI AND MENAPII. Of the two branches of the Keltic stock the British will be considered first, and that in respect to its origin. It is rare that the population of an island is without clear, definite, and not very distant affinities with that of the nearest part of the nearest continent. The Cingalese of Ceylon can be traced to India; the Sumatrans to the Malayan Peninsula; the Kurile Islanders to the Peninsula of Sagalín; the Guanches of Teneriffe to the coast of Barbary. The nearest approach to isolation is in the island of Madagascar, where the affinities are with Sumatra, the Moluccas and the Malay stock rather than with the opposite parts of Africa, the coasts of Mozambique and Zanguibar. But Madagascar has long been the great ethnological mystery. Iceland, too, was peopled from Scandinavia and not from Greenland.