To Zeuss is due the credit of having assigned its proper place to Celtic in the family of languages. The problem before his great publication in 1853 was the relationship in which the Gaels, the Welsh, and the old Gaulish people stood to one another and to the other nations of the world. Numerous publications on this question appeared during the last two centuries. But from a scientific point of view they are of very little value. Errors and unscientific theories abound in every work. At that time the scholars of France and Germany never mastered the Celtic languages; indeed, there were few reliable grammars by which they could be acquired. The native scholars were deficient in linguistic training, in common sense, and frequently in common honesty. No Gaelic scholar was conscientious enough to learn Welsh, no Welsh scholar to learn Gaelic; but each and all were ready enough to compare their languages with Phœnician, Persian, Etruscan, Egyptian, Hebrew, Arabic, &c., of which, again, they knew in reality next to nothing; though a few of them might know a little Hebrew. There was one remarkable exception, however, to this—the great Welsh scholar Edward Llhuyd, of whom it may be said that he lived a century and a half before his time; but, incapable of following him, the native school of philologists sank into chaotic and puerile etymological dreams. The Celtic problem became more hopeless than ever, and Gaelic philology became distasteful to sober minds. At the same time many Celts insisted “on the lofty claim they used to advance of speaking the primeval language.” It is only recently that they have learned “to submit to the logic of facts and listen to the voice of science.” A Gaelic poet, in an elaborate poem on his native language, thus declares his conviction on the much-debated subject, what language was spoken in Paradise— “By Adam it was spoken In Eden, I believe, And sweetly flowed the Gaelic From the lovely lips of Eve.”