The Keltic laws and monuments themselves supply conclusive evidence of the justice of these general observations. Throughout all the ages during which these populations were in immediate contact with Rome, not a single ray of Keltic nationality is able to penetrate. It is only among the mountains of the Cymri, a savage race, as little subjugated by the Romans, as even to this moment by ourselves, that a trace of that nationality is to be found. There indeed, guarded by fortresses which nature itself made impregnable, the heartblood of Keltic society was allowed to beat; and the barbarians whom policy affected or luxury could afford to despise, grew up in an independence, features of which we can still recognize in their legal and poetical remains. The pride of the invaders might be soothed by the erection of a few castra, or praesidia or castella in the Welsh marches; the itinerary of an emperor might finish in a commercial city on the Atlantic; but in Wales the Romans had hardly a foot of ground which they did not overshadow with the lines of their fortresses; and to the least instructed eye, the chain of fortified posts which guard every foot of ground to the east of the Severn tells of a contemplated retreat and defence upon the base of that strong line of entrenchments. And yet how insufficient are the laws and triads of the Cymri in point of mere antiquity! Let us do all honour to the praiseworthy burst of Keltic patriotism which has revived in our day: let us even concede that some few of the triads may carry us back to the sixth century: yet the earliest Cymric laws of which the slightest trace can be discovered, are those of Hywel in the tenth. And even, if with a courteous desire to do justice to the subject, we admit the historical existence of the fabulous Dynwall and fabulous Marcia[778], who has even insinuated that a single sentence of their codes survive; or that, if even if such existed, they had currency a single foot to the eastward of the Severn? Who can imagine that such laws ever had authority beyond the boundaries of a solitary sept, more fortunate than the rest, inasmuch as its record has not, like those of others, perished? ----- Footnote 778: We may leave those, if any such there be, who still think Geoffrey of Monmouth an authority, to cite his proofs that Dynwall Moelmwd flourished four centuries before Christ; and that the Mercian laws of Offa, quoted by Ælfred, were those of the British, princess Marcia. -----