But this period of calm was soon to be interrupted. A new people appeared on the scene, a branch of the great Celtic people to whom for purposes of identification and differentiation the name Goidels has been given. These people were more warlike than the older inhabitants of the island; nevertheless there was no settled policy of extermination or even of expropriation. But slow and silent pressure did its work. The Iberians were gradually pushed into the remoter corners of the west, and especially into the mountainous region which we now call Wales. It is unnecessary perhaps to impress upon, the reader that there never was at any time anything resembling a Celtic Empire, or even a Celtic nation. It is only the name which we give to a branch of the Aryan or Indo-European family of races which migrated at a very early date from central Asia to the banks of the Rhine, the Main, and the Danube. They became known to the Greeks of classical times, who called them Hyperboreans. A {16} martial folk they were, delighting in combat, and always thirsting for fresh conquests, for glory, and for plunder. Their first struggle was with the Germanic tribes, whom they eventually subjugated. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a writer of the first century B.C. refers to Germany as a Celtic territory. But after a time the Germans turned on their masters and expelled them from what had been their first European home, the region which lies between the Elbe and the Rhine. It is but natural that wandering nations should in all ages have felt attracted by France. To those, particularly, who came from the arid and frozen steppes of Russia, or from the wind-swept Scandinavian lands, its sunny plains, its fine rivers, its fields so well adapted for the cultivation of grain, its gentle hills on whose slopes the vine flourishes so luxuriantly, must have seemed a veritable paradise. It is therefore not in the least surprising that, from the earliest dawn of history, race should have striven with race for the possession of so fair an inheritance. Among the first invaders within the period of recorded history were the Celts, who invaded France somewhere about the year 600 B.C. Their second invasion occurred some time after 300 B.C. This time {17} they swept over the whole country from the Channel to the Bay of Biscay, and from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. The land was then called Gaul; and these were the people against whom the whole might of Rome was directed under the leadership of Julius Cæsar. Invaders and invaded were closely akin in blood. After a stubborn resistance the whole country was subjugated. Latin civilization was speedily assimilated, and Gaul became, after a time, more Roman almost than Rome itself. Even at this distant date, nowhere is it more easy to enter into the spirit of ancient Rome than within the gaunt and gigantic amphitheatre of Arles, by the exquisite Maison Carrée of Nimes, and