beneath the stupendous aqueduct of Pont du Gard. But as the power of Rome declined new torrents of invaders swept into Gaul in successive waves, Burgundian giving place to Visigoth, and Visigoth to Frank. Meanwhile the Celts who had been living on the banks of the Danube had not been idle. For them the path of sunshine and ease led in the direction of Italy and the Balkan Peninsula. Italy, more even than France, has at all times possessed a wonderful, though quite explicable, fascination for the northern {18} nations. Its fine climate, the fertility of its soil, its high state of cultivation and its accumulated riches have proved an irresistible attraction. From the picturesque pages of Livy it is easy to gather that the steady progress of the invaders, the forcing of the Alpine barrier, the march across the northern plain, the pouring through the passes of the Apennines, the capture of Clusium, and finally the holding to ransom of Rome itself, made a profound and indelible impression upon the Romans. It is altogether to the credit of the Celts that they respected the superior civilization which they found in the lands south of the Alps, and that they committed no crimes or outrages like those perpetrated at a later date by Vandals and Huns. These Celtic tribes, having conquered Macedon and Thessaly, accepted an invitation from Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, and crossed the Hellespont into Asia Minor. With their aid Nicomedes speedily defeated his enemies; but it was not long before he had good reason to repent of having brought to the country such formidable allies. The Celts had brought with them their families and all their belongings, and now they settled down on both sides of the river Halys. There they formed a state {19} called Galatia, and became the terror of all their neighbours. Incensed with Mithridates the Great on account of his treachery, they allied themselves with the Romans in the war against him, and after that they remained a Roman client state. Even then they retained their language; and we have it on the authority of St. Jerome that six centuries later the same tongue was spoken on the banks of the Halys as on the banks of the Moselle. With their language they also retained their customs and character; but recent commentators have perhaps been too ready to find evidence of the instability and impressionableness of the modern Welshman in St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians! From France the step was a comparatively easy one into Spain. But once across the Pyrenees, the forward march of the Celts was stubbornly contested. The country was in the hands of a queer assortment of people, consisting of a pre-Aryan race, Iberians, Ligurians, and Phœnicians. Nothing could, however, resist the Celtic advance; and ere long we find them firmly planted in Portugal and among the hills of Galicia and the Asturias.