The Anglo-Saxon race: its history, character, and destiny.

T2e Angllo-Saxoin Lace.
The first of these three races was the Celtic, or Keltic. The
origin of this name is doubtful. Some look iupon tile stem
Cel," or " Kel," as a simple prilnitive word foirmed by a
guttural and a lingual; some derive it firom the Gaelic " ceilt,"
an inhabitant of the forest; others firom the Welslh " celt," a
covert, or " celtiad," one who dwells in a covert, or from
"cell," to hide' while others say that it is fromn the Latin
celare," to conceal, and was given to them by the Rotnans
because they concealed their habitations in the depths of the
forests and in caves. Another writer illiustrates the namne by
three Greek words Ineaning to conceal somlething firom some
one, and infLers from this the antiquity of the happy, and often
entertaining, faculty of' narratitl fictions, that somnne perverse
-minds have thought characterized the true Celt. Another
authority sa-ys, that this habit results simply fromn a desire to
please; and hence, unlike a certain ancient Greek, the Celt is
said to be given to saying things agreeable rather than things
disagreeable though true. This race was afterward closely
pressed upon by their nmore powerful, warlike, and ambitious
Gothic successors, and they gradually retired and dwindled
away upon the western shores of Europe and the British Islands, till few are left except the inhabitants of the coast of
France, the extreme ri'lthern Scotch or IHighlanders, the
Welsh, and the Irish. Their emigration fiom Asia is earlier
thall the historic period. It occurred before the invention of
letters, when nations had no mleans, save vague tradition, of
treasuring up their story and handing it down to posterity. The
arts and sciences among them were as yet hardly born; hence
their exit from Asia or entrance into Europe was marked by no
monuments that might, like tlhose of Egypt, through their astronomnical inscriptions, tell to the men of science, three thousand years afterward, the date of their erection.
Races of men have great functions to perform in the dranma
oft human life upon this globe; and when performed, they and
their works, in the course of Providence, imperceptibly melt
away. Their stronger and better elements are absorbed by
their more vigorous and manly, I might say godly, successors;
while the weaker ones, being of no further use to humanity, sink
away, and disappear in the sea of oblivion. The Celts, as a dis