We are now prepared to study the historic and modern representatives of this important stock.
1. The Celtic Peoples.
The Celtic peoples of the present day form a decaying group, which in a few generations will wholly disappear. Two thousand years ago they were the most important Aryac stock in central and western Europe. Their sole representatives now are the Highland Scotch, the Irish, the Manx, the Welsh, and the natives of Brittany in France. In all these localities the Celtic speech is losing ground before English or French. In Ireland about 900,000 persons can speak Irish, but not more than 150,000 are ignorant of English.
These Celtic groups form two dialects, one spoken in Scotland, Ireland and the Isle of Man, known as Gaelic, the other common to Wales, Brittany, and in the last century to Cornwall, called Armorican or Cymric. The Irish possessed a sparse literature going back to the eighth century, and the Welsh to the twelfth, while the oldest Scotch or Breton songs date at the furthest from the fourteenth century, in spite of assertions to the contrary.
To this day the Celtic peoples present the same contrast of physical type that they did to the Romans. Some of the Scotch clans, many of the Irish, most of the Welsh and Bretons, are of moderate stature, dark eyes and hair, and brunette complexion, while the remainder are tall, raw-boned, red-haired, with florid, freckled skins and tawny beards.
Their mental traits are quite as conspicuous; turbulent, boastful, alert, courageous, but deficient in caution, persistence and self-control, they never have succeeded in forming an independent state, and are a dangerous element in the body politic of a free country. In religion they are fanatic and bigoted, ready to swear in the words of their master, rather than to exercise independent judgment. France is three-fifths of Celtic descent, and this explains much in its history and the character of its inhabitants.
2. The Italic Peoples.
The principal Aryac tribes who possessed themselves of the Italian peninsula were the Umbrians in the north, and the Samnites (or Oscans) and Latins in the south. They conquered in time the Etruscans, Ligurians, Volscians and others of non-Aryac lineage, and laid the foundation for the mighty Aryac Empire of Rome, destined to command the world, and to introduce the Latin tongue as the dominant speech of Southern Europe.
From the Latin speaking Roman colonies have sprung the Romance languages of modern times and the existing “Latin peoples.” These include the modern Italian, the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Roumanian, the Wallachian, and the Ladinish in Switzerland, besides a number of dialects. Through the conquests of the European Romance nations, their tongues have gained the ascendency over the whole continent of America south of the United States, over a large part of Canada and North Africa, and over many islands. To-day, the speech of imperial Rome, more or less modified, prevails over an area five times as great as that of the empire in the zenith of its glory.
Like the language, the physical type of the ancient Italic peoples indicated their near relationship to the dark Celts. The Latin and Umbrian skulls were short or rounded (brachycephalic), the stature medium, the hair dark and curly, the eyes brown or black, the nose aquiline, the complexion brunette. In later generations this type was modified by mixture with the blonde or long-skulled Etruscans, and the numerous foreigners who came to live in Rome; but to this day it is that which prevails throughout the peninsula.