the
Chow, ending about 850. During this period, then, I think
presently we shall come to place the chief activities and
civilization of the Celts. From 850 to 240--all these figures
are of course approximations: there was pralaya in China;
on the other side of the world, it was the period of Celtic
eruptions--and probably, disruption. While Tsin Shi Hwangti,
from 246 to 213, was establishing the modern Chinese Empire, the
Gauls made their last incursion into Italy. The culmination of
the age Shi Hwangti inaugurated came in the reign of Han Wuti,
traditionally the most glorious in the Chines annals. It
lasted from 140 to 86 B.C.; nor was there any decline under his
successor, who reigned until 63. In the middle of that time--the
last decade of the second century--the Cimbri, allied with the
Teutones, made their incursion down into Spain. Opinion is
divided as to whether this people was Celtic or Teutonic; but
probably the old view is the true one, that the word is akin to
Cimerii, Crimea, and Cymry, and that they were Welshmen in their
day. When Caesar was in Gaul, the people he conquered had much
to say about their last great king. Diviciacos, whose dominions
included Gaul and Britain; they looked back to his reign as a
period of great splendor and national strength. He lived, they
said, about a hundred years before Caesar's coming--or was
contemporary with Han Wuti.

But the empire of the Celtic Kings was already far fallen, before
it was confined to Gaul, Britain, and perhaps Ireland. When
first we see this people they were winning a name for fickleness
of purpose: making conquests and throwing them away; which
things are the marks of a race declining from a high eminence it
had won of old through hard work and sound policy. We shall come
to see that personal or outward characteristics can never be
posited as inherent in any race. Such things belong to ages and
stages in the race's growth. Whatever you can say of Englishmen,
Frenchmen, Germans, now, has been totally untrue of them at some
other period. We think of the Italians as passionate, subtle of
intellect, above all things artistic and beauty-loving. Now
look at them as they were three centuries B.C.: plodding, self-
contained and self-mastered, square-dealing and unsubtle, above
all things contemning beauty, wholly inartistic. But a race may
retain the same traits for a very long time, if it remains in a
back-water, and is unaffected by