Scandinavian stock, yet differs in
some important particulars from the Anglo-Saxon. But we have seen reason
to conclude that even in the most purely Teutonic region of Britain, the
district between Forth and Southampton Water, a considerable proportion
of the people were of Celtic or pre-Celtic descent, from the very first
age of English settlement. This conclusion is borne out both by the
physical traits of the peasantry and the nature of the early remains. In
the western half of South Britain, from Clyde to Cornwall, the
proportion of Anglo-Saxon blood has probably always been far smaller.
The Norman conquerors themselves were of mixed Scandinavian, Gaulish,
and Breton descent. Throughout the middle ages, the more Teutonic half
of Britain--the southern and eastern tract--was undoubtedly the most
important: and the English, mixed with Scandinavians from Denmark or
Normandy, formed the ruling caste. Up to the days of Elizabeth, Teutonic
Britain led the van in civilisation, population, and commerce. But since
the age of the Tudors, it seems probable, as Dr. Rolleston and others
have shown, that the Celtic element has largely reasserted itself. A
return wave of Celts has inundated the Teutonic region. Scottish
Highlanders have poured into Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London: Welshmen
have poured into Liverpool, Manchester, and all the great towns of
England: Irishmen have poured into every part of the British dominions.
During the middle ages, the Teutonic portion of Britain was by far the
most densely populated; but at the present day, the almost complete
restriction of coal to the Celtic or semi-Celtic area has aggregated the
greatest masses of population in the west and north. If we take into
consideration the probable large substratum of Celts or earlier races in
the Teutonic counties, the wide area of the undoubted Celtic region
which pours forth a constant stream of emigrants towards the Teutonic
tract, the change of importance between south-east and north-west, since
the industrial development of the coal country, and the more rapid rate
of increase among the Celts, it becomes highly probable that not
one-half the population of the British Isles is really of Teutonic
descent. Moreover, it must be remembered that, whatever may have been
the case in the primitive Anglo-Saxon period, intermarriages between
Celts and Teutons have been common for at least four centuries past; and
that therefore almost all Englishmen at the pre