from the presumptions
of the case, and partly from internal evidence.

Prichard, after Sharon Turner, has remarked that the legend of
Partholanus is found in Nennius.

The Welsh name Arthur, strange to Ireland, except during the period in
question, is prominent in the third century.

The Druidical religion, which on no unequivocal evidence can be shewn to
have been Irish, has the same prominence during the same time.

The _Fir-Bolg_ and _Attecheith_ are also prominent at this time, _but
not later_. Now the _Belgae_ and _Attacotti_ might easily be got from
British or Roman writers. The soil of Ireland, as soon as its records
improve, ceases to supply them.

This is as far as it is necessary to proceed in the criticism of our
early authorities of British, Irish, and Saxon origin, since it is not
the object of the present writer to throw any unnecessary discredit over
them, but only to inquire how far they are entitled to the claim of
deciding certain questions finally, and of precluding criticism. It is
clear that they are only to be admitted when opposed by a very slight
amount of conflicting improbabilities, when speaking to points capable
of being known, and when freed from several elements of error and
confusion. The practical application of this inference will find place
in the eleventh chapter.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] This is the year in which Orosius concludes his history. It leaves,
as near as may be, a century between the last of the Roman informants
and the birth of the earliest British.

[13] The origin of the Picts and Scots.

[14] Vol. iii, pp. 140-147.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ANGLES OF GERMANY: THEIR COMPARATIVE OBSCURITY.--NOTICE OF
TACITUS.--EXTRACT FROM PTOLEMY.--CONDITIONS OF THE ANGLE AREA.--THE
VARINI.--THE REUDIGNI AND OTHER POPULATIONS OF TACITUS.--THE
SABALINGII, ETC., OF PTOLEMY.--THE SUEVI ANGILI.--ENGLE AND
ONGLE.--ORIGINAL ANGLE AREA.

There are several populations of whom, like quiet and retiring
individuals, we know nothing until they move; for, in their original
countries, they lead a kind of still life which escapes notice and
description, and which, if it were not for a change of habits with a
change of area, would place them in the position of the great men who
lived before Agamemnon. They would pass from the development to the
death of their separate existence unobserved, and no one know who they
were, where they lived, and what were their relations. B