Cæsar's province, at its western extremity, touched Spain, a country which had belonged to the empire for more than 150 years. North of it lay three great nationalities, with all of which he was brought in contact. There were the Gauls, the Germans, and the Britons.

Free Gaul (Libera Gallia) consisted of all the unsubdued territory between the Pyrenees on the one side, and the Rhine and the Alps on the other, thus comprising, in general, modern France and Belgium, with parts of Holland, Germany, and Switzerland. The central portion of this territory, fully a half in extent and population, was occupied by Gauls proper, or, as they called themselves, Celts. Southwest of these were the Aquitani, of Iberian race, cognate to the Spanish. Northeast were the Belgians, whose ethnic affinities are much disputed; all that can be considered certain is that they were largely mixed with Germans.

The Gauls were an intellectual and prosperous people, far more civilized than either Germans or Britons. The country, though extensively covered with forests, especially towards the north, was well provided with roads and bridges. The entire population has been reckoned at about seven millions. The people of the Gallic race were tall, fair-complexioned, of restless, sanguine temperament, and addicted to fighting; but skilled in many arts, portions in weaving; the Aquitani, especially, in mining and engineering; and the Bretons (Veneti) in open-sea navigation, which they followed with stout high-built ships, leather sails, and iron chain-cables. Their dress included trousers and shirts with sleeves; they had a barbaric taste for gaudy ornament; their arms were showy, but clumsy and ineffective beside the tempered weapons of the Romans.

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With their culture, however, had come degeneracy in many shapes. They were divided into violently hostile factions, through which they fell an easy prey to the invader. They had numerous flourishing cities; which, however, had no political power, like those of Greece and Italy, but were merely places of residence and trade. Their government

had fallen under the control of an arrogant and luxurious aristocracy, and their religion under a cruel and domineering priesthood. Of the two great factions, into which they were divided, the Ædui were the leaders in one, and they had thought to gain supremacy by entering into alliance with Romans. Their antagonists, the Sequani, had naturally looked in the opposite direction for allies, and found them in the Germans.

The Germans occupied nearly the same territory as at the present day; not so far west as now, but on the other hand extending farther to the east. Less advanced in civilization than the Gauls, they were still far from being savages. They appear to have been just emerging from what is known as the barbarous state, beginning to acquire fixed habitations, and to cultivate the ground: they had no cities. They had brought with them from their migrations a remarkable political system, based upon an original community of origin, in which the patriarchal organization had already expanded into a multitude of petty nations, grouped into larger combinations of race. Their institutions were thoroug! ly democratic; they had noble families, but these possessed no political prerogatives; they elected kings, whose power was hardly greater than that of their general magistrates.

"The tribes which descended upon Britain had entered Europe not as a set of savages or wandering pastoral tribes, or mere pirates and warriors, but as colonists, who, rude as they may have been in dress and manners, yet, in essential points, were already a civilized people." Various considerations, says a recent writer, make it probable "that the Germans had come down from the northeast not very long before the Christian era, and intruded themselves, as a wedge, between those two more anciently recorded nations (Scythians and Celts). . . . We shall see evidence of the continuous advance of a civilized race from the confines of India to these islands, and nothing indicative of a great rush from the North of wild hordes bent upon robbery and destruction, as it has been usually represented to have been. The gradual drying of the Caspian Sea left the interior of Asia more and more barren; the knowledge

of the useful metals facilitated the conquest of the savages of the West; and predatory bands of Huns and Turks, and allied nomadic nations, are likely to have accelerated the movement, by rendering the labors of agriculture less remunerative. Thus the migration, being one that proceeded from constantly acting causes, extended over many centuries.

"In these mere names [of plants and fruits], setting aside all other sources of information, we discover that these people came from their home in the East with a knowledge of letters and the useful metals, and with nearly all the domestic animals; that they cultivated oats, barley, wheat, rye, and beans; built houses of timber, and thatched them; and what is important, as showing that their pasture and arable land was intermixed, and acknowledged as private property, they hedged their fields and fenced their gardens. Cæsar denies this; but the frontier tribes, with whom he was acquainted, were living under certain peculiar Mark laws, and were, in fact, little else than an army on its march. The unquestionably native, and not Latin or Celtic, origin of such names as Beach and Hawthorn, of Oats and Wheat, prove that although our ancestry may have been indebted to the provincials of the empire for their fruit-trees, and some other luxuries, for a knowledge of the fine arts, and the Latin literature, and a debased Christianity, the more essential acquirements, upon which their prosperity and progress as a nation depended, were already in their possession."— PRIOR, Popular Names of British Plants. Introd. 1863.

The Britons were, like the Gauls, of Celtic race, and resembled them in every respect, except that, being further from the civilized world, they were ruder, freer, and more warlike.

It was the destiny of Julius Cæsar to bring the great Gallic people into the system of civilization and government represented by Rome: it was a definite and large extension. of the bounds of civilized society. From him, too, we have the earliest authentic accounts of the other two nationalities, the Germans and the Britons.

THE CAMPAIGNS IN GAUL.

The campaigns of Cæsar in Gaul lasted throught eight seasons (B.c. 58-51), and are told in eight books, - the last

written by Hirtius, an officer of Cæsar, - each book containing the operations of a single year. The following is a brief outline:

I. Cæsar checks the attempt of the Helvetians to colonize in Western Gaul, and forces them, after a bloody defeat, to return to their own territory. He then engages with a powerful tribe of Germans, who had made a military settlement in Eastern Gaul, and drives them, with their chief Ariovistus, beyond the Rhine.

II. A formidable confederacy of the northern populations of Gaul is suppressed, with the almost complete extermination of the bravest Belgian tribe, the Nervii, in a battle which seems to have been one of the most desperate of all Cæsar ever fought. In this campaign, the coast towns of the west and northwest (Brittany) are reduced to submission.

III. After a brief conflict with the mountaineers of the Alps, who attacked the Roman armies on their march, the chief operations are the conquest of the coast tribes of Brittany (Veneti, etc.), in a warfare of curious naval engineering in the shallow tide-water inlets and among the rocky shores. During the season, the tribes of the south-west (Aquitani), a mining population, allied to the Iberians or Basques, are reduced by one of Cæsar's officers.

IV. An attack from the Germans on northern Gaul is repulsed; and Cæsar follows them, by a bridge of timber hastily built, across the Rhine. Returning, he crosses to Britain in the early autumn,

for a visit of exploration.

V. The partial conquest of Britain (second invasion) is followed by various movements in northern Gaul, in which the desperate condition of the Roman garrisons is relieved by the prudent and brave conduct of Labienus and Quintus Cicero.

VI. Cæsar makes a brief expedition across the Rhine, against the Germans. Some general disturbances are quelled, and northern Gaul is reduced to peace.

VII. Vercingetorix, a brave and high-spirited chief of southern Gaul, effects a confederacy of the whole country, which is at length subdued. Vercingetorix, in brilliant equipment, surrenders himself, to secure the quiet of the country, and is taken in chains to Rome, where he is afterwards put to death in Cæsar's triumph. VIII. Slight insurrections, breaking out here and there, are easily subdued; and the subjugation of Gaul is made complete.