alysis of the present population,
and attempt to ascertain the proportion of its different ingredients.
There is Moorish blood, and there is Gothic, Roman, and Ph[oe]nician;
some little Greek, and, older than any, the primitive and original
Iberic. Perhaps, too, there is a Celtic element,--at least such is the
inference from the term _Celtiberian_. Yet it is doubtful whether it be
a true one; and, even if it be, there still stands over the question
whether the _Celtic_ or the _Iberic_ element be the older.

When this is settled, the hardest problem of all remains behind; _viz._,
the ethnological position of the Iberians. What they were, in
themselves, we partially know from history; and what their descendants
are we know also from their language. But we only know them as an
isolated branch of the human species. Their _relation_ to the
neighbouring families is a mystery. Reasons may be given for connecting
them with the Celts of Gaul; reasons for connecting them with the
Africans of the other side of the Straits; and reasons for connecting
them with tribes and families so distant in place, and so different in
manners as the Finns of Finland, and the Laps of Lapland. Nay
more,--affinities have been found between their language and the Hebrew,
Arabic, and Syriac; between it and the Georgian; between it and half the
tongues of the Old World. Even in the forms of speech of America,
_analogies_ have been either found or fancied.

Be this, however, as it may, the oldest inhabitants of the Spanish
peninsula were the different tribes of the Iberians proper, and the
Celtiberians; the first being the most easily disposed of. They it was,
whose country was partially colonized by Ph[oe]nician colonists; either
directly from Tyre and Sidon, or indirectly from Carthage. They it was
who, at a somewhat later period, came in contact with the Greeks of
Marseilles and their own town of _Emporia_. They it was who could not
fail to receive some intermixture of African blood; whether it were from
Africans crossing over on their own account, or from the Libyans,
Gaetulians, and Mauritanians of the Carthaginian levies.

And now the great western peninsula becomes the battle-ground for Rome
and Carthage; the theatre of the Scipios on the one side, and the great
family of the Barcas on the other. On Iberian ground does Hannibal swear
his deadly and undying enmity to Rome. At this time, the numerous
primitive tribes of Spain may boast a civiliza