: one,
that this non-Aryan race has always been one of the finest and
strongest in Italy; and the other, that from the very dawn of history
its main characteristics, for good or for evil, have persisted most
uninterruptedly till the present day.

CASTERS AND CHESTERS.

Everybody knows, of course, that up and down over the face of England a
whole crop of places may be found with such terminations as Lancaster,
Doncaster, Manchester, Leicester, Gloucester, or Exeter; and everybody
also knows that these words are various corruptions or alterations of
the Latin _castra_, or perhaps we ought rather to say of the singular
form, _castrum_. So much we have all been told from our childhood
upward; and for the most part we have been quite ready to acquiesce in
the statement without any further troublesome inquiry on our own
account. But in reality the explanation thus vouchsafed us does not
help us much towards explaining the real origin and nature of these
ancient names. It is true enough as far as it goes, but it does not go
nearly far enough. It reminds one a little of Charles Kingsley's
accomplished pupil-teacher, with his glib derivation of amphibious,
'from two Greek words, _amphi_, the land, and _bios_, the water.' A
detailed history of the root 'Chester' in its various British usages
may serve to show how far such a rough-and-ready solution as the
pupil-teacher's falls short of complete accuracy and comprehensiveness.

In the first place, without troubling ourselves for the time being with
the diverse forms of the word as now existing, a difficulty meets us at
the very outset as to how it ever got into the English language at all.
'It was left behind by the Romans,' says the pupil teacher
unhesitatingly. No doubt; but if so, the only language in which it
could be left would be Welsh; for when the Romans quitted Britain there
were probably as yet no English settlements on any part of the eastern
coast. Now the Welsh form of the word, even as given us in the very
ancient Latin Welsh tract ascribed to Nennius, is 'Caer' or 'Kair;' and
there is every reason to believe that the Celtic _cathir_ or the Latin
_castrum_ had been already worn down into this corrupt form at least as
early as the days of the first English colonisation of Britain. Indeed
I shall show ground hereafter for believing that that form survives
even now in one or two parts of Teutonic England. But if this be so, it
is quite cl