ge, if genuine, carried them back and brought them, as it
were, into immediate contact with people who, long before the Christian
era, acted an important part on the stage of history, supplying the world
with two of the most precious metals, more precious then than gold or
silver, with copper and tin, the very materials, it may be, of the finest
works of art in Greece, aye, of the armor wrought for the heroes of the
Trojan War, as described so minutely by the poets of the "Iliad." There is
a continuity in language which nothing equals, and there is an historical
genuineness in ancient words, if but rightly interpreted, which cannot be
rivaled by manuscripts, or coins, or monumental inscriptions.

But though it is right to be enthusiastic about what is really ancient in
Cornwall,--and there is nothing so ancient as language,--it is equally right
to be discriminating. The fresh breezes of antiquity have intoxicated many
an antiquarian. Words, purely Latin or English, though somewhat changed
after being admitted into the Cornish dictionary, have been quoted as the
originals from which the Roman or English were in turn derived. The Latin
_liber_, book, was supposed to be derived from the Welsh _llyvyr; litera_,
letter, from Welsh _llythyr; persona_, person, from Welsh _person_, and
many more of the same kind. Walls built within the memory of men have been
admitted as relics of British architecture; nay, Latin inscriptions of the
simplest character have but lately been interpreted by means of Cornish,
as containing strains of a mysterious wisdom. Here, too, a study of the
language gives some useful hints as to the proper method of disentangling
the truly ancient from the more modern elements. Whatever in the Cornish
dictionary cannot be traced back to any other source, whether Latin,
Saxon, Norman, or German, may safely be considered as Cornish, and
therefore as ancient Celtic. Whatever in the antiquities of Cornwall
cannot be claimed by Romans, Saxons, Danes, or Normans, may fairly be
considered as genuine remains of the earliest civilization of this island,
as the work of the Celtic discoverers of Britain.

The Cornish language is by no means a pure or unmixed language,--at least
we do not know it in its pure state. It is, in fact, a mere accident that
any literary remains have been preserved, and three or four small volumes
would contain all that is left to us of Cornish literature. "There is a
poem," to quote Mr. Norris,