ry point to
Romans and Saxons, as well as to Celts; nor is it at all unlikely that
many of these half-natural, half-artificial strongholds, though originally
planned by the Celtic inhabitants, were afterwards taken possession of and
strengthened by Romans or Saxons.

But no such doubts are allowed with regard to Cornish huts, of which some
striking remains have been preserved in Cornwall and other parts of
England, particularly in those which, to the very last, remained the true
home of the Celtic inhabitants of Britain. The houses and huts of the
Romans were rectangular, nor is there any evidence to show that the Saxon
ever approved of the circular style in domestic architecture.

If, then, we find these so-called bee-hive huts in places peculiarly
Celtic, and if we remember that so early a writer as Strabo(57) was struck
with the same strange style of Celtic architecture, we can hardly be
suspected of Celtomania, if we claim them as Celtic workmanship, and dwell
with a more than ordinary interest on these ancient chambers, now long
deserted and nearly smothered with ferns and weeds, but in their general
planning, as well as in their masonry, clearly exhibiting before us
something of the arts and the life of the earliest inhabitants of these
isles. Let anybody who has a sense of antiquity, and who can feel the
spark which is sent on to us through an unbroken chain of history, when we
stand on the Acropolis or on the Capitol, or when we read a ballad of
Homer or a hymn of the Veda,--nay, if we but read in a proper spirit a
chapter of the Old Testament too,--let such a man look at the Celtic huts
at Bosprennis or Chysauster, and discover for himself, through the ferns
and brambles, the old gray walls, slightly sloping inward, and arranged
according to a design that cannot be mistaken; and miserable as these
shapeless clumps may appear to the thoughtless traveller, they will convey
to the true historian a lesson which he could hardly learn anywhere else.
The ancient Britons will no longer be a mere name to him, no mere
Pelasgians or Tyrrhenians. He has seen their homes and their handiwork; he
has stood behind the walls which protected their lives and property; he
has touched the stones which their hands piled up rudely, yet
thoughtfully. And if that small spark of sympathy for those who gave the
honored name of Britain to these islands has once been kindled among a few
who have the power of influencing public opinion in E