uls.

The names of the individual Belgic chiefs are as Gallic as those of the
towns and nations, _e.g._, _Commius_ and _Divitiacus_, and so are those
of such Britons as _Cassibelaunus_.

I submit that this is, as far as it goes, a reason for limiting rather
than extending all such statements as the ones in question. And it is by
no means a solitary one. A statement of Strabo confirms it:--"The
Aquitanians are wholly different" (_i.e._, from the other Gauls) "not
only in language, but in their bodies,--wherein they are more like the
Iberians than the Gauls. The rest are Gallic in look; but not all alike
in language. Some differ _a little_. Their politics, too, and manners of
life differ _a little_."--Lib. iv. c. 1.

With the external evidence, then, of Strabo, coinciding with the
internal evidence derived from the geographical, national, and
individual names, it seems illegitimate to infer from the text of Caesar
more than has been suggested.

Unless we believe the Belgae of Picardy to have been Germans, the second
fact stated by Caesar, viz., the Belgic origin of the south-eastern
Britons is comparatively unimportant, since it merely shews that between
the Britons of the south-eastern coast, and those of the interior, there
were certain points of difference, the former being recent immigrants,
and Belgium being the country from which they migrated. Nevertheless,
this introduces a difficulty; since, by drawing a distinction between
the men of Kent, and the men of the Midland Counties, we are precluded
from arguing that the Britons in general belonged to the same class as
the Gauls; inasmuch as Caesar's description may fairly be said to apply
to the _Belgic Britons only_.

I think, myself, that Caesar's statement must be taken as an _inference_
rather than as _evidence_; in other words, he must not be considered to
say that certain _Attrebates_ and _Belgae_ crossed the Straits of Dover
and settled in Britain, but that, as certain portions both of Belgium
and Britain bore the same names, a migration had taken place; such being
the explanation of the coincidence. Or, if we suppose Caesar himself to
have been too acute a reasoner to confound a conclusion with a fact (as,
perhaps, he was), we may attribute the inference to his informants.
Whoever is in the habit of sifting ethnological evidence, is well aware
that a confusion of kind in question is one of the commonest of the
difficulties he must deal with.

At the sam