SCYTHIA. 87

Borne and afterwards ; but the difficulty of identify- ing a modern and civilised race with an ancient and barbarous one, is shown by the dissimilarity of the * handsome and chivalrous Hungarians with their hid- eous and unkempt progenitors. They seem to have inherited from them little besides their love of horse- flesh in the civilised sense. That the Scythians disappeared from history, when history itself was at its lowest ebb, is no proof that they exist nowhere now. Their language, specimens of which are given by Herodotus, undoubtedly be- longs ,to that of the Indo-Germanic family. Their connection with the Sacae is established. Some con- nect the Sacse with the Saxons, others also with the Sikhs of northern India. It would indeed be strange if it were discovered from critical philology and ar- chaeology that the English were pitted against their cousins at Sobraon, Chilianwallah, and Gujerat, and recovered India through their aid afterwards ; and that some of our Saxon ancestors were those who fought best on the losing side at Marathon and Platsea. Cer- tain it is that nearly all the now dominant races of mankind seem to have swarmed, at longer or shorter intervals, from some mysterious hive about or beyond the Caucasus. History records some of the waves of their western or eastern progress. Before the Scythi- ans came a swarm of Cimmerians, sweeping over Asia Minor in the time of the predecessors of Croesus. Their name is still retained in the Crimea and Krim Tartary. They reappear as Cimbri in the latter days of the Ro- man republic, to which they were very near giving the finishing stroke. Then they are heard of in Schleswick and Jutland, and in Wales it is just possible that at