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28 THROUGH NORWAY WITII A KNAPSACK.
they have in Norway a rhyme precisely the same as
ours—
" A merry Christmas and a happy New Year;
A pocket full of money and a cellar full of beer."
She had instinctively come to the conclusion that the
English and Norwegians are of the same stock, and
listened most attentively to an exposition of my opinion
that the aboriginal inhabitants of the greater part of
Britain were the same as those of Norway, and that
the same race inhabited both countries long before the
Danish invasion of which we have historical records,
and centuries before Cæsar set foot on British ground;
though historians have hastily and fallaciously concluded
that Britain was peopled with a Celtic race, simply from
Cæsar’s description of the inhabitants of the Kentish
coast, where a local colony of Gauls might be expected
to have settled by invasion from the neighbouring
continent. The descendants of the old Kentish families
of the coast are still distinguishable by their dark eyes
and haii-, and Gallic physiognomy; they are by no
means of the characteristic English type. The prisoners
in the Roman slave market, whom the punning Pope
converted from Angles to Angels, could not have been
dark-haired and dark-eyed beauties; for Italian angels
(unless they be portraits of the painter’s mistress) all
have blue eyes, and red, auburn, or flaxen hair. Italian
girls are liable to fall desperately in love at first sight
with flaming red-headed Scotchmen, or Englishmen
with straw-coloured hair: the " bella barba bianca" is
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