TWO " LATIN " NATIONS.
[TO THE EDITOR. OP THE "SPECTATOR:I SJA,—In connection with tharecent visit of the Italian fleet to Toulon, there have been many references in the European Press to a renewal of the entente cordiale between two "Latin" nations. It may be of some interest to inquire in what sense the term " Latin " can be correctly applied to the French, - whom, almost in the same breath, many people are apt to describe as a " Celtic" people. One thing surely is certain, that in blood the French cannot be at the same time both " Latin " and "Celtic." Yet the inconsistency does not seem to strike people. I think that although outside Provence the French have little or no Latin---i.e., Italian—blood in their veins, the explanation of their being described as a " Latin " race is to be found in the fact that their language and civilisa- tion are both Latin. It seems no longer permissible to bold that the French are mainly " Celtic" in blood, the view being now generally accepted that the bulk of the population in France is of a pre-Celtic, and probably of Iberian or Ligurian, stock, And this view seems to hold good also of Ireland and Wales.—I am, Sir, &e., W. H HALL Six-Mile Bottom, Cambridgeshire.
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