Scotch and Picts, and successfully repelled them. But these primævally evinced the indisposition of their successors to go back, and the Saxons were required to take up their station by the Great Northern Barrier erected by the Romans, whose remains still excite the wonder of the traveller and antiquary. A presumption arises, therefore, that the Saxon speech would be speedily grafted on the language of the North of England, where still we think it is most radically preserved.

The termination of this deliverance was in agreement with general experience. The Saxons had done our state some service, and they knew it. The Allied Army did not dislike their quarters, and as it was inconvenient to be always sending for supplies across the seas, it established a tolerably rapacious Commissariat here. Soldiers, like Dalgetty, look to the provant first. The Cordon Sanitaire thought it time to seek their own health, and acted on the chivalrous principle that benevolence always rewards itself.

It is not my purpose to go much farther with the history. The Saxon power lasted with few interruptions from 430, some say 449, unto 1016. Never did people undergo a more perfect revolution. We received not only new laws, new habits, but also a new language. That language still remains, and amidst all moral vicissitudes, all national convulsions, all literary caprices, is destined to be the most widely spoken, the most thrillingly powerful, of all tongues, if it be not auspicated to supersede them all.

Kent was first peopled by the Jutes. The three kingdoms of proper Saxon were Sussex and Surrey,-then the Westward South coast, Hampshire, &c. under the name of Wessex ;—and lastly Essex, Middlesex, and Hertfordshire. The Angles were far more numerous. They occupied the country of the old Iceni, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire. They formed Mercia of the several Midland counties,-while all beyond the Abus or Humber, inclusive of Yorkshire and Lancashire, Durham and Northumberland,-though not Cumberland,-constituted the Northern Division. These comprehend far more of the East than of the Western shore, as might be expected from

the parallelism of the Saxon coast with the former, and its great distance from the latter. North and South Wales were British still, abhorring the Sassenach as much as the Gael himself. Cornwall had its peculiar language; and Daines Barrington, in a communication to the Antiquarian Society in 1773, recording a tour he had made through that county in 1768, affirms that a woman of the name of Pentraeth, aged eighty-seven years, could speak it, and that it was only just then that it was likely to become quite extinct.

Whether Heptarchy or Octarchy be the proper term to characterise these respective governments and settlements, Egbert in rather less than four hundred years assumed the sole jurisdiction and monarchy of the whole. The Cornish-men bowed, in him, to the foreign power which they had hitherto disputed, the Cumbrians were nearly subdued, and his sceptre was acknowledged in South Wales also.

But He who was to crown this dynasty, and to foster this land, he who was never intoxicated with pride nor enfeebled by despair,-who knew how to forbear in victory and how to aggrandise himself from disaster,-the humblest in the palace, the most dignified in exile,―sternly just, beautifully tender, -the hero among his warriors, the preceptor of his children, -firm in council, resistless in battle,-abandoned by all, but never abandoning himself,-Alfred arose. We need not deify him as a Woden, nor pourtray him fabulously as an Arthur, -he is the plain naked figure of history. Such marvels of excellence are only permitted to appear at tedious intervals,— ages can only bring about the revolutions of such luminaries. As a linguist, as an assertor and reformer of his native speech, he is worthy of pre-eminence. He was acquainted with Latin and translated Boëthius and Bede. He was no stranger to the sacred Greek. He was a poet, a statist, a legislator. He strove to vindicate learning and to diffuse education. Nor, in short, does there shine a name in human annals which can eclipse his just renown,-few that can venture to compare with it!

The structure and condition of the Anglo-Saxon language, previous to the time of Alfred, it seems impossible to settle

It came from the opposite Chersonesus: and it spread itself through our land. No change very greatly affected it. Though the Danes had often landed and established themselves, they were always regarded with distrust, and were as much as possible dispersed and detached by Saxon jealousy. When after the cruel massacre England was united to Denmark under Canute, the union was shortlived, and reverted to the Saxon line before the Norman invasion, a period of only twenty-three years. Besides, there is no proof that the Danish speech was essentially different from the Saxon, and incontestible evidence that they are shoots of the same great Gothic Stock.

We may observe that there is a great resemblance in the northern dialects. How many Teutonic words does any Englishman understood, when written, if not when pronounced! Dr. Calamy, in visiting Friezeland, one of the United Provinces, was convinced that this was one of the seats of the old Saxons. He testifies that the language of the Frizons in his day bore a great affinity to the then English. He mentions a town near the Zuydee Zee where he heard the Lord's Prayer recited in a tone and dialect which he very nearly comprehended. Sir William Temple's observations point to the same fact.

The doctrine of dialectical peculiarities seems to be this. The Patois of a language is seldom its deterioration. It is a prior state, which circumstances have induced and enabled some favoured orders to desert. If it be a residuum, the raciness of the juice is in it: it is the experiment in its base, it is wine on the lees. I will illustrate this with a reference to the Greek Dialects.

These were not as some suppose ignorant violations of correctness, casual corruptions of term, various dates of desuetude, -they are perfect, original, in themselves,-subsisting in their native elements and powers.

Greece was invaded as was Britain,-Greek became the language of the one as Saxon did of the other. How was the Greek language subjected to so many modifications?

We must suppose that there was a time when Greek existed in an entire and unique form. The Hellenes describe numerous

streams of emigration which flowed into Macedonia, Achaia, Attica, and Peloponnesus. Whether the Pelasgi were the first, -whoever the Pelasgi were,-there was a succession of these intruders or visitants. The last territory being the farthest, it would probably be the receptacle of those who had entered first upon these regions, or they might stand in equi-distant relation to each other. We may conceive of them in the course of their progress,-Dorians, Æolians, and Iones. These originally spoke differently. The radix of their language was common, but their own varieties were just and self-regulated. Doric, Æolic, and Ionic were distinct languages, though their distinctions were small, and though all proclaimed a similar parentage. These were from peculiar circumstances retained, or from the want of intercourse with each other, the Boeotians in the use of the Æolic from contempt, the Peloponnesians of the Doric from their peninsular condition. But as there will always be a metropolitan language in a large country, we may consider the Ionic, or old Attic, to be the language of the Archon, the Poet, and the Sage. This, in its pristine state, is exhibited in the Homeric poems. We know nothing purer and more complete than this. Thucydides and the Greek tragedians furnish also specimens. But being the courtly language, it was refined into the middle Attic, of which Plato has been quoted as furnishing illustrations. The New Attic became the classical passport of exhibition and intercourse among the most polished scholars of that republic which was called the "eye of Greece." Demosthenes and Xenophon wrote in this most perfect dialect. A depravation of it soon occurred on the destruction of their liberty and independence,but many suppose that this was confined to books, or only tolerated among them who had settled in Asia Minor, Italy, and other countries out of Greece, and who studied Greek merely as any modern language is taught in our schools. The truth was, that when Greek was spoken so accurately in Athens that the herb-woman detected Theophrastus as a stranger, when every ear was modulated to its tune and every mind was employed upon its criticism,―real forms of the original language uninpaired, from which all dialects were emanations, existed in Locris and Epirus,

Argos and Messenia,—not deteriorated but simply retained,— once, perhaps, niceties and elegancies,—though left behind by the researches of scholarship and the refinements of taste. Philippi could not compete in its dialect with Athens,-but all we contend for is, that the first is as much sui generis, independent, native, and real as the other, and far more so, since the other was purposely elaborated from its ruder state into its highest expressions of courtesy, harmony, eloquence, and verse. A peculiar dialect is never a deterioration of the language, it is its earlier stage, the subject of fashionable abandonment.

This, then, we believe to be the similar condition of the general dialects of England and Southern Scotland. The Picts, speaking a Gothic, took possession of the Lowlands of Scotland, -and there is much which a Yorkshireman can interchange with their descendants. Jamieson supplies a Dictionary of that dialect, which with advantage we may consult as to our own. The Danes came, speaking a Gothic, very little disturbing the Saxon, and their language explains many difficulties which we meet in its construction. Jute, Angle, and Saxon all spoke a Gothic, but the dialect varied in these nations, and was as defensible in one as in another. And what is very remarkable, when the Normans invaded our isle, even they produced little alteration in the language. This is, however, to be accounted for. Who were the Normans or Norsemen ?-a branch of the same great Gothic people with the Saxons, who had previously entered Gaul and, settling in its western parts, impressed their name upon them. They, indeed, had adopted the language of the conquered; perhaps at most it became the language of their noblesse and law;-but whether they retained any memory of the Gothic or not, when they conquered England, the Saxon tongue still prevailed, and the victors were obliged to employ it. Norman French included many Saxon words, and in some respects proved that a Saxon vernacular had not quite sunk into disuse among them. Charlemagne had endeavoured to drive back the Cimbrian nations, during the eighth century: and Rollo, having led his band of these very nations, obtained, early in the ninth,