they have spread, have become the less like to one another.

It is almost needless, therefore, to mention any thing that our language suffered from another invasion, which makes a conspicuous figure in the annals of our country, the invasion of the Danes. The Danes, after many unsuccessful attempts, subjected a great part of the country to their power, and blended their language with the language of the Saxons; but their language and that of the Saxons, being only different dialects of the same original tongue, mingled without discord, and in a short time were not to be distinguished.

A change of a more important nature was occasioned ere long, by the intercourse of our nation with the more southerly parts of the Continent; particularly with Normandy and with France in general. Gaul having been possessed by the Romans ever since the days of Julius Cæsar, the language of itsinhabitants, when subdued by the Franks and Normans, was a mixture of Celtic and barbarous Latin, which, owing perhaps to the preponderance of the latter, was termed Romanshe. The Franks and Normans being northern nations, speaking languages akin to each other, and both derived from the ancient Gothic, having mingled with the people of Gaul, who had yielded to their

arms, gave rise to the French, a new language in Europe, indebted for its elements to the Celts, the Romans, and the Goths. This new language, before much time had elapsed, Britain.

found its way into Great

Edward, surnamed the Confessor, having resided some time in France, had become partial to the language of that country, and, after his accession to the throne, the nobles, happy to gratify their sovereign at so easy a rate, endeavoured to speak it as they could. The French thus became the language of the court, from which it must have been communicated, in some degree, to the metropolis, and, through the metropolis, to the kingdom.

This, however, was nothing to what was soon after to happen. The few French words which had straggled into our country, were only the advanced guard of a numerous host, which was ere long to be thrown upon our shores. William, duke of Normandy, having conquered the people of England, proceeded to make war upon the language. Ignorant of that policy, which would have taught him to rest the security of his government upon the attachment of his new subjects, or disdaining, perhaps, to employ gentle means, to win the hearts of a people, whom he could at any time command by his sword, that haughty

prince, unmindful alike of justice and of humanity, seemed desirous to adopt any measure, that might break the spirit of the English, and cool their love to their native soil. For accomplishing this cruel purpose, among many other expedients, the suppression of their language seemed worthy of a trial. Accordingly the Norman French was taught in the schools; pleadings in suits at law, which concerned every man in the nation, were appointed to be conducted in Norman. Normans were dispersed among the monasteries and other religious houses; they were settled in every part of the kingdom, and furnished with estates to give them rank and influence; and what, perhaps, was of still greater consequence, the Norman nobility placed about the person of the king, and enjoying his chief confidence, made their native language, the language of the court.

The last mentioned circumstance, by the help of that principle, which disposes mankind to imitate their superiors, was alone sufficient, in the course of time, to cut up the ancient language of the country by the roots. For several centuries after the Jonquest, the intercourse between England and France, occasioned by the English dominions on the continent, must, no doubt, have tended to preserve, if not to extend, the intermixture of the two languages.

That tendency, however, the national antipathy so much cherished on both sides, served in a great measure to restrain; and, perhaps, to this very antipathy it may be owing, more than we are aware, that we find our language, at the present period, so pure as it is.

In times much nearer to our own, French terms and phrases, especially of the smarter sort, have been pretty freely imported, to the undue neglect of those of English growth; but in this ignoble and unpatriotic traffic, which every true-born Briton must regard with indignation, and every man of taste with disgust, no writer of reputation was ever known to engage. It is carried on chiefly by the manufacturers of our novels and comedies, who, with a few exceptions, are to be accounted the great polluters of our language.

In the later periods of its history, the English language has been greatly enriched by supplies from the Greek and Latin. In the ruder times of a country, its language can neither be copious nor polished; language being the sign of thought, will in its progress equal, but never outrun the progress of intellectual improvement. Had the English, as they emerged from barbarism, been shut up to the resources of their own minds, they might no doubt, in process of time, have formed a language sufficiently

philosophical, and capable of dressing to advantage the refined speculations in the various departments of literature and science, with which every English library is now stored: but, fortunately, the most difficult parts of this invention were perfected already, and the learned of our island, had only to turn to their own use the labours of men who had lived before them. The languages of the most polished people perhaps that ever lived, the people of Greece and Rome, being by various causes widely diffused over Europe, opened to the writers of Great Britain, as well as of the surrounding countries, an inexhaustible mine, from which they could extract without difficulty, whatever was necessary to embellish their ideas, or even to give them body and shape. In most instances, a slight change of termination was sufficient to adapt either a Greek or a Latin word to our mode of flection, and nothing more was necessary to make it English.

Advantages and disadvantages are generally linked together. The facility of transplanting words from the dead languages into English, has furnished pedantry with the means of disfiguring our language, and disgusting every reader of sense. Persons whom nature seems scarcely to have designed for any thing, allured by the fame of authorship, and looking upon