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the warm attachment of the Welshman and the Breton for the past, shown in no instance more touchingly than in the fond affection with which they love to recite their ancient lays? To this day the young men of the Provence go about in soft summer nights, according to ancient custom, begging for a little flour to make their Christmas cakes, and singing songs that have been heard on the same soil for a thousand years. It is by such means that these provincial dialects present to us languages in all their early freshness, and thus reflect, as in a mirror, the character of races now grown old and feeble, or entirely ruined and forgotten, but then in the days of their youth and vigor. Contemporaries of the younger years of nations, they represent even now those pure, first sensations, those spontaneous but powerful impressions, and simple but deep emotions of the heart, which fade away as childhood ripens into more mature age. They abound with words and forms, expressive of the relations of men in their early simplicity and sacredness, and fragrant with the sweet breath of youthful purity and affection.

CHAPTER XII.

ANGLO-SAXON AND ENGLISH HISTORY.

For the Reformation-For Constitutional History.

If such researches into once living languages that are now but humble dialects have been interesting and attractive to the scholar, they have often been found of much greater importance yet to the historian and powerful instruments in the hands of the reformer. Thus the Anglo-Saxon has, as an independent, national tongue, long ceased to exist. Driven out by the Norman from palace, legislature and tribunal, its tones were forgotten, its records covered with the dust of ages, and the learned contemptuously ignored it. Already, a few years after the Conquest, Robert Grosse-Tête, bishop of Lincoln, knew but two languages in England, Latin for men of letters, French for the educated the Anglo-Saxon he either did not or would not know, nor those who spoke it. Yet it lived, and many were there to whom it was dear, as the language formed by their valiant forefathers in a rude but poetical age, and, above all, because it gave to them alone of all European nations the inestimable privilege of reading the word of God in their own tongue. It was, however, only the humble serf, the lonely cottager and the outlawed forester who thus guarded it as a precious heir

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loom. They stened with vague admiration to brilliant ballads praising the bold deeds of the noble Norman, but the simple strains of their own poetical chronicles and the plaintive songs of their mother tongue appealed to deeper, almost sacred feelings and still more endeared to them the language in which they were embodied. Thus Piers Ploughman tells us of "Sloth, who does not know his paternoster, is ignorant of all hymns on the Saviour or our Lady, but well versed in (Anglo-Saxon) rhymes of Robin Hood." We see, then, here also, that the Anglo-Saxon with all its precious relics, its rich stores of literature and its ample contributions to the English of our day, was not preserved by the high and noble, the learned and wise, but by the humble and unlettered, the despised people. They treasured it up and watched it jealously, so that when England was almost despairing of political freedom and religious liberty and looked in vain for help to learning and wisdom, she found in the forgotten and neglected dialects of distant provinces assistance as powerful as it was unexpected. Anglo-Saxon blood would not have received justice at the hands of modern historians, the Englishman and the American would not now look with just pride to their remote ancestors, if the study of their ancient and now no longer living tongue had not taught posterity to venerate those men who clearly perceived and expressed the fundamental truths of civil liberty, and exhibited in their writings that love of the Scriptures and independence of faith which, even now, characterize the Anglo-Saxon. Does it not, literally, speak volumes to the honor of that "rude and illiterate" people, that they translated the Bible more fully and frequently than any other nation of that age or long afterwards? Ought not the millions

that now speak English gratefully remember their fathers, whenever they repeat the Lord's Prayer, which, in 1500 years and in spite of all changes and invasions from abroad through which England has passed, yet has admitted but three foreign words into its Anglo-Saxon form? The marriage service of the Episcopal church, in all its touching simplicity and impressive earnestness, is an equally eloquent witness, speaking in the words of a forgotten tongue, of the piety and fervor of an ancient race. It breathes, still, the same spirit that was in the Venerable Bede, when he spent his dying breath in concluding his version of the gospel of St. John, the same spirit that was revived in the zealous Wicliffe, and ultimately, with no small help from Anglo-Saxon writings, asserted the birthright of the Englishman, first claimed and enjoyed by the Anglo-Saxon, to read the Bible by his wn fireside and in his own tongue.

The Reformers themselves, when they wished to establish the truth of their doctrines, bethought themselves of early Saxon works on such subjects, and, to their great joy and surprise, found that their ancestors had, in homilies and religious writings, foreshadowed all the important doctrines for which they now contended. They found, for instance, in Paschal's homily, their own views of the Eucharist, and in the Anglo-Saxon Gospel versions, triumphant proof that the Scriptures, now prohibited by the Church of Rome, had once been read by the people in the vulgar tongue. Similar aid was obtained from like sources when, towards the end of the sixteenth century, forebodings o a political change were felt in England, and the Anglo-Saxon was once more remembered and called upon to furnish weapons for the impending struggle. The researches made by some of

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the first scholars of the age and the boldest champions of English liberty, who unexpectedly found themselves studying an humble dialect, proved that the spirit of freedom which animated their forefathers, could even now furnish them with a historical and inalienable title to the rights they had in vain prayed for at the throne of their monarch. Tardy justice was then done to the race which the proud Norman had so haughtily despised, and which now gave to late generations, in its laws written before all other nations of Teutonic blood, so striking an evidence of its innate love of liberty and high sense of justice.

It is true that linguistic studies do not always and at once produce such immediate advantages as in the case of the AngloSaxon; but they will always furnish us with a better insight into ancient times, and add to our knowledge of days long gone by. It is in this light, especially, that the study of languages becomes an all-important aid to history: by enabling us to read in words and grammatical structure what neither annals nor tradition have been able to preserve.