The English language, at present diffused not only over Great Britain, Ireland and the surrounding islands, but also throughout the English colonies out of Europe, as well as throughout the commonwealth of North America, is a peculiar mixed language, formed within Great Britain. Its most essential constituent, the Anglosaxon, after the expulsion of the Celtic language, coalesced with Normanfrench elements, and has established itself as its formative power.

The primitive inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland were Celts. Immigrant Belgic populations, which, even before Julius Caesar's time occupied the coasts of Britain, were likewise of Celtic stock, the most civilized among them being the inhabitants ot Kent. The Celtic language, peculiar to the whole of western Europe when the Romans took possession of Britain, is still spoken, as the language of the people, in Ireland, in the highlands and islands of Scotland, where subsequent immigrants from Ireland in the third century (Picts and Scots) displaced the ancient Caledonians from the West onwards; also in Wales and in the Isle of Man, as well as in French Lower Brittany. The Celtic literature of the druidical era has perished; a modern one has arisen only under the influence of foreign culture; its monuments extend up to the eighth and ninth centuries, but only in our own age have they become the subject of research. L. Dieffenbach and Zeuss, among the Germans, have devoted to it most comprehensive investigations (Celtica, in two parts. Stuttgart 1839 and Grammatica Celtica. Leipzig 1852. Two parts) while its modern idioms have been variously explored by English and French scholars.

Even in antiquity a distinction was drawn between the two main branches of the Celtic tongue, the Gaelic (the same as Gaedelic, with a mute d) and the British. To the Gaelic branch belong: first, the present Irish, frequently called Erse; secondly, the Highland-Scotch, or Erse, commonly called the Gaelic; and, thirdly, the Manx. To

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the British branch belong: first, the Welsh, or Cymric (Cymraeg) in Wales; secondly, the Cornish in Cornwall, which died out in the eightenth century; and, thirdly, the Armorican, (Breizounek,) in Brittany.

In English, with the exception of no inconsiderable number of proper names of towns, villages, hills, rivers and lakes, Celtic roots have been but scantily preserved, and of these only a few have been transmitted through the Anglosaxon. In modern times many Celtic words have been taken up by the language of the people.

The British Celts were (from Caesar, 60 years before Christ, to Agricola, 84 years after Christ subdued by the Romans, with the exception of the mountaineers of Wales and Scotland, who, like their Irish congeners remained unconquered. Roman-british towns soon covered the flourishing land, which was traversed by well designed roads, and peopled partly by Roman colonists, soldiers, and maintained a brisk intercourse with Rome and her provinces. With the Roman constitution, Roman laws and the official use of the Latin tongue, England even received a tinge of Roman science and learning as well as eloquence. Here, however, in striking contrast with its influence in Celtic Gaul, the Latin tongue, although a necessary medium for intelligence in the towns, struck by no means so deep a root among the Celtic population as to become permanently influential in the subsequent formation of the English language. The gradual penetration of Latin into English begins with the introduction of Christianity and of its ecclesiastical language, advances with the development of mediaeval science, and continues to grow with the revival of classical culture. The linguistic traces of the Roman dominion are preserved only in names of places (such as those compounded of caster, chester, cester and coln, that is, castra, colonia). After nearly five hundred years possession of the country the Romans recalled their legions to Italy, then hard pressed by barbarians, and thereupon a fresh foreign rule began in Britain.

The beginnings of the Anglosaxon dominion are veiled in darkness. Marauding expeditions of German and Scandinavian mariners to the southern and eastern coasts of Britain began in the third century after Christ: the Romans maintained fleets in the ports of Britain and Gaul against the barbarians; in the South-east strongholds were founded for the defence of the coast. In the reign of Valentinian, Theodosius acquires the surname of Saxonicus through his defeat of German pirates, and, even in the fourth century, the seacoast bears the name of Littus Saxonicum, which seems to point to its settlement by Germans. The British towns, in 409, expelled their imperial officers and drove away marauding Saxons, inhabitants of the northern coasts of Germany, by force of arms. The prevailing portion of the population of the South-east seems, even before the subsequent immigration of the Saxons and Jutes, to have been of the Saxon stock. Modern enquirers, however, are wrong in ascribing the formation of the Scotch dialect to the contemporaneous invasion of Scotland by the Picts, as if these were a Scandinavian race from the North.

In various expeditions the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, ostensibly called in for succour against the Picts and Scots, came about the

middle of the fifth century to Britain and, after a prolonged contest, possessed themselves of the country. The earliest and most numerous settlers, the Angles, who appeared in the North between the Humber and the wall of Antonine, gave their name to the country (Englaland), although the Celts are wont even now to denote the English by the name of Saxons (Cymric, Seison Saeson). The Angles, for a while the most powerful, subsequently succumbed to the Saxons, of whom the Westsaxons, in 827, in the reign of Egbert, obtained the sovereignty over the whole country, as well as over Wales, while the less numerous Jutes, who are commonly mentioned as the oldest settlers in Kent and the Isle of Wight, played no important part politically. All had come from the northern coast of Germany, from Friesland to the peninsula of Jutland: their tongue, the Lowdutch, was spoken by them in various dialects, which, blended in England more than in their home, still betray their diversity in the popular dialects of modern English.

At the end of the sixth century we find the Angles spread over the greatest portion of the country. In the South of Scotland, between the Tweed and the Frith of Forth, where King Edwin in 620 built Edinburgh, as likewise in Northumberland (that is, Bernicia) also in Cumberland, Durham, (the bishopric) Westmoreland, Lancashire and Yorkshire (that is, Deira) they dwelt under the name of Northumbers. This Northumberland was, from the seventh till the middle of the eighth century, the chief seat of learning. They bore the name of Mercians in Cheshire, Derbyshire, Nothinghamshire, (Northmercians) and south of the Trent in Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Rutlandshire, Huntingdonshire, the northern part of Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Staffordshire and Shropshire (Southmercians). In Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely, as well as in part of Bedfordshire, they were called East Angles, in Leicestershire, belonging to Mercia, Middleangles.

The Saxons settled in the South, in Sussex, Essex, Middlesex and the south of Hertfordshire, as East Saxons; then, in Surrey, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, Somersetshire, Devonshire and a portion of Cornwall, as Westsaxons.

Lastly we find the Jutes in Kent, the isle of Wight and a part of Hampshire.

Masters, for the most part, of the soil, and, unlike the Romans, inhabitants of the open country, the language of the conquerors soon penetrated deeply into the life of the people. The Anglosaxon language and literature flourished, developing even early cultivated prose. The best manuscripts in the Anglosaxon language have their origin in the tenth century; the then predominant dialect, that of Wessex, maintained itself in this century unadulterated; of the earlier language we are ignorant, the earlier works having been moulded by the copyists according to their respective dialects. The decay of the language begins in the eleventh century, under the influence of the Normans. Of foreign elements, the Anglosaxon language after the introduction of Christianity into England in 597, (first into Kent) which spread rapidly in the seventh century, adopted a number of words,

originally taken from the Greek, from the language of the Latin church. A few more Latin words have been transmitted through the Anglosaxon, and have remained in the subsequent English.

In

From 787 the Danes molested the coasts of England. In the ninth century they possessed themselves of the north, and settled in Northumberland and Mercia. Alfred the Great, involved, like his predecessors, in conflict with them, and, for a while, bereft of his sway at last overcame them, although they afterwards, after fresh arrivals of their countrymen, again in union with Scots and Britons, combated the Anglosaxons, until defeated by Athelstan at Brunaburg. The Danish king Sweno afterwards invades England, and, from the year 994, is repeatedly bought off with Danegelt. order to avenge the murder of the Danes by Ethelred in 1000, he returns, is reconciled by a fresh atonement, (Mandebod), and dies in a final attempt to conquer the country, in 1014. His son Canute the Great conquers it in 1016, makes himself monarch in 1018, and, being at the same time king of Denmark, he tries to blend both nations into one. His sons Harold and Hardicanute reign in succession till 1042 over England, when Ethelred's son, Edward the Confessor, again comes to the throne, and dies in 1065, and whose successor Harold loses both throne and life in the battle of Hastings against William the Conqueror in 1066.

The language of these Danes, partly from its very nature, was impotent to exercise a transforming influence upon the Anglosaxon tongue, and moreover, such an influence upon the Anglosaxon was, on the part of the decidedly less cultivated Danes, scarcely possible. Even Canute's laws were issued, not in the Danish, but in the Anglosaxon language, and they disclose but few traces of the Norse tongue. Solitary Old-norse words are still to be met with in English and have therefore overpassed the limits of a dialect. But it was erroneous to call, as was formerly done, the speech of the country occupied by the Angles, the Saxon-danish dialect. The memory of the Danish era has been preserved in such vigour that, in Northamptonshire even at the present day, the peasants call every coin found in the earth Dane's money. In the investigation of words, a recourse to the Old-norse idiom is, further of great importance, where the Lowdutch dialects afford no clew.

With the commencement of the Norman rule, in 1066, the period of the violent repression of the refractory Anglosaxon nation, often provoked to open resistance, the Anglosaxon tongue disappeared from literature and from the laws. The French language and customs of the Normans were, even previously, not unknown to the court and to the upper circles of Anglosaxon life, for, during the Danish sway, the Princes, Lords and Clergy had fled to the Normans of the continent, who were superior to themselves in civilization. Normans had been trained at the Anglosaxon court and entrusted with offices: that their influence was disrelished by the people was the occasion of the king's being compelled, in 1052, to banish them. But, after the conquest by William, the estates of the saxon magnates, as well as the archbishoprics, bishoprics and abbeys, soon passed into the hands of Normans. Royal ordinances were now issued in the French tongue, justice was administered in it, and it became the language of