THE GROWTH OF A LANGUAGE 3 55 



gated in England and was longest adhered to in Germany, in which 

 country university lectures were delivered in Latin by a few professors 

 within the memory of the present generation. To some extent French 

 was for a long time the most generally spoken language. Professor 

 Fouillee, in his " Psychology of the French People," asserts that toward 

 the end of the seventeenth century France had twenty millions of in- 

 habitants; Great Britain and Ireland, about nine millions; Germany, 

 nineteen millions; Austria, somewhat less than thirteen millions, and 

 that among the fifty million inhabitants of Europe France comprised 

 about forty per cent. 1 Besides, if a person spoke two languages, one of 

 them was almost invariably French. In 1789, according to the same au- 

 thority, France had a population of twenty-six millions; Great Britain 

 and Ireland, of twelve millions; Eussia, of twenty-five millions; Ger- 

 many, of twenty-eight millions, and Austria, of about eighteen millions. 

 France now represented only twenty-seven per cent, of the inhabitants 

 of Europe, Eussia having meanwhile taken its place among the great 

 powers. France continued to decline until the close of the nineteenth 

 century, when it included only about eleven per cent, of the population 

 of Europe. Nobody knows how many persons speak Eussian in the 

 proper sense of the word, but probably a good deal fewer than one half 

 of the citizens of the empire. 



Let us now glance at the career of the Castilian tongue. At the 

 death of Philip the Second the population of Spain is estimated to have 

 been about eight and a half millions. Towards the close of the seven- 

 teenth century it is supposed to have sunk to about six millions, since 

 many villages were deserted and long stretches of country lay unculti- 

 vated. Within the next eight or ten decades there was considerable 

 improvement, so that by the beginning of the nineteenth century the 

 population is believed to have doubled. The number of inhabitants in 

 the Spanish American states is estimated at about thirty-six millions. 

 Outside of these countries, and including Cuba but excluding the 

 mother-country, there may be one or two millions of Spanish-speaking 

 people; this makes the entire number between thirty-eight and forty 

 millions. But so badly managed are the internal affairs of the Central 

 American states that the best possible " guess " at the number of their 

 inhabitants may be wide of the mark. Of this total population not one 

 tenth, more likely not one twentieth, has received systematic instruction 

 in any language or in anything else. Besides, the number of persons of 

 pure Spanish descent outside of the mother-country is comparatively 

 small. As it is reputed to be but nineteen per cent, in Mexico, the 

 total number of Spaniards at the present day may fall far short of the 

 above estimate : that is to say, if we credit Spain with eighteen millions 



1 Page 321. It will be noticed that if the figures are correct the per cent. 

 can not be. 



