XXVI ROYAL SOCIETY OP CANADA. 



to the customs and habits of their maternal ancestors ; with scarcely an exception, no language was 

 spoken throughout Normandy but Romance or Fl'ench. 



If, in the middle of the eleventh century, an attempt had been made to define the ethnological 

 difference between the French and English peoples the general answer must have been that in point 

 of origin there was no difference. Varieties there were in the component parts of each ; even at the 

 present day we meet such varieties equally in France and the British Islands. South of the Channel 

 we find the Celts, the Franks, the Latins and the Germans compounded in an infinite number of 

 different proportions ; in the British Islands we have differences between the Highlanders and Low- 

 landers, between the Irishmen and Englishmen, between the Welshmen and Yorkshiremen, between 

 the men of Cornwall and the men of Kent; but taking the people of France as a whole and the people 

 of the United Kingdom as a whole, at the period of which wc speak, it would not be possible to say 

 that ill point of ancestry there were any striking distinctions between them. There undoubtedly was 

 less ethnological diitercnce between the two communities separated by the Channel, taking them as 

 unities, than between many of the minor divisions in either country. In the middle of the eleventh 

 century no one of the two peoples could be named as a pure race; both were of mixed blood; they 

 were compounded substautiallj' of the same oi-iginal elements. There were minor differences in the 

 admixture, in the combination and fusion of the elements ; possibly there were modifications arising 

 from climate and geographical position ; but the two peoples had originated in the same primitive 

 race ; they had been subjected to like influences and exjDOsed to the same vicissitudes, differing only in 

 degree. 



In the Celtic race, which formed the basis in both cases, had been infused Roman, Teutonic and 

 Sandinavian stocks. The intruding races, on their arrival in the new countries, we can well imagine, 

 were in the flower of manhood, bold and determined in spirit, the most daring of the tribes whence 

 they sprang. We are warranted in the belief that among them thetc wei'e those who would take 

 preeminent position in the adventurous type of man. From such as these a healthy vigorous progeny 

 would proceed. The Romans would introduce their civilization, their culture and their powers of 

 organization, to elevate and refine the communities which they subdued. It was the pride of the 

 Roman conquerors to treat their subject States with consideration so long as the central jiower on the 

 banks of the Tiber was duly recognized. The Northern tribes which subsequently overran the more 

 cultivated provinces of Gaul and Britain, were unlettered, savage barbarians, worshippers of Thor and 

 Woden, who looked on the slaughter of an enemy as a righteous sacrifice to their gods. Under their 

 savage exterior and ruthless natures there were, however, the germs of generous impulses and noble 

 endowments. They had vigor, valor and resolution, and many of the ruder virtues ; they required 

 oui}' contact and intercourse with a more cultivated race to be developed into a higher and more 

 estimable condition. In course of years the best qualities of the conquering races becoming gradually 

 absorbed in the postulations of Gaul and Britain, could not fail to exercise powerful influences on the 

 character of both nations. To these early influences we may attribute many of the prominent 

 characteristics of the French and English as they are seen at the present day. 



At the period referred to, the language of the two peoples had diverged into different directions. 

 In France the dialect which came into use was the legacy of one set of conquerors ; in England other 

 influences led to different results, and the idiom of another set of conquerors prevailed. This ditierence 

 in language has been continued to the present day; and if other evidence were wanting, it might be 

 argued that the French and English peoples had sprung from entirely diffeient primitive stocks. 



Language, however, is but an indifferent test of race. There arc ample proofs throughout the 

 world that people nearly related may speak widely different dialects; while other communities, be- 

 tween whom there is no affinity of race, may converse in the same idiom. Amongst ourselves, 

 instances arc not unknown where an intruding stock, in the midst of a people greatly exceeding it in 

 number, has in two or three generations yielded to the influence surrounding it, and lost the language 

 of their ancestry. 



