CHAP. xxm. NO EUROPEAN LANGUAGE A THOUSAND TEAKS OLD. 459 



distinct languages, whatever may have been their origin, 

 the definition above suggested might be of practical use, and 

 enable the teacher to proceed with his argument. 



He might begin by undertaking to prove that none of the 

 languages of modern Europe were a thousand years old. 

 No English scholar, he might say, who has not specially 

 given himself up to the study of Anglo-Saxon, can interpret 

 the documents in which the chronicles and laws of England 

 were written in the days of King Alfred, so that we may be 

 sure that none of the English of the nineteenth century 

 could converse with the subjects of that monarch if these last 

 could now be restored to life. The difficulties encountered 

 would not arise merely from the intrusion of French terms, 

 in consequence of the Norman conquest, because that portion 

 of our language (nearly three-fourths of the whole) which is 

 Saxon has also undergone great transformations by abbrevia 

 tion, new modes of pronunciation, spelling, and various 

 corruptions, so as to be unlike both ancient and modern 

 German. They who now speak German, if brought into contact 

 with their Teutonic ancestors of the ninth century, would be 

 quite unable to converse with them, and, in like manner, the 

 subjects of Charlemagne could not have exchanged ideas with 

 the Goths of Alaric's army, or with the soldiers of Armimus 

 in the days of Augustus Csesar. So rapid indeed has been the 

 change in Germany, that the epic poem called the Nibelungen 

 Lied, once so popular, and only seven centuries .old, cannot 

 now be enjoyed, except by the erudite. 



If we then turn to France, we meet again with similar 

 evidence of ceaseless change. Chevalier Pertz has printed a 

 treaty of peace a thousand years old, between Charles the' 

 Bald and King Louis of Germany (dated A.D. 841), in which 

 the German king takes an oath in what was the French 

 tongue of that day, while the French king swears in the 

 German of the same era, and neither of these oaths would now 



