CHAP, xxiii. NO EUROPEAN LANGUAGE A THOUSAND YEARS OLD. 459 



distinct languages, whatever may have been their origin, the 

 definition above suggested might be of pi-actical 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 ISTorman conquest, because that por- 

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

 is Saxon has also undergone great transformations by abbre- 

 viation, 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 con- 

 tact with their Teutonic ancestors of the ninth century, 

 would be quite unable to converse w^th 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 

 Arminius in the days of Augustus Ciiesar. So rapid indeed 

 has been the change in Germany, that the epic jjoem called the 

 Nibelungen Lied, once so popular, and only seven centuries 

 old, cannot now be enjoj-ed, exeej^t 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 Avhich 

 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 



