Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/17

Rh families might diverge, while branches of them converged so as to become the connecting links between each other. Tribes of outcasts and fugitives or other offsets might be found separating from each principal trunk and meeting the like of other nations, so as to give rise to a variance of languages, which again would become divided into dialects, all showing more or less the connection originally existing.

Of such a nature seems to have been the mixture of people in Belgic Gaul in the time of Cæsar, which had been going on perhaps for many centuries previously. But the preponderating class then was clearly German, as being the conquerors, so that, according to the statement of Celsus, cited in Oudendorp, they refused to be called Gauls, and were indignant when they heard the name assigned them:— "Ut jam se Gallos dici nesciant, si audiant indignentur." The testimony of Cæsar, both directly and indirectly, in various parts of his Commentaries, and other ancient writers to the same effect, that the Belgians were of German origin, is so express and concurrent, that it becomes a matter of surprise to us to find it disputed. If however doubted by English writers, those of the country itself have no hesitation on the subject, and they seem to be unquestionably in the right. Whatever might have been the earlier divergences in the Teutonic family of nations, that branch of it settled in Belgic Gaul in the time of Cæsar, may well be expected to have retained substantially the language of their ancestors. When the Belgians first dispossessed the Gauls of those districts, they might have found them thinly populated, so that a new language might be easily introduced. But after they became more densely peopled, the language would be less affected by any new inhabitants. In such a case, the language grown up in any well-peopled country clings to it tenaciously. That which was learned in childhood cannot easily be erased from the memory of the adult population, and thus even conquerors have often had to adopt the language of the conquered.

We have no notices left us by which to form any sure conclusion as to the language of Belgic Gaul; but as far back as it can be traced, there seems to be no doubt of its having been nearly, if not entirely, the same as that existing at present, represented by the different dialects of Dutch, Friesic, Flemish, or Anglo-Saxon. That it did exist there in the time of Cæsar is clear, from the fact that there is no trace of its having been introduced subsequently, and as far as history or tradition reaches, it has always been the language of the country. Having no remnants of it in former