Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/19

Rh Bosworth observes, that the Romans had, in the course of their usual policy, drafted away the males from the country to be engaged in foreign wars, and that their place had to be filled up with strangers who he thinks must have varied the character of the people. Granting this in some measure to have been the case, still it may be considered very probable that the new comers were only people of the neighbouring tribes, speaking the same or some cognate language. Or even if they were others, yet it may be a question whether the language of the country could be materially changed unless the women had been taken away also. Cicero well observed, that the language of a country depended on the women, De Orat. iii. § 12, as also did Plato before him, Crat. § 74, and thus all history shows, that in a densely peopled country the completest conquest scarcely ever changes the language. That is only effected by an extermination of the former inhabitants, or by separating them into small sections in subjection to their masters. Whether the modern Dutch are the genuine descendants of the Batavi or not, is not the question for us to maintain. It will be sufficient for our purpose if it may be conceded that the language now spoken in Holland is the representative of that spoken in Belgic Gaul in the time of Cæsar, making due allowances for the different circumstances of the country at the respective epochs, influenced by the former state of barbarism contrasted with their present civilization.

Proceeding with the same line of argument, in the belief that where a language has once become firmly established in a fully-peopled country it remains permanently established, purely or recognizable in its derivatives or dialects, except under very peculiar circumstances, we can have little difficulty in next assigning to the nation whom Cæsar terms Celts or Gauls, the language now spoken in Brittany. In maintaining this opinion, the first difficulty we have to encounter is with regard to the name, as the people of that district who call themselves Bretons or Brezonec, do not recognize the name either of Gauls or Celts, the latter being that which, according to Cæsar, they acknowledged. In this, however, the difficulty is perhaps more apparent than real, and may be easily explained by referring to the relationship of what we may here for once call the Celtic nations one to another. This is in accordance with the common acceptation of the term, though there may be some doubt as to its strict correctness; inasmuch as these Celtic nations, generally understood as divided into two principal branches, the Cymric and Gaelic, have