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212 principal sub-dialects, the Frankish, the Alemannic and Swabian, and the Bavarian and Austrian. The second period, that of the Middle High-German (Mittelhochdeutsch), covers about four centuries, beginning with the twelfth and ending with the fifteenth; its ruling dialect is the Swabian; and its rich literature hands down to us valuable productions of the poetical fancy of the times, in the lyric verses of the Minnesingers, and precious memorials of ancient German national tradition, in the heroic legends (Heldensagen). The foremost work of the latter class, the Lay of the Nibelungen (Nibelungenlied), is one of the noblest epics which any country has produced, in any age of the world. Of the language and literature of the New High-German period, from early in the sixteenth century to our own times—the "German" language and literature, as we are accustomed to call it—there is no need that I speak more particularly.

The third subdivision of the Germanic branch is the Scandinavian. Its earliest monuments come to us from Iceland, that far-off and inhospitable island of volcanoes, boiling springs, and ice-fields, which, settled in the ninth century by refugees from Norway, long continued a free colony, a home of literary culture and legendary song. Cbristianity, more tolerant there than elsewhere on Germanic soil, did not sweep from existence the records of ancient religion and customs. The two Eddas, gathered or preserved to us from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, are, in virtue of their tone and content, by far the most primitive works in the whole circle of the Germanic literatures, documents of priceless value for the antiquity of the Germanic race. Their language also, though of so much more recent date than the oldest Anglo-Saxon and High-German, is not exceeded by either in respect to the primitiveness of its phonetic and grammatical form. Nor has it greatly changed during the six or seven centuries which have elapsed since the compilation of the Eddas. The modern Icelandic is still, among all the existing Germanic tongues, the one that has preserved and possesses the most of that original structure which once belonged to them all alike. Three other dialects, the Norwegian, the Swedish, and the Danish, constitute along with it the Scandinavian