Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/475

Rh At first glance all this seems to belie our assertion that unity of language is often a historical product of political causes. For it may justly be objected that the Portuguese type of language, although in general limited by the political boundary along the east, has crossed the northern frontier and now prevails throughout the Spanish province of Galicia; or again, that the French-Spanish political frontier has been powerless to restrain the advance, far toward the Strait of Gibraltar, of the Catalan speech, closely allied as we have said to the dialects of Provence



in southern France; that not even the slight line of demarcation between these last two lies along the Pyrenean political boundary, but considerably to the north of it, so that Catalan is to-day spoken over nearly a whole department in France; and, lastly, that the Basque language, utterly removed from any affiliation with all the rest, lies neither on one side nor the other of this same Pyrenean frontier, but extends down both slopes of the mountain range, an insert into both national domains of France and Spain. These objections are, however, the very basis of our contention that language and nationality often stand in a definite relation to one another: for, if we examine the history of Spain