Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/22

4 confidence in their future that led their bishop to let them hear the Gospel story in their own vulgar tongue? Ever since the beginning of literature there has existed a well-marked distinction between the language of the vulgar and that of the learned—the lewed man and the clerk. The latter is the exclusive privilege of the educated, and specially of the priestly class; the former is the vernacular, the speech of the verna or house-hold slave, that which children may pick up from a nurse, but which they will be half-ashamed of soon as they cross the vestibulum of the grammar school and learn the language of books. Knowing the influence of our Authorised Version on the development of modern English, we can better appreciate the wisdom and foresight of Wulfila. That his efforts failed to effect a similar result for his native Gothic was due to the cruel destiny of his people, a destiny over which he could have had no control. A somewhat bewildering chapter in Gibbon, and a half-contemptuous aplication of the name in art, alone preserve the memory of the Goths. Obscure Teutonic tribes—Alemanni, Suevi, Balti, Belgians, Franks, Lombards—these survive in some form, but the name of the Goth is well-nigh effaced from the map of Europe. Let me hurriedly glance at the history of this people, our own kith and kin, as their language shows them to have been.

The races that have played the chief part in the history of Europe fall into two distinct groups—the Latin and the Teutonic. The physical configuration of the Continent explains the division. Imagine oneself in a balloon in lat. 50° N., and what will be seen by the eye whose horizon is created by the imagination? Southwards a great inland sea bathed in the golden light of a sub-tropical sky, lofty snow-clad mountains shut out the arctic blasts, long rugged spurs push their giant arms far into the blue waters, lovely valleys skirt the shores or lose themselves in the deep recesses of the foot-hills, winding bay and receding creek bring the sea-breeze that fills the social sail and tempts to a larger trade and a wider knowledge. Northwards, on the other hand, stretches an almost sub-arctic sea, broken into two irregular halves by peninsulas, its shallow waters washing dreary sandy shores, on every side a vast plain covered for ages with a dense forest through which mighty rivers pour their sluggish waters into storm-tossed seas, and