Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/244

 CHAPTER IV.

nearer we approach 1303, the more numerous become the French words, upon which the right of En&shy;glish citizenship was being bestowed. In the Thirteenth Century the greatest change that ever revolutionised our tongue was made. A baleful Century it was, when we look to English philology; though a right noble Century, in its bearing on English politics and English architecture. The last word suggests a comparison: if we may liken our language to a fine stone building, we shall find that in that wondrous age a seventh part of the good old masonry was thrown down, as if by an earthquake, and was withdrawn from mortal ken. The breach was by slow degrees made good with bricks, meaner ware borrowed from France; and since those times, the work of destruction and reparation has gone on, though to a lesser extent than before. We may put up with the building as it now stands, but we cannot help sighing when we think of what we have lost.

Of old, no country was more thoroughly national than England: of all Teutonic lands she alone set down her annals, year after year, in her own tongue; and this went on for three Centuries after Alfred began to reign. But