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finitely more powerful mind than Roederer possessed, either to have inspired the King himself with an energy adequate to the emergency, or to have assumed the burden of saving his Majesty in spite of himself. Passive courage, personal fortitude, the King possessed in the highest degree, but the danger of his wife and family unnerved him, as it might have done more energetic men; and he had, above all, a fixed determination-laudable in feeling, but fatal in practice-to suffer anything rather than have recourse to bloodshed. On the 4th August one of his old ministers, M. de Montmorin, showed him the approaching danger, and urged him, as the only means of avoiding an actual conflict, to leave Paris under the escort of the Swiss and of his still numerous friends-the King, after some consideration, replied

No; I am less afraid of the personal danger with which I am threatened than of a civil war.'--Peltier, ii. 293.

That amiable but erroneous feeling produced all the miseryand in an aggravated extreme-that it desired to avoid; and, whatever may have been the political motives of M. Roederer's conduct, it is, we think, impossible to deny that, considering the personal character of the King and the posture of affairs at the moment, the retreat to the Assembly was-after the murder of Mandat-the most prudent course which could be adopted. But we have no approbation to express of M. Roederer's share in the events which produced this crisis, and we cannot but deplore that, when he quitted the palace with his appointed prey, he did not, agreeably to the King's humane suggestion, take some measures to prevent a collision between the hostile parties,-to ensure the safe retreat of the faithful Swiss, and to protect the lives of the crowd of non-combatants who were left behind in the palace. He might not have been successful in such an effort-but he ought to have made it-or at least when he was writing an apology for his share in the 10th of August, he ought to have explained by what overpowering control he was prevented from making even the slightest exertion to save the palace and its defenceless inhabitants from plunder and massacre.

NOTE. Since the foregoing pages were printed, we have learned that Count Ræderer died at Paris in the night of the 18th December, suddenly, after having attended the evening before a sitting of the procès monstre; in which, as in every other monstrosity of the successive usurpations he has lived under, he was a ready and subservient instrument. Our readers will have seen that our article was written in the idea that we were examining a witness who was capable of answering us. Could we have foreseen that this was not to be the case, the style of our article would of course have been somewhat different-though there is nothing to change in the substance.

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ART. III-1. Provincial Glossary. By Francis Grose, Esq. London. 1811.

2. Supplement to the Provincial Glossary of Francis Grose, Esq. By Samuel Pegge, Esq. London. 1814.

3. An Attempt at a Glossary of some Words used in Cheshire. By Roger Wilbraham, Esq. London. 1826.

4. Observations on some of the Dialects in the West of England. By James Jennings. London. 1825.

5. The Hallamshire Glossary. By the Rev. Joseph Hunter.

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6. The Dialect of Craven. With a copious Glossary. By a Native of Craven. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1828.

7. The Vocabulary of East Anglia. By the late Rev. Robert Forby. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1830.

8. A Glossary of North Country Words. By John Trotter Brockett, F.S.A. Newcastle-upon-Tyne. 1829.

9. An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language. By John Jamieson, D.D. 2 vols. 4to. Edinburgh. 1808.

10. Supplement to ditto. 2 vols. 4to. 1825.

11. Glossary of Archaic and Provincial Words.

By the late Rev. Jonathan Boucher. 4to. Parts I. and II. London. 1832, 1833.

IT

T is justly observed by Johnson-whose theoretical ideas of philology were, like those of many teachers and preachers, much better than his practical performances-that the language of our northern counties, though obsolete, (i. e., discontinued in written compositions,) is not barbarous. On another occasion the Doctor told Boswell, that his meditated dictionary of Scottish words would be a very useful contribution towards the history of the English language. For our part, we never refer to that extraordinary work, Cotgrave's French Dictionary-the value of which is perhaps now better known in France than in England-without a feeling of regret that its author did not employ the same industry and research in collecting the obsolete and dialectical words of his native tongue. Not a few works, both in verse and prose, current in his time, and containing, doubtless, valuable materials for the illustration of the literature of the Elizabethan period, are irretrievably lost; and since then many genuine Saxon words have gradually disappeared from the language of common life, especially in the southern and midland counties, which, if carefully preserved, would have freed the present race of antiquaries and critics from a great deal of uncertainty and error. However, it avails nothing to lament the archaisms which have sunk in the ocean of oblivion, together with Wade and his boat Guingelot. We cannot, perhaps,

repair the injury we have sustained in this way, but we may check its increase by making a diligent collection of those which still survive. The books named at the head of the present article show that various attempts of this sort have been made, and in various quarters. They possess, as might be expected, different degrees of literary merit; but all furnish materials of some value to the philologist and the critic, and will doubtless be thankfully received by those who are aware of the importance of the subject.

We consider it superfluous to discuss the causes of dialect in the abstract, or to attempt to establish a clear and positive distinction between the vaguely employed terms dialect and language. The apparently simple question,-Is Gaelic a tongue per se, or a mere dialectical variety of Irish? is not without its intricaciesnay, not without its perils-to a peaceably disposed man. Within the English pale the matter is sufficiently clear; all agree in calling our standard form of speech the English language, and all provincial deviations from it—at least all that assume a distinct specific character-dialects. How and when those different forms originated has never yet been fully explained: there is, however, no doubt that some of them existed at a very early period. Bede observes, that Ceawlin was the West Saxon form of Calin; and a nice observer may detect diversities of grammatical and orthographical forms in our Anglo-Saxon MSS., according to the province of the transcriber.* The remarks of Higden on the subject, though neither very profound, nor, as we think, quite correct, are by no means devoid of interest :

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Although the English, as being descended from three German tribes, at first had among them three different dialects; namely, southern, midland, and northern yet, being mixed in the first instance with Danes, and afterwards with Normans, they have in many respects corrupted their own tongue, and now affect a sort of outlandish gabble-(peregrinos captant boatus et garritus). In the above threefold Saxon tongue, which has barely survived among a few country people,† the men of the east agree more in speech with those of the west-as being situated under the same quarter of the heavens -than the northern men with the southern. Hence it is that the Mercians or Midland English--partaking, as it were, the nature of the extremes-understand the adjoining dialects, the northern and the southern-better than those last understand each other. The whole speech of the Northumbrians, especially in Yorkshire, is so harsh and rude, that we southern men can hardly understand it.'‡

The late Mr. Price promised a work on the Anglo-Saxon dialects: we do not know whether his collections on the subject are still in existence. †This, literally interpreted, would denote that the Anglo-Saxon language was not yet quite extinct.

Polychronicon R. Higdeni, ap, Gale, pp. 210, 211.

We

We see here that Higden (writing about A. D. 1350) was only aware of the existence of three different forms, which he regards as analogous to the dialects spoken by the Jutes, Old Saxons, and Angles, by whom the island was colonized. It is, however, certain that there were in his time, and probably long before, five distinctly marked forms, which may be classed as follows:-1. Southern or standard English, which in the fourteenth century was perhaps best spoken in Kent and Surrey by the body of the inhabitants. 2. Western English, of which traces may be found from Hampshire to Devonshire, and northward as far as the Avon. 3. Mercian, vestiges of which appear in Shropshire, Staffordshire, and South and West Derbyshire, becoming distinctly marked in Cheshire, and still more so in South Lancashire. 4. Anglian, of which there are three subdivisions-the East Anglian of Norfolk and Suffolk; the Middle Anglian of Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, and East Derbyshire; and the North Anglian of the West Riding of Yorkshire-spoken most purely in the central part of the mountainous district of Craven. 5. Northumbrian; of which we shall treat more fully in the sequel. This sketch is only to be considered as an approximation to a geographical arrangement; for in this, as in all other countries, dialects are apt to get out of bounds, or to mix with their neighbours. For example-the pronunciation in the parishes of Halifax and Huddersfield is decidedly Mercian; while that of North Lancashire, Westmoreland, and Cumberland exhibits many Anglian peculiarities, which may have been occasioned in some degree by the colonies from the south planted in that district by William Rufus.

We refrain from entering at present into the obscure and difficult subject of the origin and early history of the West-Saxon, Mercian, and Anglian dialects; especially as valuable materials for its illustration will shortly be laid before the public. When we are in possession of Layamon and the semi-Saxon gospels, illustrated, as we doubt not they will be, by the care and skill of Sir Frederick Madden and Mr. Kemble, we trust they will clear up many points connected with the early history of our language that are now involved in a good deal of uncertainty. We have not space to point out the distinctive peculiarities of our provincial dialects, consisting chiefly in minutiae of grammar and pronunciation, which it is sometimes difficult to render intelligible. Those of the West of England are

*Saxon Chronicle, A. D. 1092. A comparison of Anderson's ballads with Burns's songs will show how like Cumbrian is to Scottish, but how different. We believe that Weber is right in referring the romance of Sir Amadas to this district. The mixture of the Anglian forms, gwo, gwon, bwons, boyd-word, (in pure Northum brian, gae, gane, banes, bod-worde,) with the northern terms tynt, kent, bathe, mare, and many others of the same class, could hardly have occurred in any other part of England.

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exhibited by Mr. Jennings, and those of East Anglia by Mr. Forby, in the introductions to their respective Glossaries. Some information respecting the Halifax dialect will be found in Watson's history of that town; or in the Appendix to Mr. Hunter's Hallamshire Glossary.' It may not be unacceptable to some of our readers to know that Robert of Gloucester's language is decidedly West Saxon; that the peculiarities of ' Pier's Plouhman's Vision' belong to the Mercian dialect; and that Manning's version of Langtoft's 'Chronicle' is written in the English of his age, with a pretty copious sprinkling of Middle Anglian. We know of no production of the middle ages in the Yorkshire Anglian or the Lancashire Mercian. Of the latter there is not even a decent vocabulary, though it is highly important to the philologist, on account of its peculiar grammatical structure and its many genuine Saxon terms. How

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ever, a tolerably correct idea of it may be formed from Collier's justly celebrated Dialogue between Tummus and Meary;' which is not only a faithful exhibition of the dialect, but perhaps the truest picture of the modes of thought and habits of the class of people described in it, in their native breadth and coarseness, that has hitherto appeared. The mixture of population consequent upon the spread of the cotton manufacture has greatly deteriorated the purity of the Lancashire speech; but our worthy friend the Laird of Monkbarns might still have found the genuine Saxon guttural in the mouths of old people. A single word still remains generally current, as a memorial of its former prevalence-namely Leigh, a town near Wigan; pronounced nearly like the German leich, both by gentle and simple.

The most important of our provincial dialects is undoubtedly the Northumbrian-both on account of the extent of the district where it prevails, and its numerous and interesting written monuments. It is the speech of the peasantry throughout Northumberland, Durham, the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire, nearly the whole of the extensive Wapontake of Claro in the West Riding, and the district called the Ainsty or liberties of the city of York. What is spoken in Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire to the north of the Ribble, is substantially the same dialect, but with many verbal varieties, and a less pure pronunciation. It is, as might be expected, more like English to the south of the Tees, and more like Scotch as we approach the Tweed, but its essential peculiarities are everywhere preserved. It is unquestionably-pace Ranulphi Higdeni dixerimus- the

It is worth observing that the language of Layamon-just one step removed from Anglo-Saxon-bears an unequivocal analogy to the present West of England dialect; a pretty strong proof that the distinguishing peculiarities of the latter are not modern corruptions.

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