whence a new process of dialectic divergence should commence. On the contrary, Britain is still, like Germany, only in a less degree, a country full of dialects, some of whose peculiarities go back to the diversities of speech among the tribes by whom the Anglo-Saxon conquest of the island was achieved, thirteen hundred years ago, while the rest are of every date of origin, from that remote period to the present. One or two of these dialects—especially the Scottish and the Yorkshire—poetry and fiction have made somewhat familiarly known to us; others are matters of keen and curious interest to the student of language, their testimony being hardly less essential than that of the literary dialect to his comprehension of the history of English speech.
But it was impossible that, in the transfer of English to the continent of America, these local dialects should maintain themselves intact; that could only have been the result of a separate migration of parts of the local communities to which they belonged, and of the continued maintenance of their distinct identity in their new place of settlement. Such was not the character of the movement which filled this country with an English-speaking population. Old lines of local division were effaced; new ties of community were formed, embracing men of various province and rank. It was not more inevitable that the languages of the various nationalities which have contributed to our later population should disappear, swallowed up in the predominant English, than that the varying forms of English should disappear, being assimilated to that one among them which was better supported than the rest. Nor could it be doubtful which was the predominant element, to which the others would have to conform themselves. In any cultivated and lettered community, the cultivated speech, the language of letters, is the central point toward which all the rest gravitate, as they are broken up and lose their local hold. And our first settlers were in no small part from the instructed class, men of high character, capacity, and culture. They brought with them a written language and a rich literature; they read and wrote; they established schools of every grade, and
