244 H. W. SCOTT. of memorial, no tradition or record, can ascend. Of the great Aryan or Indo-European branches. Greek in the East and Latin in the West, became through course of ages the familiar speech of millions who had not a drop of Greek or Italian blood in their veins. The same has been the case in later times with Arabic, Persian, Spanish, German, English. The Gauls gradually gave up their own language for a modified Latin. Moral causes, the needs of civilization, directed their choice and determined that Gaul should become a Latin-speaking land. France, as she is to-day, is the resultant of the work of Caesar; for the work of Ca3sar prepared Gaul for all that has followed. Ca?sar broke down the great Celtic Confederacy, thus weakening Gallic power and opening a way for the ascendency of the Franks. Hence Charles the Great and the empire that laid the foundations of modern Europe. The Frenchman is formed by the infusion of Frank upon Celt; and the Frankish empire, with its control of both Germany and Gaul, was thus also a fruit of the career of Csesar. The French nation is indeed the only one that has maintained an uninterrupted existence from the fall of the Roman power down to the present day; and this long career has been marked throughout by the strangest vicissitudes alternations of glory and disaster, of misrule and revolu- tion. France has many times been overrun and con- quered, and its territory dismembered; it has been a prey to every variety of civil war wars of factions, of classes, and of creeds; its administrative system has been disor- ganized under weak governments, its liberties have been trodden down by despotic governments; it has cut itself loose at a single stroke from its ancient traditions; it has maintained an attitude of hostility against the world, and, after unexampled and intoxicating triumphs, it has tasted the bitter dregs of humiliation and defeat; yet even in defeat she has largely led the ideas of the world and still
