Queen of Navarre, to whom it is dedicated in French.* The Gospel of Matthew has been published at Bayonne, in Basque, entitled-" Jesus Christoren Evangelio Suindua, S. Mathiueren Arabera. Itculia escuarara Lapurdico Lenguayaz, 1826." Some time ago a copy of this ancient version of the Gospel in Basque was found in the University library at Cambridge.

The extent of this language demands the attention of those who desire the improvement of this ancient people, the descendants of the Cantabri and Vascones, whose language once not only extended along the banks of the Ebro (Iberus), but more anciently throughout Spain itself. At present it is spoken chiefly by a people on the western side of the Pyrenees, who inhabit Navarre, Alcava, Biscaya, and Guipuscoa; but it is spoken also by a considerable portion of the population in the south-west of France, inhabiting Basse Navarre, Soul and Labour, who understand no other language, and to whom therefore the Scriptures in French are altogether unintelligible.

Armorican or Bas Bretagne.

The average of education in France is extremely low. Dupin has affirmed, that it is only as one to thirty! and at all events it is far below many other countries, or rather every other country in Europe, except Spain, Russia, and Turkey. At the same time, it is chiefly owing to the south of France being in such a neglected state that the average is so low. The southern half of this kingdom is a kind of contrast to the northern, corresponding to that which exists between the Lowlands and Highlands of Scotland, and arising from precisely the same cause, the neglect of the vernacular dialects. We have noticed one class of French subjects to whom the Scriptures in that language are a sealed book: but the truth is, that there are as many as nine or ten millions, to whom a book in French, though read to them, is almost, if not altogether, unintelligible. In short, every such book in these districts is of no value whatever. The vision of all is to them, "as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot, for it is

**Le Long, I. p. 446.

sealed and the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I am not learned."

Now it is a curious fact, that the whole of this southern ground is strongly impregnated with Celtic. The dialects called Patois are, in fact, regular languages; and if the reader wishes to know the present state of these districts, he may observe what has been recently said. "The departments in the centre of France, where ignorance and rudeness are most prevalent, are exactly the ancient seat of the Celts. In the western part of this tract the Celtic race preserves its original language, and throughout the whole of its extent we have reason to believe that the basis of the population is Celtic still. The inhabitants of these districts, in short, are at the bottom of the same family with the Welsh, the Irish, and the Scots Highlanders.'

"*

Lagonidec, in his Breton Grammar and Dictionary, talks of there being above four millions of inhabitants who speak this language, an assertion which should be verified, and if true, made generally known. The number may be overrated; but there are unquestionably above 900,000 souls in the two departments of Finisterre and Morbihan, in Lower Brittany, where the language is universal, yet it must extend farther than these, and the probability is, that all these tribes having been treated much in the same way as our own; they require some decided friend to examine their actual state and publish the result.

The language is, we know, closely allied to the Welsh, and history seems to account for this; for the Armorican Celta, about the beginning of the sixth century, received a new colony of British Celts.† The colonists, who landed on the shores of Brittany, afterwards stretched into the interior of the country to Rennes, and southward as far as Nantz, and these again were followed by others to such ex

To this passage it is then strangely added, that these are "tribes which, even at this day, are much inferior to the Gothic race in aptitude for civilization!" but that "education, a free press, and continued peace, will do much to improve the people of the south."-Foreign Quarterly Review, No. II. p. 496-7. To this I only add, that, except the education is through the medium of the colloquial dialect, the press will be powerless, and whether there be peace or war, French schools will be of as little value as English have been in our Celtic districts. Try the native language, and if there is any "inaptitude for civilization" then, so far as education can civilize, it will be the first instance on record in any Celtic tribe. Had the "Gothic race" pursued a different policy, there had been no lack of civilization in these districts. All the Celtic tribes are distinguished for mental vigour.

† After the capture of Belle-isle by the British, in 1761, such of the soldiers as belonged to Wales were easily understood by the country people, and by means of their Welsh language served as interpreters to their English comrades.

tent, that the names of Devon and Cornwall (near Brest) were imposed on the districts occupied or seized.

There are above thirty different volumes printed in this language-a proof that the art of reading is not entirely neglected. Their condition as it regards the Scriptures has begun to excite some notice, but at present the country must still be in a state of almost entire destitution!

The Welsh.

Next in point of antiquity to the Irish, and as far as books and the art of reading have influence, more cultivated, the Welsh has been placed. In the rear of the Celts of Ireland not removing so soon, because perhaps more powerful, but originally part of the same people, though changed in respect of language by long separation, came the progenitors of the present inhabitants of Wales. The languages are radically, but only radically, the same; and a variety of causes have contributed to the difference which now exists between them.

"The Irish and the Welsh, when they were separated from the dialects of eastern Europe," are said by Dr Murray to have had" inflections of nouns, consignifications of gender, and varieties in verbs,-but in the woods of Gaul, Britain, and Erin, they lost those complicated improvements." And although this may be questioned by some who have not paid the same attention to the subject, it will be allowed that the circumstances in which the two dialects were placed, after their importation to Ireland and Britain, were extremely different. Separated from each other by the sea though narrow, the lapse of time alone would certainly influence; but the British or Cymraig of Wales were exposed for centuries to the influence of the Teutonic dialects and the Latin, as well as to the Saxon and Norman English, which the Irish were not. The power of corrupt pronunciation too has been felt by the Welsh as well as by the Irish; but the former have withstood many encroachments on the form of the words, which the latter have admitted."*

There is some difference between the dialects of North and South Wales. The Brython or Strathclyde is supposed

* Murray, II. 318.

to have contributed its share of influence on the north, and the Cornish, or, as it has been sometimes called, the Lloegrian, on the south. This may account for the difference of speech in Gwynedh or North Wales, and Deheubarth or South Wales,-a difference which consists not in pronunciation only, but in the use of various terms peculiar to each district.

The orthography of the Welsh having been changed with a view to adapt the written to the spoken language, which the Irish has escaped, this may be the reason why at first sight some have imagined, that there is a greater dissimilarity between them than that which actually exists.

The object which the writer has in view with regard to Ireland has been abundantly answered in Wales, as proved by the statements previously given. Sound policy now urges the extension of the same incalculable benefits to the sister island.

The Manks.

This has been regarded as the connecting link between the Irish and the Welsh; and it has been said to be not more distantly related to the former and to the Gaelic of Scotland than Portuguese is to Spanish. It is a curious circumstance, that the incorporation of Icelandic terms is said to constitute the existing difference between the Manks and Irish or Gaelic. In the Manks, however, they also write and print as they pronounce,-a measure which tends materially to obscure the affinity existing between children of the same parent.

The Gaelic of Scotland.

This dialect is much more closely allied to the Irish than either of the two preceding. The words are almost the same, the structure every way similar, and the inhabitants, in many instances, conduct their little shipping connexions through the medium of the language common to both parties. There is, in short, much greater difference between the vernacular dialects of two counties in England, and they have greater difficulty in understanding each other, than an Irishman and a Highlander.

That this should be the case is not at all surprising; for

whatever may be affirmed of times more remote, the irruptions from Ireland to Scotland are matter of authentic history.

The Native Irish.

It has been the singular fortune of each of the Celtic dialects to be treated contemptuously in succession; and the Irish, whether ancient or modern, is the last of the series in the United Kingdom, which has begun to be regarded with enlightened candour. If the extent to which it is still spoken is observed, as an instrument of moral improvement it will be found not the least important, though it has been by far the most unfortunate. Regarded with indifference by all classical scholars, and men well acquainted with the other living languages of Europe, it has been also viewed with some jealousy even by Celtic scholars to whom one or other of its kindred dialects were vernacular; while the vain attempts to exterminate the Welsh, the Gaelic, and the Manks, have been as nothing when compared with those which poor Erin has had for ages to sustain. To these dispositions, however, there have long been honourable exceptions. The laborious Edward Lhuyd, keeper of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, a Welshman, who, in the close of the seventeenth century, travelled through the Highlands of Scotland, through Ireland and Brittany, at his own expense, collecting and comparing these languages, gives the highest rank in point of antiquity to the Irish; and there have been other instances in succession from that period. One of these, alluding to the ancient written Irish, has said,—“ To the antiquary this language is of the utmost importance; it is rich in pure and simple primitives, and which are proved such by the sense and structure of the longest written compounds; by the supply of many roots which have been long obsolete in the Welsh and Armorican, but still occur in the compounds of these languages; and by their use in connecting the Celtic dialects with Latin, Greek, and Gothic, and perhaps with some of the Asiatic languages.' Alluding again to this language, he elsewhere affirms, that, after we have discarded its eastern terms, and others which cannot be derived from the native roots, it "presents the most accurate copy of the Celtic, in its original and primitive state, in the same manner as the Welsh does that of the cultivated or druidical