Lard Lytton, in a very eloquent speech on the uses
of Arcbasology, -delivered on Monday at St. Alban's, before the British Archreolo- gical Association, enunciated a theory as to the battle of lan- guages which requires a remark. Invaders seldom take their wives with them, and consequently their children speak the mother's tongue. The Norsemen in France married French wives, and their children spoke French ; while the same race in England married Saxons, and their descendants also spoke Saxon. If this had been universally the case, quality would avail nothing in the strife of tongues, the mother's dialect always winning the game ; but is that the case? Not many Italian women can have settled either in Gaul or Spain, yet French and Spanish are dialects of Latin. On the other hand, Latin never conquered Greek, but was in many places conquered by it. The Saxons con- -quered England, but though, as Mr. Wright has shown, the Britons were not exterminated, Saxon prevailed over Welsh. Half India still speaks debased Sanserit, yet the invaders who spoke Sanscrit cannot have brought many women, or their descendants, like them- selves, would be white. Is not the truth more like this,—that the mother's tongue conquers the father's when her civilization is -equal or superior, and not else ? Indian half-castes speak English as a caste distinction.
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