Burgundian. (§ 28.) It was not till later, when the house of Capet began a new work of centralization, and the government of the Isle of France gradually became the seat of administration for the provinces, that the dialect of that state became the language of France, with the other dialects more or less incorporated into it.

§ 13. The Church, throughout these long ages of ignorance, had nobly pursued her work of regeneration. She had early adopted the barbarians for her sons, and had been the first among the higher classes to speak the popular language in order to win the multitude.* Governed at last. by a second Charlemagne, Gregory VII, who tried to unite all the kingdoms of Europe under one spiritual sway, she became the greatest power of the age, and when she called all the nations of Christendom to the defence of the Faith, kings and people rose at her voice. Then commenced between East and West the struggle by means of which the French language was spread abroad. When a new Christian kingdom was founded at Jerusalem, its laws were written in French (A.D. 1099).

§ 14. Old French, the slow formation of which we have sketched through such a long space of time, at last reached its culmination during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. France was then at the head of the civilized world. Of the historical characters of the time, Louis IX. (St. Louis) is the most prominent; he stands out among them like a fine and noble figure, around which are grouped the arts and sciences and all the genius of the age. Philip Augustus had founded the University of Paris, St. Louis granted it new privileges, and founded the Sorbonne. On all sides arose magnificent monuments of Church architecture, the admiration of modern times. A nation had at length emerged from chaos, and in

*About 659 the Bishop of Noyon, St. Mummolinus, was highly thought of because of his knowledge of the Romance language.

In 813, the Council of Tours ordered the bishops to translate into the Romance language their pastoral instructions, and even the homilies of the fathers of the Church.

the strength of its youth, it clothed its ideas in an expressive and original language, which soon attracted the attention of Europe. Learned men of other countries adopted it; the great sent their sons to France to learn it; and the literary world, struck with admiration at the freshness, the simplicity, and the natural grace of its poetry, as well as at the almost classical qualities of the historian of Louis IX., Joinville, drank eagerly from its streams of popular literature.

§ 15. Middle French Period, A.D. 1300 to 1600.-The fourteenth century saw the unfortunate country of the Gauls again plunged into a cruel and bloody anarchy. The language, always strongly influenced by political events, suffered much in consequence.

The France of the Carlovingians had been ruined by the great nobles who had shared the land among them. The France of the Valois was well-nigh ruined by her proud and incapable kings and her feudal lords. In the midst of war, pillage, injustice, and cruelty, each powerful baron had his own court and legislature, and his own men of letters. Paris, towards which had once gravitated all the hopes and aspirations of France, ceased to preside over her civilization, and each state struggled for precedence. The want of unity between the king and his nobles, and between the nobles themselves, did not fail to stamp its mark upon the language, and the dialects of Burgundy, Normandy, Picardy, and Isle of France, renewed their rivalry. The "Langue d'Oil," in her turn, but just escaped the imminent danger of sinking, like the "Langue d'Oc," into a number of patois. Happily for the country, after a struggle of a century with England; after the "free bands" and the formidable revolts of the peasants; after famine, pestilence, and horrors of every description, there arose a new order of ideas out of the midst of the general ruin. Thought no longer depended on popes or emperors. The people no longer believed in the Church, nor in that chivalry which had deceived and oppressed them. By their vices these had forfeited the allegiance of the people, who,

panting for liberty, and victorious on the field of battle, now formed the elements of progress in the French nation. But the degradation resulting from years of ignorance, misery, and oppression was but too apparent. All selfreliance was lost, and great was the need of training and guidance. The first use which the people made of political liberty was to resign it into the hands of a single man (Louis XI.), whom they invested with despotic power, and then prided themselves on their dependence. With respect

to literature, we find the nation first pressing forward, then drawing back, hesitating, choosing foreign models, seeking inspiration from antiquity, from learning,-from any source, in fact, except from its own natural genius.

During this period of transition, in which the secret promise of the future was hidden amidst the ruin of a crumbling and decaying past, nothing in the course of events contributed to purify or to enrich the language; it only partook of the general decay. It could not even fall back upon its own grand poems; for the sentiments which had given them birth were no longer understood, and when the art of printing began, they were not considered worthy of reproduction. Thus the idiom of the fifteenth century lost. the influence, which nothing could replace, of those treasures, so energetic in thought and so simple in language.

§ 16. Mighty agencies like the Reformation, the discovery of America, and the invention of the art of printing, wrought upon the world, and brought about that grand movement of progress called the Renaissance. Petrarch, the earliest of modern scholars, had begun the classical renaissance in Italy, and that country, then at the height of her prosperity, took the lead in the literary revival which drew all minds towards the study of antiquity.

France, brought into contact with Italy by the wars in which her kings engaged, not only joined in her passionate worship of the ancients, but also conceived a great admiration for the Italian language itself. For more than a whole century, from the time of Charles VIII. (1494) to that of

Catharine de Medicis (1589), kings, ministers, courtiers, men of letters, all contributed more or less to make the French language an imitation of the Italian. They Italianized both orthography and pronunciation; and notwithstanding the reaction which took place afterwards, this Italian mania left deep traces upon the language. (§ 30.)

§ 17. But the influence of Latin and Greek at this time was still more serious. Scholars, now in possession of the masterpieces of Greece and Rome, looked upon French as a language which had wandered from the right path. The old controversy between the literary Latin and the vulgar idiom was renewed under a different form. If the learned at last interest themselves in the popular tongue, it is that they may again lay upon it the yoke from which it had freed itself. They impose upon the French the old Latin forms cast off during the slow but sure progress of centuries. Pen in hand, we find them correcting, restraining the genius of the language by narrow and arbitrary rules, creating new words, and waging war in general with the writers of the previous century, who had shewn what the popular idiom was still capable of achieving. Imitators of classical Latin, rather than writers of French, they arrested the progress of the national language in its second stage of formation, and plunged it into a state of chaotic confusion.

§ 18. A reaction camo. There arose great minds, who, in spite of their respect for antiquity, made every effort to lead the national literature and language into their own legitimate and natural channels. Rabelais, Henri Estienne, Montaigne, Amyot, Desportes, Calvin, and particularly Malherbe, passing by the followers of Greece and Rome, renewed the great national work begun by Villon, Commines, etc.

Still the end of the sixteenth century found the language. in an incomplete stage of formation. There was throughout the whole of France neither king, parliament, scholar, nor literary genius powerful enough to give unity to its new idiom.

§ 19. Modern French, A.D. 1600 to present day.-France under the Valois had passed through a period of suffering and bloodshed, the dark outlines of which are but too apparent under a thin veil of civilization. Her language and literature had well nigh lost all originality, and it seemed as if the national genius would succumb under its repeated and different trials. Yet it was then that the characteristics of the Gallic race again showed themselves: their quick perception, their readiness to assimilate, and their passionate love of the beautiful. After numerous efforts, all tending towards the same goal, the literature and language attained the full expression of the true and the sublime. It was given to this race, so often enslaved and so often rising superior to all reverses, once more to rule over the literary world.

§ 20. During the last two centuries Italian, literary Latin and Greek had each had a part in moulding the language. It was now the turn of Spain. Owing to the wars of the League and the sojourn of Spanish armies in France, many Spanish words found their way into French. (§ 31.) Corneille, in borrowing from Spanish authors, only followed the fashion of the age, but his genius soon placed him far above those whom he imitated. We find in his writings neither Spaniards nor Romans, but embodiments of nobleness, generosity, and heroism such as belong to all time. He awakes in us the noblest sentiments of which humanity is capable, and yet remains essentially French. This is true of most of the great writers of the seventeenth century; if they looked elsewhere for the framework of their subjects, they gave new life and soul to the borrowed form, and stamped it with the impress of genuine French thought.

The language of the seventeenth century proved equal to every demand made upon it. Logic, irony, religious enthusiasm, and sublimity, all found their due expression in an idiom remarkable for grace, clearness, and precision. Born in a coarse and degrading period, it became the most refined and the most justly admired of all the languages of Europe. The country long divided into dialects henceforth