Page 311 - Third Book of Reading Lessons

310 THIRD BOOK OF
island; and continued so till the arrival of the Sax­ ons in England, in the year of our Lord 450 : they, having conquered the Britons, did not intermix with them, but expelled them om their habitations, and drove them, together with their language, into the mountains of vVales. The Saxons were one of those northern nations that over-ran Europe; and their tongue, a dialect of the Gothic, or Teutonic, alto­ gether distinct om the Celtic, laid the undation of the present English- tongue. With some inter­ mixture of Danish (a language, probably, om the same root with the Saxon), it continued to be spoken throughout the southern part of the island, till the time of William the Conqueror. He introduced his Norman, or French, as the language of the court, which made a considerable change in the speech of the nation; and the English, which was spoken afterwards, and continues to be spoken now, is a mixture of the ancient Saxon and this Norman French, together with such new and reign words as commerce and learning have, in progress of time, gradually introduced.
3. The history of the English language can, in this manner, be clearly traced. The language spoken in the low countries of Scotland, is now, and has been r many centuries, no other than a dialect of the English. ow, indeed, or by what steps, the an­ cient Celtic tongue came to be banished om the low country in Scotland, and to make its retreat into the highlands and islands, cannot be so well pointed out, as how the like revolution was brought about in England. ,Vhether the southern part of Scotland was once subject to the Saxons, and rmed a part of th'e kingdom of Northumberland; or, whether the great number of English exiles that retreated into