e, the change of language will afford the most probably inference.
According to this standard, it will appear, that the Lombards of Italy,
and the Visigoths of Spain, were less numerous than the Franks or
Burgundians; and the conquerors of Gaul must yield, in their turn, to
the multitude of Saxons and Angles who almost eradicated the idioms of
Britain. The modern Italian has been insensibly formed by the mixture
of nations: the awkwardness of the Barbarians in the nice management
of declensions and conjugations reduced them to the use of articles
and auxiliary verbs; and many new ideas have been expressed by Teutonic
appellations. Yet the principal stock of technical and familiar words
is found to be of Latin derivation; [38] and, if we were sufficiently
conversant with the obsolete, the rustic, and the municipal dialects
of ancient Italy, we should trace the origin of many terms which might,
perhaps, be rejected by the classic purity of Rome. A numerous army
constitutes but a small nation, and the powers of the Lombards were
soon diminished by the retreat of twenty thousand Saxons, who scorned
a dependent situation, and returned, after many bold and perilous
adventures, to their native country. [39] The camp of Alboin was
of formidable extent, but the extent of a camp would be easily
circumscribed within the limits of a city; and its martial in habitants
must be thinly scattered over the face of a large country. When Alboin
descended from the Alps, he invested his nephew, the first duke of
Friuli, with the command of the province and the people: but the prudent
Gisulf would have declined the dangerous office, unless he had been
permitted to choose, among the nobles of the Lombards, a sufficient
number of families [40] to form a perpetual colony of soldiers and
subjects. In the progress of conquest, the same option could not be
granted to the dukes of Brescia or Bergamo, or Pavia or Turin, of
Spoleto or Beneventum; but each of these, and each of their colleagues,
settled in his appointed district with a band of followers who resorted
to his standard in war and his tribunal in peace. Their attachment was
free and honorable: resigning the gifts and benefits which they had
accepted, they might emigrate with their families into the jurisdiction
of another duke; but their absence from the kingdom was punished with
death, as a crime of military desertion. [41] The posterity of the first
conquerors struck a deeper root into the