ies both unfashionable and fruitless--a man who
ought to have been born in the days of old, that he might have spoken the
language he is so curious to know, and have appeared in the costume of an
age better suited to his taste.

6. But _Learning_ is ever curious to explore the records of time, as well
as the regions of space; and wherever her institutions flourish, she will
amass her treasures, and spread them before her votaries. Difference of
languages she easily overcomes; but the leaden reign of unlettered
Ignorance defies her scrutiny. Hence, of one period of the world's history,
she ever speaks with horror--that "long night of apostasy," during which,
like a lone Sibyl, she hid her precious relics in solitary cells, and
fleeing from degraded Christendom, sought refuge with the eastern caliphs.
"This awful decline of true religion in the world carried with it almost
every vestige of civil liberty, of classical literature, and of scientific
knowledge; and it will generally be found in experience that they must all
stand or fall together."--_Hints on Toleration_, p. 263. In the tenth
century, beyond which we find nothing that bears much resemblance to the
English language as now written, this mental darkness appears to have
gathered to its deepest obscuration; and, at that period, England was sunk
as low in ignorance, superstition, and depravity, as any other part of
Europe.

7. The English language gradually varies as we trace it back, and becomes
at length identified with the Anglo-Saxon; that is, with the dialect spoken
by the Saxons after their settlement in England. These Saxons were a
fierce, warlike, unlettered people from Germany; whom the ancient Britons
had invited to their assistance against the Picts and Scots. Cruel and
ignorant, like their Gothic kindred, who had but lately overrun the Roman
empire, they came, not for the good of others, but to accommodate
themselves. They accordingly seized the country; destroyed or enslaved the
ancient inhabitants; or, more probably, drove the remnant of them into the
mountains of Wales. Of Welsh or ancient British words, Charles Bucke, who
says in his grammar that he took great pains to be accurate in his scale of
derivation, enumerates but one hundred and eleven, as now found in our
language; and Dr. Johnson, who makes them but ninety-five, argues from
their paucity, or almost total absence, that the Saxons could not have
mingled at all with these people, or even ha