ospels, translated by
Ulphilas; which is preserved at Upsal, and called, from its embellishments,
_the Silver Book_. This old work has been three times printed in England.
We possess not yet in America all the advantages which may be enjoyed by
literary men in the land of our ancestors; but the stores of literature,
both ancient and modern, are somewhat more familiar to us, than is there
supposed; and the art of printing is fast equalizing, to all nations that
cultivate learning, the privilege of drinking at its ancient fountains.

13. It is neither liberal nor just to argue unfavourably of the
intellectual or the moral condition of any remote age or country, merely
from our own ignorance of it. It is true, we can derive from no quarter a
favourable opinion of the state of England after the Saxon invasion, and
during the tumultuous and bloody government of the heptarchy. But I will
not darken the picture through design. If justice were done to the few
names--to Gildas the wise, the memorialist of his country's sufferings and
censor of the nation's depravity, who appears a solitary star in the night
of the sixth century--to the venerable Bede, the greatest theologian, best
scholar, and only historian of the seventh--to Alcuin, the abbot of
Canterbury, the luminary of the eighth--to Alfred the great, the glory of
the ninth, great as a prince, and greater as a scholar, seen in the evening
twilight of an age in which the clergy could not read;--if justice were
done to all such, we might find something, even in these dark and rugged
times, if not to soften the grimness of the portrait, at least to give
greater distinctness of feature.

14. In tracing the history of our language, Dr. Johnson, who does little
more than give examples, cites as his first specimen of ancient English, a
portion of king [sic--KTH] Alfred's paraphrase in imitation of Boethius.
But this language of Alfred's is not English; but rather, as the learned
doctor himself considered it, an example of the Anglo-Saxon in its highest
state of purity. This dialect was first changed by admixture with words
derived from the Danish and the Norman; and, still being comparatively rude
and meagre, afterwards received large accessions from the Latin, the
French, the Greek, the Dutch--till, by gradual changes, which the
etymologist may exhibit, there was at length produced a language bearing a
sufficient resemblance to the present English, to deserve to be called
Englis