s not the Dutch of Holland; nor yet a mere
provincial dialect of it. Instead of the infinitive moods and plural
numbers ending in -_n_ as in Holland, the former end in -_a_, the latter
in -_ar_. And so they did when the language was first reduced to
writing,--which it has been for nearly a thousand years. So they did
when the laws of the Old Frisian republic were composed, and when the
so-called _Old_ Frisian was the language of the country. So they did in
the sixteenth century, when the popular poet, Gysbert Japicx, wrote in
the _Middle_ Frisian; and so they do now--when, under the auspices of
Postumus and Hettema, we have Frisian translations of Shakespeare's "As
You Like it," "Julius Caesar," and "Cymbeline."

Now the oldest Frisian is older than the oldest Dutch; in other words,
of the two languages it was the former which was first reduced to
writing. Yet the doctrine that it is the mother-tongue of the Dutch, is
as inaccurate as the opposite notion of its being a mere provincial
dialect. I state this, because I doubt whether the Dutch forms in -_n_,
could well be evolved out of the Frisian in -_r_, or -_a_. The -_n_
belongs to the older form,--which at one time was common to both
languages, but which in the Frisian became omitted as early as the tenth
century; whereas, in the Dutch, it remains up to the present day.

If the Frisian differ from the Dutch, it differs still more from the
proper Low German dialects of Westphalia, Oldenburg, and Holstein; all
of which have the differential characteristics of the Dutch in a greater
degree than the Dutch itself.

The closest likeness to the Frisian has ceased to exist as a language.
It has disappeared on the Continent. It has changed in the island which
adopted it. That island is Great Britain.

No existing nation, as tested by its language, is so near the Angle of
England as the Frisian of Friesland. This, to the Englishman, is the
great element of its interest.

The history of the Frisian Germans must begin with their present
distribution. They constitute the present agricultural population of the
province of Friesland; so that if Dutch be the language of the towns, it
is Frisian which we find in the villages and lone farm-houses. And this
is the case with that remarkable series of islands which runs like a row
of breakwaters from the Helder to the Weser, and serves as a front to
the continent behind them. Such are Ameland, Terschelling, Wangeroog,
and the others-