lish, and a French prince, now living in this
country, deserves great credit for collecting what can still be saved of
English dialects. Hindustani is not the daughter of Sanskrit, as we find
it in the Vedas, or in the later literature of the Brahmans: it is a
branch of the living speech of India, springing from the same stem from
which Sanskrit sprang, when it first assumed its literary independence.

While thus endeavoring to place the character of dialects, as the feeders
of language, in a clear light, I may appear to some of my hearers to have
exaggerated their importance. No doubt, if my object had been different, I
might easily have shown that, without literary cultivation, language would
never have acquired that settled character which is essential for the
communication of thought; that it would never have fulfilled its highest
purpose, but have remained the mere jargon of shy troglodytes. But as the
importance of literary languages is not likely to be overlooked, whereas
the importance of dialects, as far as they sustain the growth of language,
had never been pointed out, I thought it better to dwell on the advantages
which literary languages derive from dialects, rather than on the benefits
which dialects owe to literary languages. Besides, our chief object to-day
was to explain the growth of language, and for that purpose it is
impossible to exaggerate the importance of the constant undergrowth of
dialects. Remove a language from its native soil, tear it away from the
dialects which are its feeders, and you arrest at once its natural growth.
There will still be the progress of phonetic corruption, but no longer the
restoring influence of dialectic regeneration. The language which the
Norwegian refugees brought to Iceland has remained almost the same for
seven centuries, whereas on its native soil, and surrounded by local
dialects, it has grown into two distinct languages, the Swedish and
Danish. In the eleventh century, the languages of Sweden, Denmark, and
Iceland are supposed(50) to have been identical, nor can we appeal to
foreign conquest, or to the admixture of foreign with native blood, in
order to account for the changes which the language underwent in Sweden
and Denmark, but not in Iceland.(51)

We can hardly form an idea of the unbounded resources of dialects. When
literary languages have stereotyped one general term, their dialects will
supply fifty, though each with its own special shade of meaning.