d up in one jumbled system of inane
speculation, from which at last the East was delivered by the
positive doctrines of Mohammed, the West by the pure Christianity of
the Teutonic nations.

In order to judge fairly of the merits of the Huzvaresh as a language,
it must be remembered that we know it only from these speculative
works, and from translations made by men whose very language had
become technical and artificial in the schools. The idiom spoken by
the nation was probably much less infected by this Semitic fashion.
Even the translators sometimes give the Semitic terms only as a
paraphrase or more distinct expression side by side with the Persian.
And, if Spiegel's opinion be right that Parsi, and not Huzvaresh, was
the language of the later Sassanian empire, it furnishes a clear proof
that Persian had recovered itself, had thrown off the Semitic
ingredients, and again become a pure and national speech. This dialect
(the Parsi) also, exists in translations only; and we owe our
knowledge of it to Spiegel, the author of the first Parsi grammar.

This third period in the history of the Persian language,
comprehending the Huzvaresh and Parsi, ends with the downfall of the
Sassanians. The Arab conquest quenched the last sparks of Persian
nationality; and the fire-altars of the Zoroastrians were never to be
lighted again, except in the oasis of Yezd and on the soil of that
country which the Zoroastrians had quitted as the disinherited sons of
Manu. Still the change did not take place at once. Mohl, in his
magnificent edition of the Shahnameh, has treated this period
admirably, and it is from him that I derive the following facts. For a
time, Persian religion, customs, traditions, and songs survived in the
hands of the Persian nobility and landed gentry (the Dihkans) who
lived among the people, particularly in, the eastern provinces, remote
from the capital and the seats of foreign dominion, Baghdad, Kufah,
and Mosul. Where should Firdusi have collected the national strains of
ancient epic poetry which he revived in the Shahnameh (1000 A.D.), if
the Persian peasant and the Persian knight had not preserved the
memory of their old heathen heroes, even under the vigilant oppression
of Mohammedan zealots? True, the first collection of epic traditions
was made under the Sassanians. But this work, commenced under
Nushirvan, and finished under Yezdegird, the last of the Sassanians,
was destroyed by Omar's command. Firdusi him