victorious and the vanquished
people, the change of language will afford the most probably inference.
According to this standard, it will appear, that the Lombards of Italy,
and the Visigoths of Spain, were less numerous than the Franks or
Burgundians; and the conquerors of Gaul must yield, in their turn, to
the multitude of Saxons and Angles who almost eradicated the idioms of
Britain. The modern Italian has been insensibly formed by the mixture
of nations: the awkwardness of the Barbarians in the nice management
of declensions and conjugations reduced them to the use of articles
and auxiliary verbs; and many new ideas have been expressed by Teutonic
appellations. Yet the principal stock of technical and familiar words is
found to be of Latin derivation; and, if we were sufficiently conversant
with the obsolete, the rustic, and the municipal dialects of ancient
Italy, we should trace the origin of many terms which might, perhaps, be
rejected by the classic purity of Rome. A numerous army constitutes but
a small nation, and the powers of the Lombards were soon diminished
by the retreat of twenty thousand Saxons, who scorned a dependent
situation, and returned, after many bold and perilous adventures, to
their native country. The camp of Alboin was of formidable extent, but
the extent of a camp would be easily circumscribed within the limits of
a city; and its martial in habitants must be thinly scattered over
the face of a large country. When Alboin descended from the Alps, he
invested his nephew, the first duke of Friuli, with the command of the
province and the people: but the prudent Gisulf would have declined
the dangerous office, unless he had been permitted to choose, among
the nobles of the Lombards, a sufficient number of families to form a
perpetual colony of soldiers and subjects. In the progress of conquest,
the same option could not be granted to the dukes of Brescia or Bergamo,
of Pavia or Turin, of Spoleto or Beneventum; but each of these, and each
of their colleagues, settled in his appointed district with a band of
followers who resorted to his standard in war and his tribunal in
peace. Their attachment was free and honorable: resigning the gifts
and benefits which they had accepted, they might emigrate with their
families into the jurisdiction of another duke; but their absence from
the kingdom was punished with death, as a crime of military desertion.
The posterity of the first conquerors struck a deepe