clearly intended to be the language of the future. At the
time of Charlemagne this was not so; and one of the earliest literary
monuments of the German language, the "Heliand," _i.e._ the Saviour, is
written in Saxon or Low-German. The Saxon Emperors, however, did little
for German literature, while the Swabian Emperors were proud of being the
patrons of art and poetry. The language spoken at their court being
High-German, the ascendency of that dialect may be said to date from their
days, though it was not secured till the time of the Reformation, when the
translation of the Bible by Luther put a firm and lasting stamp on what
has since become the literary speech of Germany.

But language, even though deprived of literary cultivation, does not
easily die. Though at present people write the same language all over
Germany, the towns and villages teem everywhere with dialects, both High
and Low. In Hanover, Brunswick, Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, the Free Towns,
and in Schleswig-Holstein, the lower orders speak their own German,
generally called _Platt-Deutsch_, and in many parts of Mecklenburg,
Oldenburg, Ostfriesland, and Holstein, the higher ranks too cling in their
every-day conversation to this more homely dialect.(28) Children
frequently speak two languages: High-German at school, Low-German at their
games. The clergyman speaks High-German when he stands in the pulpit; but
when he visits the poor, he must address them in their own peculiar
_Platt_. The lawyer pleads in the language of Schiller and Goethe; but
when he examines his witnesses he has frequently to condescend to the
vulgar tongue. That vulgar tongue is constantly receding from the towns;
it is frightened away by railways, it is ashamed to show itself in
parliament. But it is loved all the more by the people; it appeals to
their hearts, and it comes back naturally to all who have ever talked it
together in their youth. It is the same with the local patois of
High-German. Even where at school the correct High-German is taught and
spoken, as in Bavaria and Austria, each town still keeps its own patois,
and the people fall back on it as soon as they are among themselves. When
Maria Theresa went to the Burgtheater to announce to the people of Vienna
the birth of a son and heir, she did not address them in high-flown
literary German. She bent forward from her box, and called out: "_Hoerts!
der Leopold hot an Bueba_": "Hear! Leopold has a boy." In German comedies,
ch