e Highlands and the Western Isles, the
infusion of Scandinavian is very considerable. Caithness has numerous
geographical terms whose meaning is to be found in the Danish, Swedish,
Norwegian, and Icelandic. _Sutherland_ shews its political relations by
its name. It is the _Southern Land_; an impossible name if the county be
considered English (for it lies in the very _north_ of the island), but
a natural name if we refer it to Norway, of which Sutherland was, at one
time, a southern dependency, or (if not a dependency), a robbing-ground.
Orkney and Shetland were once as thoroughly Norse as the Faroe Isles or
Iceland.

The third variety of the present British population is in the Isle of
Man, where a language sufficiently like the Gaelic of Ireland and
Scotland to be placed in the same division, is still spoken. Yet the
blood is mixed. The Norsemen preponderated in Man; and the constitution
of the island is in many parts Scandinavian, though the language be
Keltic.

In Wales the language and population are still Keltic, though
sufficiently different from the Scotch, Irish, and Manx, to be
considered as a separate branch of that stock. It is conveniently called
_British_, _Cambrian_, and _Cambro-Briton_. It is quite unintelligible
to any Gael. Neither can any Gael, talking Gaelic, make himself
understood by a Briton. On the other hand, however, a Scotch and an
Irish Gael understand each other; whilst, with some effort, they
understand a Manxman, and _vice versa_. So that the number of mutually
unintelligible languages of the Keltic stock is two; in other words, the
Keltic dialects of the British Isles are referable to two branches--the
British for the Welsh, and the Gaelic for the Scotch, Irish, and Manx.
The other language of the British Isles is the English, one upon which
it is unnecessary to enlarge; but which makes the third tongue in actual
existence at the present moment, if we count the Irish, Scotch, and Manx
as dialects of the same language, and the fifth if we separate them.

By raising the Lowland Scotch to the rank of a separate language, we may
increase our varieties; but, as it is only a general view which we are
taking at present, it is as well not to multiply distinctions. I believe
that, notwithstanding some strong assertions to the contrary, there are
no two dialects of the English tongue--whether spoken east or west--in
North Britain or to the South of the Tweed--that are not mutually
intelligible,