No one can look
carefully at the French troops in Rome, amongst the Italian
population, and not perceive this trace of Germanism; I do not mean
in the Alsatian soldiers only, but in the soldiers of genuine France.
But the governing character of France, as a power in the world, is
Latin; such was the force of Greek and Roman civilisation upon a race
whose whole mass remained Celtic, and where the Celtic language still
lingered on, they say, among the common people, for some five or six
centuries after the Roman conquest. But the Normans in Neustria lost
their old Teutonic language in a wonderfully short time; when they
conquered England they were already Latinised; with them were a
number of Frenchmen by race, men from Anjou and Poitou, so they
brought into England more non-Teutonic blood, besides what they had
themselves got by intermarriage, than is commonly supposed; the great
point, however, is, that by civilisation this vigorous race, when it
took possession of England, was Latin.
These Normans, who in Neustria had lost their old Teutonic tongue so
rapidly, kept in England their new Latin tongue for some three
centuries. It was Edward the Third's reign before English came to be
used in law-pleadings and spoken at court. Why this difference?
Both in Neustria and in England the Normans were a handful; but in
Neustria, as Teutons, they were in contact with a more advanced
civilisation than their own; in England, as Latins, with a less
advanced.
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