led to their adoption of peculiarities sanctioned by no grammatical rule; or, on the other hand, these peculiarities may partake rather of the character of dialectic differences, and enter more deeply into the organization of the language, and thus may have characterized it from that remoter period, when geographical separation and political isolation may have led to the formation, in the Highlands of Scotland, of a dialectic variety of the common language.

The first is the view taken by Irish grammarians, and if correct, these differences cannot be considered as of any philological importance. The question has not, however, been treated by them in a candid spirit, or with any grasp of the subject; and their opinion must be based upon a more accurate knowledge of the spoken dialect which is the subject of it, and upon a sounder and more impartial examination of those philologic elements which ought to enter into its consideration, before it can be accepted as conclusive. If the second view is the correct one, then it is obvious that the Scotch Gaelic is well deserving of study, as a distinct variety of the Gaelic language which was common to Scotland and Ireland; and everything that tends to throw light upon it, and upon the existence and origin of these differences, acquires a philologic value.

In the study of language, the spoken dialects are of great value. It is from the study of the living dialects, which are not merely corruptions of the spoken language, but present dialectic peculiarities, that we arrive at a full perception of the character and tendencies of the mother tongue.

It is the destiny of all languages, that they no sooner enter upon the domain of history than they begin to alter, decompose, and split into dialects. The formation of the mother tongue belongs to the prehistoric period; and it is a process which, carried on in the infancy and growth of the social state, is concealed from observation. When its possessors first emerge into view, and take their place among the history of nations, counter influences have already been at work, their language has already entered upon its downward course, and we can only watch it in its process of decomposition and alteration, and reach its primitive condition, through the medium of its dialects.

There are two opposing influences by which all languages are affected—the etymologic and the phonetic. The etymologic principle is all-powerful in the formation and original structure of the language, producing combinations of sounds demanded by the laws of its composition, but irrespective altogether of the requirements of harmony, or the tendencies of the human organs of sound. It contains in it, however, the seeds of its own destruction, and has no sooner completed its work of formation than a process of modification and decomposition commences, caused by the respective idiosyncrasies of its speakers, their craving after harmony of combination and ease of utterance, and the influence of physical situation and surrounding agents upon the organs of speech.

These phonetic causes enter at once into conflict with the strictly etymologic formations of the language, moulding its sounds, decomposing its structure, and interchanging the organs producing the sounds; and these effects are perpetuated by circumstances causing the separation or isolation of the people who have adopted them, while new words and combinations are added to their vocabulary by new wants arising in their separate state, by their advance in social condition, or by the peculiarities of their new condition. Thus innumerable dialects spring up. Whenever a difference of situation takes place among the people composing the aggregate by whom the original language was spoken, a diversity of dialect is at once created. In these dialects are preserved the bones of the mother tongue; and it is only by a comparison of these that her full character can be ascertained.

This tendency of the mother tongue, to break up into as many dialects as there are shades of difference in the position and tendencies of its speakers, is only arrested by the formation of a cultivated dialect, created when the wants of an educated or cultivated class in the community demand a common medium of interchanging their ideas. This cultivated language is usually first formed by poetry, completed by writing, and adopted by education. Its first stage is that of the language in which the songs and poems, the first literature of a rude people, are recited by its bards, its earliest literary class; and, by the introduction of the art of writing, it passes over into the written speech. It then becomes a common dialect, spoken and written by the cultivated class of the community, and to a knowledge of which a portion of the people are raised by education.

This cultivated or written language may have been originally one of the numerous dialects spoken by the people composing the community, and which circumstances have elevated into that position; or it may have been introduced from another country speaking a sister dialect, which has preceded it in cultivation; or it may, like the German, have been developed from an unspoken variety of the language created by other causes and for other purposes. In the one case, the language first cultivated by poetry passes over into the written language. In the other, it remains an indigenous, cultivated, spoken language, which is antagonistic to, and contends with, the imported written speech till the influence of the latter prevails, and it is either extinguished by it, or remains as popular poetry in the vernacular tongue, while everything prose is absorbed.

But however it originates, the spoken dialects still remain as the vernacular speech of portions of the community. They are not the children or creatures of the written speech, still less corruptions of it, but are equally ancient, and retain much of the elements of the original language which the written speech has rejected.

The formation of a cultivated or written language is always an eclectic process. It selects, it modifies, and it rejects, while the living dialects retain many of the forms and much of the structure modified and rejected by it. Hence, for the study of the character and formation of the mother tongue, the living spoken dialects are of the first importance; and a restricted attention to the written language, and the contemptuous rejection of everything in the spoken dialects which vary from it, as barbarisms and corruptions, is simply to part with much valuable material for the study, and to narrow the range of inquiry.[19]

Perhaps the English language affords an illustration of these remarks. As a written and cultivated language, it took its rise in England, but was introduced from England into Scotland.

In England, the provincial dialects have remained as the spoken language of the uncultivated class in the respective provinces side by side with it; but their antiquity and their value for philological purposes is fully acknowledged. No one dreams of viewing them as merely corruptions of the written language, arising from rudeness and ignorance.

In Scotland, the English language has been introduced as the written or cultivated language, but a different form of the language, the Broad Scotch, is the vernacular speech of the people, and preceded the English language as the written language of the country in which its earliest literature was contained. Its great value, as an early form of the original Anglic tongue which