ce of a man speaking two languages in their perfection,
but I learned since then that his French had displaced his Italian, and
so completely that he was quite unable to speak Italian correctly, and
made use of French invariably when in Italy. The risk of this
displacement is always greatest in cases where the native tongue is not
kept up by means of literature. Byron and Shelley, or our contemporary
Charles Lever, would run little risk of losing English by continental
residence, but people not accustomed to reading and writing often forget
the mother tongue in a few years, even when the foreign one which has
displaced it is still in a state of imperfection. Madame L. is an
English lady who married a Frenchman; neither her husband nor her
children speak English, and as her relatives live in one of our most
distant colonies, she has been separated from them for many years.
Isolated thus from English society, living in a part of France rarely
visited by her countrymen, never reading English, and writing it little
and at long intervals, she speaks it now with much difficulty and
diffidence. Her French is not grammatical, though she has lived for many
years with people who speak grammatically; but then her French is fluent
and alive, truly her own living language now, whilst English is, if not
wholly forgotten, dead almost as our Latin is dead. She and I always
speak French together when we meet, because it is easier for her than
English, and a more natural expression. I have known some other cases of
displacement of the native tongue, and have lately had the opportunity
of watching a case of such displacement during its progress. A sergeant
in the Italian army deserted to join Garibaldi in the campaign of 1870.
On the conclusion of peace it was impossible for him to return to Italy,
so he settled in France and married there. I found some work for him,
and for some months saw him frequently. Up to the date of his marriage
he spoke no language but Italian, which he could read and write
correctly, but after his marriage the process of displacement of the
native tongue began immediately by the corruption of it. He did not keep
his Italian safely by itself, putting the French in a place of its own
as he gradually acquired it, but he mixed the two inextricably together.
Imagine the case of a man who, having a bottle half full of wine, gets
some beer given him and pours it immediately into the wine-bottle. The
beer will never be pu