Spanish or Italian. It is French, with merely a
dialectical difference from "French of Paris." But the Normans, in this
resembling the Gascons, have no special objection to a final consonant,
and most vulgarly and perversely still sound divers _s's_ and _t's_ which
the politer tongue of the capital dooms to an existence on paper only.

It is certainly curious that Normandy--which, save during the
comparatively short occupation in the fifteenth century, has always been
politically separate from England, since England became English once
more--should be so much more like England than Aquitaine, which was an
English dependency two hundred and fifty years after Normandy and
England were separated. The cause is clearly that between Englishmen and
Normans there is a real natural kindred which political separation has
not effaced, while between English and Gascons there was no sort of
kindred, but a mere political connexion which chanced to be convenient
for both sides. The Gascons, to this day, have not wholly forgotten the
advantages of English connexion, but neither then nor now is any
likeness to England the result. So, in our own time, we may hold Malta
for ever, but we shall never make Maltese so like Englishmen as our
Danish kinsmen still are without any political connexion more recent
than the days of Earl Waltheof.

For the antiquary, nothing can be more fascinating than a Norman tour.
Less curious, less instructive, because much more like English
buildings, than those of Aquitaine, the architectural remains of the
province are incomparably finer in themselves. Caen is a town well nigh
without a rival. It shares with Oxford the peculiarity of having no one
predominant object. At Amiens, at Peterborough--we may add at
Cambridge--one single gigantic building lords it over everything. Caen
and Oxford throw up a forest of towers and spires, without any one
building being conspicuously predominant. It is a town which never was a
Bishop's see, but which contains four or five churches each fit to have
been a cathedral. There is the stern and massive pile which owes its
being to the Conqueror of England, and where a life which never knew
defeat was followed by a posthumous history which is only a long series
of misfortunes. There is the smaller but richer minster, part of which
at least is the genuine work of the Conqueror's Queen.[8] Around the
town are a group of smaller churches such as not even Somerset or
Northamptonshi