l dialects. In other words, a single Low Dutch speech then
apparently prevailed from the mouth of the Elbe to that of the Scheldt,
with small local variations; and from this speech the Anglo-Saxon and
the modern English have developed in one direction, while the Dutch has
developed in another, the Frisian dialect long remaining intermediate
between them. Scandinavian ceased, perhaps, to be intelligible to
Englishmen at an earlier date, the old Icelandic being already marked
off from Anglo-Saxon by strong peculiarities, while modern Danish
differs even more widely from the spoken English of the present day.

The relation of Anglo-Saxon to modern English is that of direct
parentage, it might almost be said of absolute identity. The language of
_Beowulf_ and of AElfred is not, as many people still imagine, a
different language from our own; it is simply English in its earliest
and most unmixed form. What we commonly call Anglo-Saxon, indeed, is
more English than what we commonly call English at the present day. The
first is truly English, not only in its structure and grammar, but also
in the whole of its vocabulary: the second, though also truly English
in its structure and grammar, contains a large number of Latin, Greek,
and Romance elements in its vocabulary. Nevertheless, no break separates
us from the original Low Dutch tongue spoken in the marsh lands of
Sleswick. The English of _Beowulf_ grows slowly into the English of
AElfred, into the English of Chaucer, into the English of Shakespeare and
Milton, and into the English of Macaulay and Tennyson.

Old words drop out from time to time, old grammatical forms die away or
become obliterated, new names and verbs are borrowed, first from the
Norman-French at the Conquest, then from the classical Greek and Latin
at the Renaissance; but the continuity of the language remains unbroken,
and its substance is still essentially the same as at the beginning. The
Cornish, the Irish, and to some extent the Welsh, have left off speaking
their native tongues, and adopted the language of the dominant Teuton;
but there never was a time when Englishmen left off speaking Anglo-Saxon
and took to English, Norman-French, or any other form of speech
whatsoever.

An illustration may serve to render clearer this fundamental and
important distinction. If at the present day a body of Englishmen were
to settle in China, they might learn and use the Chinese names for many
native plants, animals