"Redgauntlet," the "Fortunes of Nigel," "Quentin Durward," and
"Woodstock."[57]

28. It is, however, too late to enter on my subject in this article,
which I may fitly close by pointing out some of the merely verbal
characteristics of his style, illustrative in little ways of the
questions we have been examining, and chiefly of the one which may be
most embarrassing to many readers, the difference, namely, between
character and disease.

One quite distinctive charm in the Waverleys is their modified use of
the Scottish dialect; but it has not generally been observed, either by
their imitators, or the authors of different taste who have written for
a later public, that there is a difference between the dialect of a
language, and its corruption.

A dialect is formed in any district where there are persons of
intelligence enough to use the language itself in all its fineness and
force, but under the particular conditions of life, climate, and temper,
which introduce words peculiar to the scenery, forms of word and idioms
of sentence peculiar to the race, and pronunciations indicative of their
character and disposition.

Thus "burn" (of a streamlet) is a word possible only in a country where
there are brightly running waters, "lassie," a word possible only where
girls are as free as the rivulets, and "auld," a form of the southern
"old," adopted by a race of finer musical ear than the English.

On the contrary, mere deteriorations, or coarse, stridulent, and, in the
ordinary sense of the phrase, "broad" forms of utterance, are not
dialects at all, having nothing dialectic in them; and all phrases
developed in states of rude employment, and restricted intercourse, are
injurious to the tone and narrowing to the power of the language they
affect. Mere breadth of accent does not spoil a dialect as long as the
speakers are men of varied idea and good intelligence; but the moment
the life is contracted by mining, millwork, or any oppressive and
monotonous labor, the accents and phrases become debased. It is part of
the popular folly of the day to find pleasure in trying to write and
spell these abortive, crippled, and more or less brutal forms of human
speech.

29. Abortive, crippled, or brutal, are however not necessarily
"corrupted" dialects. Corrupt language is that gathered by ignorance,
invented by vice, misused by insensibility, or minced and mouthed by
affectation, especially in the attempt to deal with words of whi