As to Naples and Sicily, the expulsion of the Saracens by the Normans, under Robert Guiscard in 1059, must have produced in that country nearly the same effect, a similar event soon after brought about in England. And in fact we have the authority of William of Apulia[BD] to prove, that the conquerors used all their efforts to propagate their language and manners among the natives, that they might ever after be considered only as one people. And Hugo Falcland[BE] relates, that in the year 1150, Count Henry refused to take upon him the management of public affairs, under pretence of not knowing the language of the French; which, he adds, was absolutely necessary at court. That the language of the Romans penetrated very early into Spain, appears most evidently from a passage in Strabo,[BF] who asserts that the Turditani inhabiting the banks of the Boetis, now the Guadalquivir, forgot their original tongue, and adopted that of the conquerors. That the Romance was used there in the fourteenth century appears from a correspondence between St. Vincent of Ferrieres and Don Martin, son of Peter the IVth of Arragon;[BG] and that this language must once have been common in that kingdom appears manifestly from the present name of the Spanish, which is still usually called Romance.[BH] These circumstances considered, I am not so much inclined to discredit a fact related by Mabillon,[BI] who says, that in the eighth century a paralytic Spaniard, on paying his devotions at the tomb of a saint in the church of Fulda, conversed with a monk of that abbey, who, _because he was an Italian_, understood the language of the Spaniard. Neither does an oral tradition I heard some times ago appear so absurd to me, as it did when it was first related to me, which says, that two Catalonians travelling over the Alps, were not a little surprized when they came into the Grison country, to find that their native tongue was understood by the inhabitants, and that they could comprehend most of the language of that district.