In this transference and transfusion of languages, Italy retained the sonorous termination of her paternal soil, and Spain did not forget the majesty of the Latin accent; lands favoured by more genial skies, and men blessed with more flexible organs. But the Gothic and the Northern races barbarously abbreviated or disfigured their Latin words--to sounds so new to them they gave their own rude inflections; there is but one organ to regulate the delicacy of orthoepy--a musical and a tutored ear. The Gaul,[2] in cutting his words down, contracted a nasal sharpness; and the Northmen, in the shock of their hard, redundant consonants, lost the vowelly confluence. This vulgar or corrupt Latin, mingled with this diversity of jargons, was the vitiated mother of the sister-languages of Europe--sisters still bearing their family likeness, of the same homely origin, but of various fortunes, till some attained to the beauty and affluence of their Latin line. From the first the people themselves had dignified their spurious generation of language as _Romans_, or _Romance_, or _Romaunt_, still proud perhaps of its Roman source; but the critical Latins themselves had distinguished it as _Rustic_, to indicate a base dialect used only by those who were far removed from the metropolis of the world. But when these different nations had established their separate independence, this vernacular idiom was wholly left to the people; it was the image of their own barbaric condition, unworthy of the studies, and inadequate to the genius, of any writer. The universal language maintained its pre-eminence over the particular dialect, and as the course of human events succeeded in the overwhelming of ancient Rome, another Rome shadowed the world. Ecclesiastical Rome, whence the novel faith of Christianity was now to emanate, far more potent than military Rome, perpetuated the ancient language. The clergy, through the diversified realms of Europe, were held together in strict conformity, and by a common bond chained to the throne of the priesthood--one faith, one discipline, one language! The Latin tongue, both in verse and prose, was domiciliated among people of the most opposite interests, customs, and characters. The primitive fathers, the later schoolmen, the monkish chroniclers, all alike composed in Latin; all legal instruments, even marriage-contracts, were drawn in Latin: and even the language of Christian prayer was that of abolished paganism.