The Germans of Schleswig-Holstein are Saxons, and all true Saxons speak Low-German, and Low-German is more different from High-German than English is from Lowland Scotch. Low-German, however, is not to be mistaken for vulgar German. It is the German which from time immemorial was spoken in the low countries and along the northern sea-coast of Germany, as opposed to the German of the high country, of Swabia, Thuringia, Bavaria, and Austria. These two dialects differ from each other like Doric and Ionic; neither can be considered as a corruption of the other; and however far back we trace these two branches of living speech, we never arrive at a point when they diverge from one common source. The Gothic of the fourth century, preserved in the translation of the Bible by Ulfilas, is not, as has been so often said, the mother both of High and Low German. It is to all intents and purposes Low-German, only Low-German in its most primitive form, and more primitive therefore in its grammatical framework than the earliest specimens of High-German also, which date only from the seventh or eighth century. This Gothic, which was spoken in the east of Germany, has become extinct. The Saxon, spoken in the north of Germany, continues its manifold existence to the present day in the Low-German dialects, in Frisian, in Dutch, and in English. The rest of Germany was and is occupied by High-German. In the West the ancient High-German dialect of the Franks has been absorbed in French, while the German spoken from the earliest times in the centre and south of Germany has supplied the basis of what is now called the literary and classical language of Germany. Although the literature of Germany is chiefly High-German, there are a few literary compositions, both ancient and modern, in the different spoken dialects of the country, sufficient to enable scholars to distinguish at least nine distinct grammatical settlements; in the Low-German branch, _Gothic_, _Saxon_, _Anglo-Saxon_, _Frisian_, and _Dutch_; in the High-German branch, _Thuringian_, _Frankish_, _Bavarian_, and _Alemannish_. Professor Weinhold is engaged at present in publishing separate grammars of six of these dialects, namely, of _Alemannish_, _Bavarian_, _Frankish_, _Thuringian_, _Saxon_, and _Frisian_: and in his great German Grammar Jacob Grimm has been able to treat these, together with the Scandinavian tongues, as so many varieties of one common, primitive type of Teutonic speech.