This two-line lullaby constitutes one of the few but sufficing proofs which have come down to us of the existence among the people of old Rome of a sort of folk verse not by any means resembling the Latin classics, but bearing a considerable likeness to the _canti popolari_ of the modern Italian peasant. It may be said parenthetically that the study of dialect tends altogether to the conviction that there are country people now living in Italy to whom, rather than to Cicero, we should go if we want to know what style of speech was in use among the humbler subjects of the Caesars. The lettered language of the cultivated classes changes; the spoken tongue of the uneducated remains the same; or, if it too undergoes a process of change, the rate at which it moves is to the other what the pace of a tortoise is to the speed of an express train. About eight hundred years ago a handful of Lombards went to Sicily, where they still preserve the Lombard idiom. The Ober-Engadiner could hold converse with his remote ancestors who took refuge in the Alps three or four centuries before Christ; the Aragonese colony at Alghero, in Sardinia, yet discourses in Catalan; the Roumanian language still contains terms and expressions which, though dissimilar to both Latin and standard Italian, find their analogues in the dialects of those eastward-facing "Latin plains" whence, in all probability, the people of Roumania sprang. But we must return to our lullabies. There exists another Latin cradle song, not indeed springing from classical times, but which, were popular tradition to be trusted, would have an origin greatly more illustrious than that of the laconic effusion of the Roman nurse. It is composed in the person of the Virgin Mary, and was, in bygone days, believed to have been actually sung by her. Authorities differ as to its real age, some insisting that the peculiar structure of the verse was unknown before the 12th century. There is, however, good reason to think that the idea of composing lullabies for the Virgin belongs to an early period. Dormi, fili, dormi! mater Cantat unigenito: Dormi puer, dormi! pater Nato clamat parvulo: Millies tibi laudes canimus Mille, mille, millies. Lectum stravi tibi soli, Dormi, nate bellule! Stravi lectum foeno molli: Dormi mi animule. Millies tibi laudes canimus Mille, mille, millies. Dormi, decus et corona! Dormi, nectar lacteum! Dormi, mater dabo dona, Dabo favum melleum. Millies tibi laudes canimus Mille, mille, millies. Dormi, nate mi mellite! Dormi plene saccharo, Dormi, vita, meae vitae, Casto natus utero. Millies tibi laudes canimus Mille, mille, millies. Quidquid optes, volo dare; Dormi, parve pupule Dormi, fili! dormi carae, Matris deliciolae! Millies tibi laudes canimus Mille, mille, millies.