The circumstances, however, under which the dialects of the several provinces existed, did not present those facilities for an improved national language, on the principle of the Italian _Volgare illustre_, of the age of Dante, which would have enabled a poet of Dante’s genius, had such then arisen in Spain, to form out of them one general literary language for all the Christian states of the Peninsula. It happened, singularly enough, that about the beginning of the thirteenth century, the three principal idioms which were spoken from the coast of the Atlantic to the Pyrenees, and from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean, were represented by three kingdoms perfectly independent of each other. The Castilian prevailed exclusively only in the Castiles and Leon, the latter of which was permanently united to the former in the year 1230. The Portuguese was spoken both by the court and the people of Portugal. In the kingdom of Arragon, the language in general use was the Catalonian, a dialect nearly the same as the Provençal or Limosin of the south of France, but differing greatly both from the Castilian and the Portuguese. This language also extended to the little kingdom of Navarre, but it was there spoken only by the nobles, who were of French or Hispano-Gothic origin. The great body of the population in Navarre spoke the ancient Cantabrian, called BASKIAN, VASKIAN, or BISCAYAN, and which still exists in the Pyrenees and in the Spanish province of Biscay. The trouble will be repaid if a glance be now cast on the map, in order to distinguish, with somewhat more precision than is usually thought necessary, the respective domains of the three principal dialects of the Spanish tongue; for it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to form any opinion on the contest maintained between the Spaniards and the Portuguese relative to the value of their respective languages, and the influence which the merits or demerits of these languages have had on the polite literature of both countries, without a knowledge of the geographical boundaries, which, previously to the political divisions, separated the Portuguese from the Castilians, and the latter from the Arragonese. In these questions the Biscayan language is of no consideration, as it has only an accidental and unimportant connexion with the other Spanish dialects, and, besides, bears not the most remote resemblance to them.[6]