The mutilated latin spoken along the Mediterranean on the Spanish shore, from the Pyrenees as far as Murcia, appears to have resolved itself, before the period of the Arabian invasion, into the same language which extended eastward from the Pyrenees through the whole of the south of France to the Italian frontiers, and which, according to the most remarkable of its provincial forms, was called the CATALONIAN, the VALENCIAN, the LIMOSIN, and the PROVENÇAL. Of all the tongues spoken in modern Europe, this language of the coasts was the first cultivated. In it the Troubadours sang, and their lays had all the same character, whether addressed to the Italians, the French, or the Spaniards. From Catalonia it probably spread itself along the chain of the Pyrenees. The kingdom of Arragon became, after the restoration of the Spanish romance in that quarter, its second country; for there both it and the poetry of the Troubadours were particularly favoured by the princes and the nobles. But at the very period of the decline of this poetry, the kingdom of Arragon was united to the Castilian dominions. Another kind of poetry, in the Castilian language, then obtained encouragement, and the seat of the government of the united kingdoms was permanently fixed in Castile. The energetic development of literary talent among the Castilians, the bold romantic character of that people, and that ardent spirit of national pride which prompted them to make the most of all their advantages, soon banished the ancient and in other respects highly esteemed dialect of Arragon, Catalonia, Valencia, and Murcia, from literature, law, and the conversation of the superior classes of society. Finally, towards the middle of the sixteenth century the Castilian became, in the strictest sense of the word, the reigning language of the whole Spanish monarchy.[7]