The Castilian tongue (_Lengua Castellana_), now called, by way of distinction, the Spanish, doubtless had its origin before the Moorish conquest, in the northern and midland parts of the Peninsula. How far it had originally spread towards the south, it would not now be easy to determine; but it came down from the Asturian mountains with the warriors who boldly undertook to recover the country of their fathers. It first resumed its sway in the kingdoms of Leon and old Castile, where it is still spoken in the greatest purity.[8] It then followed step by step, the fortune of the Castilian arms, until it finally became the established language of the most southern provinces, where its progress had been longest withstood by the Arabic. More recently cultivated than the Catalonian, it cannot be doubted that it owes to that dialect a part of its improvement; but the elevated expression of its long full-toned words, soon stamped on it the character of quite a different kind of romance. The abbreviation of the latin words which gave the Catalonian language a striking resemblance to the French, was not agreeable to the genius of the Castilian, which, in consequence of its clear sonorous vowels and the beautiful articulation of its syllables, had, of all the idioms of the Peninsula, the greatest affinity to the Italian. Amidst the euphony of the Castilian syllables, the ear is however struck with the sound of the German and Arabic guttural, which is rejected by all the other nations that speak languages in which the latin predominates.[9]