The language is always to a certain extent transformed in these democracies; provincialisms and Americanisms abound; the popular tongue differs from the autocratic Castilian. Don Rufino Cuervo predicts that Spanish will undergo essential alterations in America, as was the case with Latin at the time of the Roman decadence. An Argentine writer, Señor Ernesto Quesada, believes that a national language is in process of formation on the banks of the Plata, and that the barbarisms of the popular speech are forecasts of a new tongue. In Chili an exalted patriot has upheld the originality of the Chilian race and language in an anonymous book, claiming that they derive from the Gothic. Thus is the effect of the national spirit exaggerated. Among the Ibero-American republics there is a profound and general {338} resemblance in the pronunciation and the syntax of the language; the same linguistic defects even are to be found in all. The Spanish of the Peninsula loses its majesty overseas; it is no longer the language, lordly in its beauty, solemn in its ornaments, of Granada, of Mariana, of Perez de Guzman. Familiar, declamatory, pronounced with a caressing accent, the Castilian of America is uniform from North to South. More effectual than religion and language the identity of race explains the similarity of the American peoples, and constitutes a promise of lasting unity. The native race, the Spanish race, and the negro race are everywhere mingled, in similar proportions, from the frontier of the United States to the southern limits of the continent. On the Atlantic seaboard European immigration, an influx of Russians, Italians, and Germans, has given the supremacy to the white race, but this influence is limited to small belts of land, when we consider the vast area of the continent. A single half-caste race, with here the negro and there the Indian predominant over the conquering Spaniard, obtains from the Atlantic to the Pacific. There is a greater resemblance between Peruvians and Argentines, Colombians and Chilians, than between the inhabitants of two distant provinces of France, such as Provence and Flanders, Brittany and Burgundy, or between the Italian of the north, positive and virile, and the lazy and sensual Neapolitan, or between the North American of the Far West and the native of New England. The slight provincial differences enable us the better to understand the unity of the continent. This identity explains the monotonous history of America. A succession of military periods and industrial periods, of revolts and dictatorships; perpetual promises of political restoration; the tyranny of {339} ignorant adventurers, and complicated and delusive legislation.