The parts where the dialects of these particular specimens were spoken are generally considered to have been the country about Essen, Cleves, and Munster; and, although closely allied to the Anglo-Saxon of England, the Westphalian Saxon is still a notably different form of speech. It was the Angle language in its southern variety, or (changing the expression) the Angle was the most northern form of it. We have seen that _Saxony_ and _Saxon_ were no native terms on the Upper Elbe. Were they so in the present area--in Westphalia, Eastphalia, and the land of the Angrivarii? Tacitus knows no such name at all; and Ptolemy, the first writer in whom we find it, attaches it to a population of the Cimbric Peninsula. Afterwards, in the third and fourth centuries it is applied by the Roman and Byzantine writers in a general sense, to those maritime Germans whose piracies were the boldest, and whose descents upon the Provinces of Gaul and Britain were most dreaded. Yet nowhere can we find a definite tract of country upon which we can lay our finger and say _this is the land of Saxons_, saving only the insignificant district to the north of the Elbe, mentioned by Ptolemy. From the time of Honorius to that of Charlemagne, _Saxo_ is, like _Franc_, a general term applied, indeed, to the maritime Germans rather than those of the interior, and to those of the north rather than the south, yet nowhere specifically attached to any definite population with a local habitation and a name to match. Whenever we come to detail, the Saxons of the Roman writers become Chamavi, Bructeri, Cherusci, Chauci, or Frisii; while the Frank details are those of the Ostphali, Westphali, and Angrivarii.