The influx of foreigners consequent upon the invasion of the Norman adventurers, who founded a sovereignty in Apulia, was not sufficiently great to effect a change in the language; and, under their government, the Italian or Sicilian tongue first assumed a settled form. The court of Palermo, early in the twelfth century, abounded in riches, and consequently indulged in luxurious habits; and there the first accents of the Sicilian muse were heard. There, too, at the same period, the Arabs acquired a degree of influence and credit which they have never possessed in any other Christian court. The palace of William I, like those of the monarchs of the East, was guarded by Mohammedan eunuchs. From them he selected his favourites, his friends, and sometimes even his ministers. To attach themselves to the arts and to the various avocations which contribute to the pleasures of life, was the peculiar province of the Saracens, by whom half of the island is still occupied. When Frederick II, at the end of the twelfth century, succeeded to the throne of the Norman monarchs, he transported numerous colonies of Saracens into Apulia and the principality, but he did not banish them from either his service or his court. Of them his army was composed; and the governors of his provinces, whom he denominated justiciaries, were chosen almost exclusively from their number. Thus was it the destiny of the Arabians, in the east as well as in the west of Europe, to communicate to the Latin nations their arts, their science, and their poetry. From the history of Sicily, we may deduce the effects produced by Arabian influence on the Italian, or as it was then considered, the Sicilian poetry, with no less certainty than that with which we trace its connection, in the county of Barcelona and in the kingdom of Castile, with the first efforts of the Provençal and Spanish poets. William I, an effeminate and voluptuous prince, forgot, in his palace of Palermo, amidst his Moorish eunuchs, in the song and the feast, those commotions which agitated his realms. The regency of the kingdom devolved, at his decease, upon his widow, who entrusted the government to Gayto Petro, the chief of the eunuchs, connected with the Saracens of Africa. All the commerce of Palermo was monopolised by the infidels. They were the professors of every art, and the inventors of every variety of luxury. The nation accommodated itself to their customs; and in their public festivals it was usual for Christian and Moorish women to sing in concert to the music of their slaves. We may safely conclude that on these occasions each party adopted their mother-tongue; and that the Italian females who, in the words of Hugo Falcandus,[m] responded, in melancholy cadence to the tambours of their Moorish attendants, would, in all probability, adapt Sicilian words to African airs and measures. THE UNIVERSITIES AND NASCENT SCHOLARSHIP