W. von Humboldt says: “Languages, that are apparently crude and unrefined, may show some striking qualities in their structure, and often do so. In this respect they may quite possibly surpass more highly developed tongues. The comparison of Birman with Delaware, not to speak of Mexican, can leave no doubt of the superiority of the latter; yet a strand of Indian culture has certainly been interwoven into Birman by Pali” (_Über die Kawi-Sprache_, Introduction, p. xxxiv). Footnote 124: This difference of level between the intellect of the conqueror and that of the conquered is the cause of the “sacred languages” that we find used in the early days of an empire; such as that of the Egyptians, or the Incas of Peru. These languages are the object of a superstitious veneration; they are the exclusive property of the upper classes, and often of a sacerdotal caste, and they furnish the strongest possible proof of the existence of a foreign race that has conquered the country where they are found. Footnote 125: W. von Humboldt, _Über die Kawi-Sprache_, Introduction, p. xxxiv. Footnote 126: _See_ p. 82 above. Footnote 127: Ancient Greece contained many dialects, but not so many as the Greece of the sixteenth century, when seventy were counted by Simeon Kavasila; further we may notice (in connexion with the following paragraph) that in the thirteenth century French was spoken throughout Greece, and especially in Attica (Heilmayer, quoted by Pott, _op. cit._, p. 73). Footnote 128: The Hebrews themselves did not call their language “Hebrew”; they called it, quite properly, the “language of Canaan” (Isaiah xix, 18). Compare Roediger’s preface to the Hebrew grammar of Gesenius (16th edition, Leipzig, 1851, p. 7 _et passim_). Footnote 129: This is also the view of W. Edwards (“Physical Characteristics of the Human Races”). Footnote 130: Besides the Jews, I might also mention the Gipsies. There is, further, the case where a people speaks two languages. In Grisons almost all the peasants of the Engadine speak Roumansch and German with equal facility, the former among themselves, the latter to foreigners. In Courland there is a district where the peoples speak Esthonian (a Finnish dialect) to each other and Lithuanian to every one else (Pott, _op. cit._, p. 104). Footnote 131: _See_ pp. 97–102. Footnote 132: The way was not so long from rustic Latin, _lingua rustica Romanorum_, to the _lingua romana_ and thence to corruption, as it was from the classical tongue, the precise and elaborate forms of which offered more resistance to decay. We may add that, as every foreign legionary brought his own provincial patois into the Gallic colonies, the advent of a common dialect was hastened, not merely by the Celts, but by the immigrants themselves. Footnote 133: Sulp. Severus, _Dial. I de virtutibus monachorum orientalium_. Footnote 134: