(the cities being usually situated in plains,) having little intercourse with their foreign masters, continued for ages to preserve the Saxon speech with very little adulteration, and, in many provinces, retain it to the present day.

It is therefore in the towns only that we can expect to find a mixture of speech, resulting from a mixture of inhabitants; and to their history must we look for the evidence of its operation. But in the first instance, the Norman garrisons, and such colonies of their countrymen as may have been settled under their protection, were effectually separated from the native inhabitants, by contempt on one side, by fear on the other, and on both by opposition of interests. The two nations formed separate and hostile societies: they were in a state of juxta-position, but without intercourse. Even their commercial relations were very trifling, the internal as well as external trade of the country being principally carried on by Jews.

This mutual hatred was encouraged by the partialities, and still more by the policy, of William and his immediate successors. All the towns in the kingdom were attached as demesnes either to the crown or to its tenants in capite; their inhabitants were subjected to all the feudal services, and, being arbitrarily governed by a regal or baronial

officer, were exposed to every exaction of partial and capricious tyranny. Anderson, in his History of Commerce, gives us a curious instance of the general poverty resulting from this system. "We "find in the first volume of Rymer's Fœdera (p. 80.)" says he, “a letter from that king, dated [1193] at "Haguenau in Germany, where the Imperial Diet "was then assembled, to his mother queen Elinor, "and to the judges of England, earnestly pressing "them to raise the money for his ransom to the said "sordid Emperor, being 70,000 marks of silver, and "urging that for this end all the money of the churches

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may be borrowed, as also of the barons. HERE IS "NOT THE LEAST MENTION OF THE MONEY OF

66 MERCHANTS OR CITIZENS, which shews the "poor state of England at this time, in point of com"merce or wealth." He had, however, previously noticed a most material and beneficial change which took place a few years before in the political situation of the citizens and burghers; a change, indeed, so important, that Madox, in his History of the Exchequer, (chap. x.) considers it as the adoption of an entirely new system, and as the foundation of all their future prosperity. This was the grant of various immunities by charter, and the formation of corporate bodies in certain towns and cities; the earliest of which is assigned to the 26th year of

Henry II. 1180, when such charters were granted to the city of London, and the town of Southampton.

The object of Henry's policy in this measure was, by encouraging the growth of the towns, to erect a barrier against the encroachments of the aristocracy; and this policy, in which he persevered during the remainder of his reign, was also adopted by his sons. Several proofs of it are recorded bý Anderson, even in the short and busy reign of Richard I. and they are much more numerous in that of his successor. "Notwithstanding all the "faults too justly (it is to be feared) charged on "King John" says this historian,-" we find him, in "this very first year of his reign (1199,) beginning "the good purpose as a king,which he farther in"creased in the course of his reign:-this was the "erecting of his demesne towns into free burghs; "which thereby paved the way for the gradual "introduction of commerce into his kingdom." The barons, on the other hand, with no less policy, declared themselves the champions of all the privileges obtained or claimed by the cities, who thus derived a double advantage from the contest for popularity between the king and the aristocracy.

It is not our present business to pursue the gradual effects of these measures in disseminating liberty and prosperity, but it seems probable that

their operation on our language must have been immediate and extensive. The Norman and Saxon inhabitants of England were now permanently united by the bonds of common interest; and the establishment of a popular form of municipal government, under an annually elective magistracy, by encouraging the spirit and furnishing the topics of daily discussion, could not fail of giving currency to new forms of speech, and of forming a language adapted to their new situation.

It is evident that nothing less than the most minute enquiry into all the circumstances of our history under the first Norman kings would be sufficient for the full investigation of this subject; but the preceding observations will perhaps authorize us to assume, that the formation of the English language took its rise, and was probably far advanced, during the interval of not quite forty years which preceded the accession of Henry III.

After quitting Layamon, we shall waste little time on the compositions of his immediate successors. The earliest of these, according to Mr. Tyrwhitt, is a paraphrase of the Gospel histories,called Ormulum, composed by one ORME or OR MIN, which seems to have been considered as mere prose by Hickes and Wanley, who have given extracts from it, but is really written in verse of fifteen syllables, without rhyme, in imitation of the most common form of G

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the Latin tetrameter iambic. The next is a Moral Poem on Old Age, written in rhyme, and extracted by Hickes, part of which is to be found in the introduction to Dr. Johnson's Dictionary. Another poem, also transcribed from Hickes's extract, by Dr. Johnson, is a Life of St. Margaret, which, as Mr. Warton tells us, forms part of a voluminous MS. in the Bodleian library, containing various lives of the saints, translated, perhaps, from some earlier Latin or French original.

But the most entertaining and curious specimen preserved in Hickes's Thesaurus is one which that learned editor has characterised as a most malevolent satire on the religious orders. It, however, by no means deserves this disgraceful appellation, because it does not contain one of those opprobrious expressions which are so liberally employed, as a substitute for wit, by the early satirists. The author, whoever he was, takes advantage of a popular tradition respecting the existence of an imaginary terrestrial Paradise, in some unknown quarter of the globe, which he calls the land of Cokaygne; in which his houris are nuns, and their happy companions white and grey monks; and his object is to insinuate that the ease and luxury enjoyed in the monasteries had scarcely less effect in peopling the monastic orders than the inducements more usually assigned by the proselytes of zeal and