[139]. P. Pâris, Garin le Loherain, preface.
[140]. It may however be observed that the accent of Vaud and Savoy has a southern ring, strongly reminiscent of the colony of Aventicum.
[141]. See p. 43.
[142]. Pott brings out very well the fact that the different dialects maintain the balance between the blood of a race and its language, when he says, “Dialects are the diversity in unity, the prismatic sections of the monochromatic light and the primordial One” (Ersch and Gruber’s Encyclopädie, p. 66). The phraseology is obscure; but it shows his meaning clearly enough.
[143]. This caution applies only when the history of a single people is in question, not that of a group of peoples. Although one nation may sometimes change its language, this never happens, and could not happen, in the case of a complex of nationalities, racially identical though politically independent. The Jews have given up their national speech; but the Semitic nations as a whole can neither lose their native dialects nor acquire others.
[144]. “Taste and smell in the negro are as powerful as they are undiscriminating. He eats everything, and odours which are revolting to us are pleasant to him” (Pruner).
[145]. Carus, op. cit., p. 60.
[146]. Martius observes that the European is superior to the coloured man in the pressure of the nervous fluid (Reise in Brasilien, vol. i, p. 259).
THE RENAISSANCE