13. But to return. — In human language, as in the whole creation, the
great law of beauty and happiness is this — variety in unity. Though there
are great difficulties in discovering the true pronunciation of Anglo-Saxon,
we have still left to us two means of investigation. First, the comparison
of its vowels and consonants with those of a kindred dialect existing at
a more remote period ; and secondly, the same comparison with a kindred
dialect of posterior age, both as it is written and still spoken— for, however
altered in some of its features, it must still retain genuine traits of its
original countenance. The Gothic or Moeso-Gothic* will answer for the
first, and the Friesic the second ; two languages combining the advantage
that the nations who spoke them bordered on the Anglo-Saxons, the
Moeso-Goths on the north, and the Friesians on the south, and by
enclosing the Anglo-Saxons, limit their influence, both as it respects their
geography and language.
14. It is evident that all the tongues spoken by the great people which
the Romans called Germani, considered on a large scale, appear as
dialects all issuing from one common source. There was a time when all
these languages were one. If we could mount sufficiently high in the
scale of time, we should arrive at the period when the progenitors of all
the tribes were gathered within the compass of a little camp under a few

* See VII. §. 1, and note 2.
40 FRIESIC— NAMES OF NUMBERS. IV. 15, 16.
