The descendants of the Gauls, however, constitute the mass of the people in Central France. The Gauls, or Galatians, are supposed to have come from the central district of Asia Minor. They were always a warlike people. In their wanderings westward, they passed through the north of Italy and entered France, where they settled in large numbers. Dr. Smith, in his Dictionary of the Bible, says that "Gálatai is the same word as Kéltici," which indicates that the Gauls were Kelts. It is supposed that St. Paul wrote his Epistle to the Galatians soon after his visit to the country of their origin. "Its abruptness and severity, and the sadness of its tone, are caused by their sudden perversion from the doctrine which the Apostle had taught them, and which at first they had received so willingly. It is no fancy, if we see in this fickleness a specimen of that 'esprit imprétueux, ouvert à toutes les impressions,' and that 'mobilité extrême,' which Thierry marks as characteristic of the Gaulish race." At all events, the language of the Gauls disappeared in Central France to make way for the language or the Capital--the modern French, founded on the Latin. The Gaulish race, nevertheless, preserved their characteristics--quickness, lightness, mobility, and elasticity-- qualities which enabled them quickly to conceive new ideas, and at the same time to quickly abandon them. The Franks had given the country the name it now bears--that of France. But they were long regarded as enemies by the Central and Southern Gauls. In Gascony, the foreigner was called Low Franciman, and was regarded with suspicion and dislike.

"This term of Franciman," says Miss Costello, who travelled through the country and studied the subject, "evidently belongs to a period of the English occupation of Aquitaine, when a Frenchman was another word for an enemy."³ But the word has probably a more remote origin. When the Franks, of German origin, burst into Gaul, and settled in the country north of the Loire, and afterwards carried their conquests to the Pyrenees, the Franks were regarded as enemies in the south of France.

"Then all the countries," says Thierry, "united by force to the empire of the Franks, and over which in consequence of this union, the name of France had extended itself, made unheard-of efforts to reconquer their ancient names and places. Of all the Gallic provinces, none but the southern ones succeeded in this great enterprise; and after the wars of insurrection, which, under the sons of Charlemagne, succeeded the wars of conquest, Aquitaine and Provence became distinct states. Among the South Eastern provinces reappeared even the ancient name of Gaul, which had for ever perished north of the Loire. The chiefs of the new Kingdom of Aries, which extended from the Jura to the Alps, took the title of Gaul in opposition to the Kings of France."⁴

It is probable that this was the cause of the name of "Franciman" being regarded as an hereditary term of reproach in the Gaulish country south of the Loire. Gascon and Provençal were the principal dialects which remained in the South, though Littré classes them together as the language of the Troubadours. They were both well understood in the South; and Jasmin's recitations were received with as much enthusiasm at Nimes, Aries, and Marseilles, as at Toulouse, Agen, and Bordeaux.

Mezzofanti, a very Tower of Babel in dialects and languages, said of the Provençal, that it was the only patois of the Middle Ages, with its numerous derivations from the Greek, the Arabic, and the Latin, which has survived the various revolutions of language. The others have been altered and modified. They have suffered from the caprices of victory or of fortune. Of all the dialects of the Roman tongue, this patois alone preserves its purity and life. It still remains the sonorous and harmonious language of the Troubadours. The patois has the suppleness of the Italian, the sombre majesty of the Spanish, the energy and preciseness of the Latin, with the "Molle atque facetum, le dolce de l'Ionic; which still lives among the Phocéens of Marseilles. The imagination and genius of Gascony have preserved the copious richness of the language.

M. de Lavergne, in his notice of Jasmin's works, frankly admits the local jealousy which existed between the Troubadours of Gascony and Provence. There seemed, he said, to be nothing disingenuous in the silence of the Provençals as to Jasmin's poems. They did not allow that he borrowed from them, any more than that they borrowed from him. These men of Southern France are born in the land of poetry. It breathes in their native air. It echoes round them in its varied measures. Nay, the rhymes which are its distinguishing features, pervade their daily talk. The seeds lie dormant in their native soil,