the same manner an English dramatist could indicate or suggest a German style of thought, if he would use old Saxon expressions and inflections. For the English language consists of two heterogeneous elements, the Latin and the German, which, being merely squeezed together, do not form an organic whole, and which easily fall apart when we cannot decide as to which side the real English belongs. One has only to compare the language of Doctor Johnson or of Addison with that of Byron or Cobbett. It was really quite unnecessary for Shakespeare to let the Princess Katharine talk French.
This leads me back to a remark which I have already made. It is a defect in the historical drama of Shakespeare that he does not contrast the Norman French spirit of the higher nobility with the Saxon British spirit of the people by means of characteristic forms of speech. Walter Scott did this in his novels, and thereby attained his most startling effects.
The artist who has contributed to this gallery the portrait of the French princess has, perhaps inspired by English malice, given her features more expressive of drollery than beauty. She has here a true bird face, and her eyes look as if they belonged to some one else. Are those parrot's feathers which she wears on her head, and are they intended to indicate her babbling
