The conventional countryman of the stage, who picks up pocket books and never looks into them, and who is too simple even to know that honesty has its opposite, represents the still lingering mistake that an unintelligible dialect is a guarantee for ingenuousness, and that slouching shoulders indicate an upright disposition.

Negro dialect is naturally and by long association the exact instrument for voicing this phase of Negro life; and by that very exactness it is an instrument with but two full stops, humor and pathos.

Some linguists think that these dialects are archaic forms of the language, the memory of which was retained in ceremonial observances; others maintain that they were simply affectations of expression, and form a sort of slang, based on the every day language, and current among the initiated.

We have seen that the Limousin dialect became the basis of the literary language, and that the first troubadour known to us belonged to Poitou.

Since the Bible-translation of Luther, this central dialect has not only become the medium in which poet and philosopher, historian and critic address the nation, but it may be said to have entirely superseded the Northern and Southern forms.

The negro dialect of this county is a combination of the dialect white folk use plus that of the negro of the South.

The vulgar dialect was not only a fund of humour for him; but seems to have been acceptable to his nature, as appears from the many filthy ideas, and indecent expressions found throughout his works.

His dialect was the vilest and surliest form of the colloquial "Clear Speech.

Mr. Wenham was a native of New- York, and his dialect was a mixture that is getting to be sufficiently general, partaking equally of the Doric of New England, the Dutch cross, and the old English root; whereas, Mr. Dodge spoke the pure, unalloyed Tuscan of his province, rigidly adhering to all its sounds and significations.