Of any thing not Italian by speech so
little has been taken in that the non-Italian parts of Italy,
Burgundian Aosta and the Seven German Communes--if these last still keep
their Teutonic language,--fall under the rule that there are some things
too small for laws to pay heed to.
But it must not be forgotten that all this simply means that in the
lands of which we have just been speaking the process of adoption has
been carried out on the largest scale. Nations, with languages as their
rough practical test, have been formed; but they have been formed with
very little regard to physical purity of blood. In short, throughout
Western Europe assimilation has been the rule. That is to say, in any of
the great divisions of Western Europe, though the land may have been
settled and conquered over and over again, yet the mass of the people of
the land have been drawn to some one national type. Either some one
among the races inhabiting the land has taught the others to put on its
likeness, or else a new national type has arisen which has elements
drawn from several of those races.
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