S, x, z, t, being the principal grammatic letters, are most frequently joined in this manner. On French pronunciation Malvin-Cazal, Mme. Sophie Dupuis, and Bescherelle (Plus de grammaires) may be advantageously consulted.-The dialects and patois of the French language are: I. The academic, consecrated by the best literature.

II. Old French: 1, Walloon (rouchi), in Belgium and West Luxemburg; 2, Franco-Flemish; 3. Picard and the dialect of Artois. All these are Franco-Romanic.

III. New French. A. In the north: 1, Norman; 2, patois of Paris and Champagne; 3, of Lorraine and the Vosges; 4, the Bourguignon; 5, patois of Orleans and Blois; 6, of Anjou and Maine. B. In the middle and west: 1, Auvergnat; 2, Poite-vin; 3, Vendeen; 4, Bas Breton; 5, Berrichon; 6, Bordelais and Gascon. C. In the east: 1, Franc-Comtois and its varieties in Valais and Neufchatel, and partly in the cantons of Fri-bourg and Bern; 2, Vaudois (Roman, Romain); 3, Savoisien and Genevois; 4, Lyonnais; 5, patois of the cities of Dauphiny. D. In the islands of Jersey and Guernsey, Anglo-Norman. French is also spoken with various local peculiarities or corruptions in Algeria, on the Senegal, in the Mascarene and Seychelles islands, French Guiana, the French West Indies, the greater part of Hayti, in Illinois, Michigan, Louisiana, and some other of the United States, by the habitans of Lower Canada and even some aboriginal tribes, and in some settlements in Asia and Oceanica. There are also small French colonies in the banat of Temesvar and elsewhere. It is the most generally known of all languages among civilized nations, and many illustrious foreigners, as Leibnitz, Humboldt, Gibbon, and SirWilliam Jones, have written some of their works in it.

The dialects of the langue d'oc, particularly the Limousin, Languedocien, and Provencal, are spoken S. of a line passing through the departments of Charente, Charente-Inferieure, Haute - Vienne, Creuse, Allier, Puy-de-D6me, Haute-Loire, Ardeche, Drome, and I sere. Celtic (Breyzad) is spoken by about 1,000,000 people in Finis-tere, Cote-du-Nord, and Morbihan; Basque by about 150,000 in Basses-Pyrenees; Flemish in parts of Le Nord and Pas-de-Calais; Catalan in Pyrenees-Orientales; and Italian in Corsica. -Among the authors of grammars of the French tongue are: J. Sylvius (1537); Robert and Henry Stephens (Paris, 1558 and 1579); Ramus, Grammaire francaise (1571); Vauge-las, Remarques sur la langue francaise (1647); the Port-Royal writers, Lancelot and Arnauld, Grammaire generale et raisonnee (1060, often republished); Wailly, Grammaire francaise (1754); Beauzee, Grammaire generale (Paris, 1707); Levizac,Theoretical and Practical Grammar of the French Tongue" (1801); Fabre, Syntaxe francaise (1803); Gueroult, Grammaire francaise (1806); Lhomond, Elements de la grammaire francaise (last ed., 1865); Girault-Duvivier, Grammaire des gram-maires (1811, many times reprinted); Landais, Grammaire generale et raisonnee, a compilation from numerous sources (1836); Noel and Chapsal, Nouvelle grammaire francaise (1823, many times republished). Still later are the grammars of Letellier, Poitevin, and Larousse. Among the best dictionaries are those by Robert Stephens (French and Latin, 1543); Aimar de Ranconnet (1606); Richelet (1680); Furetiere (1690); Menage (1694); the famous dictionary of Trevoux, so named from its place of publication (1704); those of Boiste and Bastien (1800), Roquefort, Raymond, La-veaux, and Landais; several works by Charles Nodier; and Bescherelle, Dictionnaire national, ou Grand dictionnaire critique de la langue frangaise (2 vols. 4to, 1843-'6). The Dictionnaire de l'academie francaise was published in 2 vols. fol. in 1094, and has been several times reprinted.

A Dictionnaire his-torique de la langue francaise, on a grand scale, is in preparation by the academy. The latest and best dictionary is that of E. Lit-tre in 4 vols. 4to (Paris, 1863-'73). Girard (1730), Beauzee (1709), Roubaud (1785), and Guizot (1809-22) have written on French synonymes; and Gerusez (1801), Henry (1811), Villemain, in the dictionary of the academy, J. J. Ampere (1841), F. Wey (1815), and F. Genin (1845-,6), on the history of the French language.-Literature. The earliest literature of France is that of the trouveres and troubadours. The latter, who wrote in the soft southern langue d'oc, produced short lyrical effusions on love or matters of trilling import; they flourished most during the 11th and 12th centuries. The trouveres, on the other hand, in their narrative poems, known as chansons de geste, and written in the energetic langue d'oil, treated of great national subjects and celebrated the heroic deeds of il-lustrious kings and knights. Some of their compositions, the earliest especially, have a striking character of grandeur, which may sometimes be not unfavorably compared with that of the ancient epic poems.

These chansons de geste, which are also called romans, are very numerous, and have been classified into three cycles, bearing respectively the names of Charlemagne, King Arthur, and Alexander. The first cycle of course includes all the poems that celebrate the deeds of the great Frankish. emperor, his descendants and vassals; one of the oldest and perhaps the most magnificent of this category is entitled La chanson de Roland ou de Roncevaux. The Armorican cycle or that of King Arthur is filled with the traditionary legends connected with old Britain and the achievements of the Norman warriors; the Roman de Brut, or that of King Arthur of Britain, on one side, and the Roman de Rou, or that of the dukes of Normandy, on the other, may be said to be the double foundation on which all the poems belonging to this series rest. The cycle of Alexander consists of poems in which recollections of Greece and Rome are strangely mixed with chivalric notions and legends of fairy land. The "History of the Taking of Troy,'1 composed about 1160 by Benoit de St. Maure, and the "Romance of Alexander," about 1180, by Lambert li Cors and Alexandre of Paris, are fair specimens of these compositions.