There has been much ingenious and plausible speculation upon the natural significance of articulate words; and it is at least established, that certain elementary sounds are very extensively, if not universally, employed to express certain primary conceptions. The subject has not, however, yet been prosecuted far enough to bring us to very precise results; but we are probably authorized to say that, as a general law, there does exist, or has existed, a natural connection between the sound and the thing signified, and consequently, that the forms of language are neither arbitrary or conventional on the one hand, nor accidental on the other, but are natural and necessary products of the organization, faculties, and condition of man. Nay, some philologists maintain that the laws of the germination and growth of these forms are so constant, that if the structure and powers of the organs of speech, and all modifying outward conditions affecting the internal or external life of a particular race, could be precisely known, their entire language might be predicted and constructed beforehand, with as much certainty as any other result of the action of human faculties. Hence it would follow that a resemblance between particular radicals or grammatical forms in different languages does not prove that one is derived from the other, or that both are historically referable to any one original source; but the likeness may be simply an instance of a similarity of effect from the operation of similar causes. It would therefore, be conceivable that words identical in form, yet absolutely new, might even now spring up simultaneously or successively in nations between which there is no communication, and no connection but that which is implied in unity of species and of organization. When, therefore, we find in the language of the Tonga Isl ands the verb maté, to kill, we are not authorized to infer an affinity between that speech and the Spanish, which uses matar in the same sense, or the Latin which has mactare, also of the like signification. We must either refer such cases to some obscure law of universal humanity, or agree with an old writer, who remarks that "The judicious behold these as no regular congruities, but casual coincidences, the like to which may be found in languages of the greatest distance, which never met together since they parted at the confusion of Babel; and we may not enforce a conformity between the Hebrew and the English because one of the three giants, sons of Anak, was called A-hi-man." The origin of language is shrouded in the same impenetrable mystery that conceals the secrets of our primary mental and physical being. We cannot say, with some, that it is of itself an organism, but we regard it as a necessary, and, therefore, natural, product of intelligent self-conscious organization. Yet we do not believe that the rage of the naturalistic school of philosophy for detecting law and principle, where our limited human faculties must be content to accept ultimate fact, will ever succeed in pointing out the quo modo, the how, of its germination and early development. We know no language in a state of formation. So far as observation goes, its structure is as complete among the most unlettered savages, and in the remotest periods, as in the golden age of Hellenic literature. The history of its changes we can but imperfectly trace; the law of its being lies beyond our reach. Its contemporary mutations, even, elude us, and to most of our inquiries into the rationale of its forms we find no more satisfactory answer than that one given by the quaint author of the Religio Medici, in the seventh of his Miscellany Tracts, Why saith the Italian, Signor, si! the Spaniard, Si Señor! But though the faculty of articulate speech may be considered natural to man, it differs from most other human powers, whether organic or incorporeal, in this: that it is a faculty belonging to the race, not to the individual, and that the social condition is essential, not to its cultivation, but to its existence. Hence, its exercise is not spontaneous, or in any sense self-taught, as are all purely organic processes. Nevertheless, considered in its mode of action, the use of the mother-tongue may be regarded as an instinctive function, because it is acquired through the promptings of natural impulses, and without any conscious, calculating effort. We retain no recollection of the process by which we learned to understand and employ our maternal speech, at least as respects that portion of it which is mastered in infant life, and not taught in the artificial form it assumes in books. In actual speaking, the movement, both physical and intellectual, is as completely automatic and unconscious as the action of the nerves, muscles, and tendons, by whose instrumentality the hand is raised or the foot thrown forward. We will the result, and it follows, mechanically in both cases, so far as any conscious operation of our volition upon the material agencies is concerned. It is, therefore, no abuse of words to call the mother-tongue, as the unlearned often do, our natural language. Speech, fully possessed and absolutely appropriated, is purely subjective, but it becomes inorganic and foreign when we make it matter of objective study, observation, or con scious effort. Learning a foreign language, or even studi ously conforming our own to abstract rule, is analogous to those half-intellectual, half-corporeal processes, by which we acquire the power of controlling the action of the involuntary muscles, so as to give movement to parts of the system ordinarily quiescent; and speech, like bodily motion, is seldom graceful or free, except while its action is spontaneous. The moment it betrays itself as artificial, it becomes constrained, awkward, inelegant. And hence it is that the mother-tongue, though it may be forgotten, can never be completely supplanted or supplied by any other. Those who grow up speaking many languages, very seldom acquire a complete mastery over any of them. They are linguistic orphans, without a maternal speech, and they use language not as an organ, but as an implement.* *It is wonderful to what extent purely conventional articulate symbols may be made to supply the place of a more natural language, and to serve as a means of very varied communication. In most of these cases, the signs agreed upon must be considered as standing for words, not ideas, and they are rather an index to speech than a language of themselves. Take the exhibitions often witnessed, where, when you show an object to one in the secret, a confederate, blindfolded or in an adjoining room, will instantly name it. A method of coinmunication in such cases is this. The parties agree to designate certain words of frequent occurrence, chiefly names of familiar objects, by numerals, and the table of words and their corresponding numbers is committed to memory by both. The simple digits up to nine, including also the cipher, will represent words which may, without exciting suspicion, be used in asking the name of the object. Let us suppose 1 to stand for what, 2 for is, and 3 for this; and further, that the number corresponding to pen-knife is 123. spectator produces a pen-knife, asks, What is this? the corresponding numerals one, two, three, into the which is pen-knife. Or again, 4, 5, and 6 may stand respectively for tell, me, and now, and the number 645 for pencil. A pencil is held up by a spectator, the conjuror cries, Now, tell me! and the answer 6, 4, 5—645, a pencil, is at once given. I have known this numeral vocabulary carried up to four thousand words, and the principle is capable of almost unlimited variation and exten. sion. The performer, when a The confederate combines number 123, the answer to The origin of the appellative English, as the exclusive designation of a tongue employed by the Saxon, as well as the Anglian colonists of our fatherland, is not altogether clear. The etymology of the national names of both the principal immigrant races is very uncertain, but it is famil iarly known, that for several centuries after, and not improbably before, the commencement of the Christian era, bands of warlike adventurers from the conterminous borders of what are now the Kingdom of Denmark and the German States, made frequent incursions into Britain, and at last established themselves as its masters. The native Celtic inhabitants, who were compelled to retire before the martial prowess of the strangers, do not seem to have distinguished very accurately between the different nationalities of their conquerors. A common name was applied by the Britons to the whole alien immigration; and, though each tribe had its own domestic designation, they were, and still are, all called Saxons by the Celtic aborigines. Popular narrative has fixed the most important of these expeditions at about the middle of the fifth century, and it is said to have been composed chiefly of Jutes, or Jutlanders, under the leadership of Hengist and Horsa, who were afterwards joined by successive reinforcements from the Gothic tribes on the coast of the German Ocean. Among these are particularly named, first, the Saxon conquerors, who, at different periods, and under different leaders, subdued and colonized Sussex, Wessex, Essex, and Middlesex; and secondly, two considerable bodies of Angles from Sleswick, who occupied Suffolk and Norfolk, and the south-western districts of Scotland. These tribes, together with Frisians and emigrants from other neighboring Scandinavian and Teutonic |