literature of English itself promises the most abundant har vest of information with respect to the etymology of the fundamental part of our present speech, and an inexhaustible mine of material for the further enrichment of our native tongue, we must, in spite of the close analogy between the syntax of primitive and modern English, and the great diversity between that of the latter and of Latin, still turn to the speech and literature of Rome, as the great source of scientific grammatical instruction.

The Moso-Gothic, both intrinsically, and as being the earliest form in which considerable remains of any dialect cognate with our own have come down to us, is of much philological interest and importance. There are extant in Maso-Gothic a large proportion of a translation of the gospels and epistles by Ulphilas, a semi-Arian bishop of that nation in the fourth century, portions of commentaries on different parts of the New Testament, and only some other less important fragments.

It is a point of dispute how far any of the later Teutonic dialects can claim direct descent from the Moso-Gothic, but it is certain that it is very closely allied to all of them, and scarcely any modern Germanic forms are too diverse from that ancient tongue to have been derived from it. In variety of inflection, and power of derivation and composition, in the possession of a dual and of certain passive forms, and in abundance of radical words, an inexhaustible material for development and culture, the Moso-Gothic bears a certain resemblance to the Greek, while on the other hand, it is identified as a Germanic speech, by the character of its radicals, almost all of which yet exist in the Teutonic languages, by its want of any verbal tenses but the present and the past,

by the co-existence of a very complete sys.em of vowelchanges in a strong, with a well-marked weak, order of inflection, and by general syntactical principles.*

The Scandinavian languages, the Swedish and Danish, and especially their common mother the Icelandic or Old-. Northern, the Frisic, which, in some of its great multitude of dialects, perhaps more than any other language resembles the English, the Dutch, and the German, particularly in the Platt-Deutsch or low German forms, are all of value to the thorough etymological and grammatical study of our native tongue.

They are important, not so much as having largely contributed to the vocabulary, or greatly influenced the grammatical structure of English, but because in the poverty of accessible remains of Anglo-Saxon literature in different and especially in early stages of linguistic development, we do not possess satisfactory means of fully tracing the history of the Gothic portion of our language. There are very many English words and phrases, whose forms show them to be Saxon, but which do not occur in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. These may generally be explained or elucidated by reference to the sister-tongues, and consequently some knowledge of them is almost as useful to the English student as AngloSaxon itself. I should unhesitatingly place the Icelandic at the head of these subsidiary philologies, because, from its

* It is a question of curious interest whether those Crimean Goths, whom the Austrian ambassador, Busbequius, saw at Constantinople about the middle of the sixteenth century, and of whose vocabulary he has given us some scanty specimens in his fourth letter, were of Moso-Gothic descer.t. It is difficult to account for their presence in that locality upon any other supposition, but the few words of their language left us by Busbequius do not enable us positively to determine to what branch of the Gothic stock their linguistic affinities would point.

close relationship to Anglo-Saxon, it furnishes more abundant analogies for the illustration of obscure English etymological and syntactical forms than any other of the cognate tongues.* It is but recently that the great value of Icelandic philology has become known to the other branches of the Gothic stock, and one familiar with the treasures of that remarkable literature, and the wealth, power, and flexibility of the language which embodies it, sees occasion to regret the want of a thorough knowledge of it in English and American grammatical writers, more frequently than of any other attainment whatever.

French, of course, is of cardinal importance, both with reference to the history of our grammatical inflections, and as having contributed, though chiefly as a conduit, much more largely to our vocabulary than any other foreign source. The English words usually referred to a Latin original, have, in a large majority of cases, come to us through the French, and we have taken them with the modifications of orthography and meaning which our Norman neighbors had impressed

*English philologists formerly ascribed perhaps too much to the Scandinavian Gothic as an element in the structure and composition of Anglo-Saxon, and more recent inquirers have erred as widely, in denying that early English was sensibly modified by the same influence. The dialects of Northern England, where the population partakes in greater proportion of Danish blood, show a large infusion of Scandinavian words and forms, and many of these have become incorporated into the general speech of Britain. The written AngloSaxon and Old-Northern certainly do not resemble each other so closely as to render it probable that they could have been mutually intelligible to those who spoke them; and we find that by the old Icelandic law the representatives of Englishmen dying in Iceland were expressly excluded from the right of inheritance, as foreigners, of an unknown speech, þeir menn er menn kunna eigi hèr máli eðr túngu við. At the same time, it appears abundantly from the sagas that the Old-Northern was well understood among the higher circles in England, and the Icelandic skalds or bards were specially welcome at the English court.

upon them. The syntax of English, in its best estate, has been little affected by French influence, and few grammatical combinations of Romance origin have been permanently approved and employed by good English writers. Every Gallicism in syntax is presumably a corruption; but Norman French itself, as known to our ancestors, had been much modified by an infusion of the Scandinavian element, and therefore, forms of speech which we have borrowed from the French are sometimes referable, in the last resort, to a Gothic

source.

I cannot speak of even Greek as being of any such value in reference to English grammar or etymology, as to make its acquisition a well-spent labor, unless it is pursued for other purposes than those of domestic philology. But that I may not be misunderstood, let me repeat that so far from dissuading from the study of Greek as a branch of general education, I do but echo the universal opinion of all persons competent to pronounce on the subject, in expressing my own. conviction that the language and literature of ancient Greece constitute the most efficient instrument of mental training ever enjoyed by man; and that a familiarity with that wonderful speech, its poetry, its philosophy, its eloquence, and the history it embalms, is incomparably the most valuable of intellectual possessions. The grammar of the Greek language is much more flexible, more tolerant of aberration, less rigid in its requirements, than the Latin. The varium et mutabile semper femina, of the Latin poet, for example, is so rare an instance of apparent want of concord, that it startles us as abnormal, while similar, and even wider grammatical discrepancies, are of constant occurrence in Greek. The precision, which the regularity of Latin syntax gives to a

period, the Greek more completely and clearly accomplishes by the nicety with which individual words are defined in meaning; and while the Latin trains us to be good grammarians, the Greek elevates us to the highest dignity of manhood, by making us acute and powerful thinkers.

Nothing could well have been more surprising than the discovery that the ancient Sanscrit exhibits unequivocal evidence of close relationship to the Greek and Latin, as well as to the modern Romance and the Gothic languages, in both grammar and vocabulary, and these analogies have served to establish a general alliance between a great number of tongues formerly supposed to be wholly unrelated. When linguistic science shall be farther advanced, the Sanscrit will probably in a great measure supersede the Latin as the common standard of grammatical comparison among the European tongues, with the additional advantage of standing much more nearly in one relation both to the Gothic and the Romance dialects. But at present, Sanscrit is accessible only to the fewest, and the English student can hardly be advised, as a general rule, to look beyond the sources from which our maternal speech is directly derived, for illustrations either of its grammar or vocabulary. With respect to verbal forms, and points of grammatical structure not sufficiently explained by AngloSaxon, Latin, and French inflection and syntax, it may in general be said, that any one of the Gothic dialects will supply the deficiency, and if the inquirer's objects be limited to the actual use of his own tongue, the study of English authors is a better and safer guide than any wider researches in for eign philologies.