ganic growth, which impresses its own peculiar form on the religious ideas and the philosophical opinions of the people, on their political constitution, their legislation, their customs, and the expression of all these individualities is found in the speech. In this are embalmed that to which they have aspired, that to which they have attained. There we find the record of their thought, its comprehension, wealth and depth, the life of the people, the limits of their culture, their appetencies and their antipathies, whatsoever has germinated, fructified, ripened and passed away among them, yes, even their short-comings and their trespasses. The people and their language are so con-natural, that the one thrives, changes, perishes with the other." So far our author, and with the allowances to be made for the exaggeration into which writers are often led by their enthusiasm for their subject, his views are entitled to general concurrence. think by words, and therefore thought and words cannot but act and react on each other. As a man speaks, so he thinks, and as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.

We

It is evident, therefore, that unity of speech is essential to the unity of a people. Community of language is a stronger bond than identity of religion or of government, and contemporaneous nations of one speech, however formally separated by differences of creed or of political organization, are essentially one in culture, one in tendency, one in influence. The fine patriotic effusion of Arndt, "Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland," was founded upon the idea that the oneness of the Deutsche Zunge, the German speech, implied a oneness of spirit, of interest, of aims and of duties, and the universal acceptance with which the song was received was evidence that the poet had struck a chord to which every Teutonic heart responded. The national language is the key to the

national intellect, the national heart, and it is the special vocation of what is technically called philology, as distinguished from linguistics, to avail itself of the study of language as a means of knowing, not man in the abstract, but man as collected into distinct communities, informed with the same spirit, exposed to the same moulding influences, and pursuing the same great objects by substantially the same means. We are certainly not authorized to conclude that all the individuals of a nation are altogether alike because they speak the same mother-tongue, but their characters presumably resemble each other as nearly as the fragments of the common language which each has appropriated to his own use. Every individual selects from the general stock his own vocabulary, his favorite combinations of words, his own forms of syntax, and thus frames for himself a dialect, the outward expression of which is an index to the inner life of the man. No two Englishmen, Germans or Frenchmen speak and act in all points alike, yet in character as well as in speech, they would generally be found to have more points of sympathy and resemblance with each other, than either of them with any man of a different tongue.

The relations between the grammatical structure or general idiom of a language and the moral and intellectual character of those who speak it, are usually much more uncertain and obscure than the connection between the particular words, which compose their stock, and the thoughts, habits and tendencies of those who employ them. Except under circumstances where our mouths are sealed and our thoughts suppressed, from motives of prudence, of delicacy or of shame, the names of the objects dearest to the heart, the expression of the passions which most absorb us, the nomenclature of the religious, social or political creeds or parties to

which we have attached ourselves, will most frequently rise to the lips. Hence it is the vocabulary and the phraseological combinations of the man, or class of men, which must serve as the clue to guide us into the secret recesses of their being; and in spite of occasional exceptions, apparent or real, it is generally true that our choice of words, as also of the special or conventional meanings of words, is determined by the character, the ruling passion, the habitual thoughts,—by the life, in short, of the man; and in this sense Ben Jonson uttered a great and important truth when he said: "Language most shows a man: speak that I may see thee! It springs out of the most retired and inmost parts of us, and is the image of the parent of it, the mind. No glass renders a man's form and likeness so true as his speech."

But there is much risk of error in the too extended application of this criterion. In two cases only can we be justified in condemning a people upon the strength of indications furnished by their language alone. The one is that of the voluntary, or at least the free, selection of a debased or perverted diction, when a higher and purer one is possible; the other, that of the non-existence of words expressive of great ideas, and this will generally be found coupled with an abundance in terms denoting, and yet not stigmatizing, gross and wicked acts and passions.

There are cases where the crimes of rulers are mirrored in the speech of their subjects;* others, where governments by a long course of corruption, oppression, and tyranny, have stamped upon the language of their people, or at least upon

*""Tis you that say it, not I. You do the deeds,
And your ungodly deeds find me the words.

SOPHOCLES, as translated by Milton.

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its temporary conventionalities, a tone of hypocrisy, falsehood, baseness, that clings to the tongue, even after the spirit of the nation is emancipated, and it is prepared to vindicate, by deeds of heroism, the rights, the principles, the dignity of its manhood.

I think the language of Italy is a case in point. Landor argues the profound and hopeless depravity of the Italians from the abject character of their complimentary and social dialect, and the phraseology expressive of their relations with their rulers or other superiors, as well as from the pompous style by which they magnify the importance of things in themselves insignificant, and their constant use of superlatives and intensitives, with reference to trifling objects and occasions. Were it true, that the Lombards, the Piedmontese, the Tuscans and the Romans of the present day had not inherited, but freely adopted, the dialect, of which Landor gives a sort of anthology, it would argue much in favor of his theory. A bold and manly and generous and truth

*

*The Imaginary Conversations of Landor are a very indifferent authority upon questions of fact, nor, in my opinion, are they entitled to a high rank as standards in criticism, in language, or in morals. But a physiognomist may refer to a caricature for an illustration of the connection between moral traits and the physical features by which they are indicated, and I may, with at least equal propriety, cite the exaggerations of Landor as exemplifying the manner in which external causes may corrupt language, and, through it, the morality of those who use it.

The metamorphosis of the frank, straightforward speech of ancient Rome into the cringing form which it has in modern times adopted, is the natural consequence of centuries of tyrannies, that have crushed not so much the bodies, as the souls of men who have so long groaned hopelessly under them. But whatever may have been the character of the Italians, when Landor wrote the dialogue from which I have taken these examples, he would grossly misjudge their countrymen of this generation, who should infer that because the language has not yet recovered its native majesty, the people is not ripe for an ennobling revolution. The habitual speech of the Italians is, at present, by no means of so unmanly a character as the author in question represents it, and

ful people certainly would not choose to say umiliare una supplica, to humiliate a supplication, for, to present a memorial; to style the strength which awes, and the finesse which deceives, alike, onestà, honesty or respectability; to speak of taking human life by poison, not as a crime, but simply as a mode of facilitating death, ajutare la morte; to employ pellegrino, foreign, for admirable; to apply to a small garden and a cottage the title of un podere, a power; to call every house with a large door, un palazzo, a palace; a brass ear-ring, una gioja, a joy; a present of a bodkin, un regalo, a royal munificence; an alteration in a picture, un pentimento, a repentance; a man of honor, un uomo di garbo, a well-dressed man; a lamb's fry, una cosa stupenda, a stupendous thing; or a message sent by a footman to his tailor, through a scullion, una ambaseiata, an embassy.

We must distinguish between cases where words expressive of great ideas, mighty truths, do not at all exist in a language, and those where, as in Italy, the pressure of external or accidental circumstances has compelled the disuse or even when expressions, which jar with the self-respect of a citizen of a free state, are employed, they are not usually accompanied with a fawning or degradingly deferential manner, or an ostentatious sacrifice of the rights of private opinion and private interest. The leaven of French democracy, which, however unsparing in its career of overthrow at home, was a beneficent influence in the Italian peninsula, is still at work; the last quarter of a century has brought the principles of civil and religious liberty within the intelligence, and commended them to the heart, of the masses; occasion only has long been wanting; the recent outrage perpetrated by the Papal government on the sanctities of domestic life, in the kidnapping of a Jewish child, will, it is to be hoped, hasten the dawn of the day when the whole Ausonian people shall be transformed, transfigured we may say, into what Milton describes as "a noble and puissant nation, rousing herself like a strong man after sleep and shaking her invincible locks." Then they will reassert their claim to the divine rights of humanity, and then their speech, like themselves, will burst its fetters and become once more as grand and as heroic as it is beautiful.