nature as they passed before him, but he did it at the suggestion of God and with the faculty imparted to him.1

Every language commenced, as it does now in children, with a scanty list of root-words, mostly onomatopoëtic and exclamatory or interjectional, expressing the most obvious objects of sense and sensations of the heart, and reached its relative perfection by a slow and gradual historical growth corresponding to the growth of civilization and literature.

Professor Skeat closes the preface to his Etymol. Dictionary (Oxford, 1882) with the truthful remark, "The speech of man is influenced by physical laws, in other words, by the working of Divine power. It is therefore possible to pursue the study of language in a spirit of reverence similar to that in which we study what are called the works of nature; and by the aid of that spirit we may gladly perceive a new meaning in the sublime line of our poet Coleridge, that

"Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.''

DIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE.

The diversity of language is traced by the Bible to the pride and confusion of Babel. But it was nevertheless decreed and is controlled by divine Providence like the diversity of nations. God made of one blood all nations of the earth, says Paul, and determined the bounds of their habitation. He raises up nations for particular purposes and assigns them a peculiar work.

Every language reflects the genius of the nation which uses it as the organ of its inner life, and serves the special mission which it is called to fulfill in the great family of nations and in the drama of history. The knowledge of the language, therefore, is the key to the knowledge of the people with which it is identified.

The Hebrew language, by its simplicity and sublimity, was admirably adapted to be the organ of the earliest revelations of

1 Comp. Gen. i. 19. Webster makes language itself, as well as the faculty of speech, the immediate gift of God, but supposes it to have been very limited in vocabulary. See Introd. to his Dictionary.

God, of primitive history, poetry, and prophecy, which prepared men for Christianity. Its literature remains to this day an ever fresh fountain of popular instruction and devotion.

The Greek abounds in wealth, vitality, elasticity, and beauty; and hence it became the organ not only of every branch of ancient classical science and art, but also of the eternal truths of Christianity.

The Latin embodies the commanding power, dignity and majesty of the old Roman people which conquered the world by the sword and organized it by law. It ruled the literature of Europe long after the downfall of the Western empire and became the fruitful mother of all Romanic languages. It is still and will remain the official organ of the Roman Church.

Of the Romanic languages again, each has its peculiar merit and beauty.

The Italian, spoken by an imaginative, excitable, art-loving people, in a warm climate, under serene skies, sounds like music itself, and glows with all the fire of passion. "It melts like kisses from a woman's mouth."

The Spanish, by its pathos and grandezza, reminds us of the days of Castilian chivalry.

The French is the medium of travel, fashion, and diplomacy on the Continent of Europe, and expresses the clearness, directness, and precision, the polished ease and elegance, the sprightly vigor, the mercurial vivacity, and martial fire, but also the lightness and fickleness of the French, whom one of their most philosophic writers, M. de Tocqueville, characterizes as at once "the most brilliant and the most dangerous nation of Europe."

The German language, in native strength, fullness, depth, and flexibility, as also in the leavening influence of its literature upon the progress of knowledge, strongly resembles the ancient Greek, and is best adapted for the mining operations of thought, for every kind of speculative and scientific research and every form of poetry, but far less for business, commerce, political life, forensic and parliamentary eloquence, than either the French or the English.

1 "Lingua Toscana in boca Romana e la bellissima lingua del mondo."

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE-GRIMM'S JUDGMENT.

The character of the English language cannot be better expressed than in the words of Professor Jacob Grimm, the author of the most learned German grammar and, jointly with his brother, of the best German dictionary.

"Among all the modern languages," he says, "" none has, by giving up and confounding all the laws of sound, and by cutting off nearly all the inflexions, acquired greater strength and vigor than the English. Its fullness of free middle sounds which cannot be taught, but only learned, is the cause of an essential force of expression such as perhaps never stood at the command of any other language of men. Its entire highly intellectual and wonderfully happy structure and development are the result of a surprisingly intimate marriage of the two noblest languages in modern Europe, the Germanic and the Romance; the former (as is well known) supplying in far larger proportion the material groundwork, the latter the intellectual conceptions. As to wealth, intellectuality, and closeness of structure, none of all the living languages can be compared with it. In truth, the English language, which by no mere accident has produced and upborne the greatest and most commanding poet of modern times as distinguished from the ancient classics-I can, of course, only mean Shakespeare-may with full propriety be called a world-language; and like the English people it seems destined hereafter to prevail even more extensively than at present in all the ends of the earth.”

Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache, Berlin, 1852, p. 50: Keine unter allen neueren Sprachen hat gerade durch das Aufgeben und Zerrütten aller Lautgesetze, durch den Wegfall beinahe sämmtlicher Flexionen eine grössere Kraft und Stärke empfangen, als die englische, und von ihrer nicht einmal lehrbaren, nur lernbaren Fülle freier Mitteltöne ist eine wesentliche Gewalt des Ausdruckes abhängig geworden, wie sie vielleicht noch nie einer menschlichen Zunge zu Gebote stand. Ihre ganze, überaus geistige, wunderbar geglückte Anlage und Durchbildung war hervorgegangen aus einer überraschenden Vermählung der beiden edelsten Sprachen des späteren Europas, der germanischen und romanischen, und bekannt ist, wie im Englischen sich beide zu einander verhalten, indem jene bei weitem die sinnliche Grundlage hergab, diese die geistigen Begriffe zuführte. An Reichthum, Vernunft und gedrängter Fuge lässt sich keine aller noch lebenden Sprachen ihr an die Seite setzen. Ja die englische Sprache, von der nicht umsonst der grösste und

This remarkable eulogy on the language of Great Britain and North America has the more weight as it comes from a foreign scholar who is not blinded by national prejudice and vanity, and is universally acknowledged to be one of the first masters of the entire field of Teutonic philology and literature. I shall choose it as the text of my dissertation.

THE COMPOSITE CHARACTER OF THE ENGLISH RACE AND LANGUAGE.

The origin, growth and material of the English language clearly indicate its comprehensive destiny. The character and history of the nation and of the language singularly correspond in this case. Every stage in the progress of the one forms an epoch for the other. Every invasion of England left its permanent trace in the language and enriched its power and capacity. The English language contains the fossil poetry, philosophy, and history of the English people. The changes and enrichments of the language have been brought about by the irresistible force of time and custom, and by the multiform pursuits, the migratory habits, and universal trade of the English race, but most of all by the successive immigrations of foreigners.

It is well known that the English people are not a homogeneous race, but an organic mixture of different national elements. So also their language derived its material from many sources, like a mighty river in its majestic flow through fertile valleys to the boundless sea. Almost every language of Europe, besides some of Asia, Africa and America, has furnished its contribution.

Professor Skeat distributes the English words under the following heads: English (i e., Anglo-Saxon and Middle English of the earlier period), Old Low German, Low German, Dutch, Scandinavian, German, French from German, Teutonic (in a general sense), Celtic, Romanic Languages (including Italian, überlegenste Dichter der neuen Zeit, im Gegensatz zur classischen alten Poesieich kann natürlich nur Shakespeare meinen—gezeugt und getragen worden ist, sie darf mit vollem Rechte eine Weltsprache heissen und scheint gleich dem englischen Volke ausersehen, künftig noch in höherem Masse an allen Enden der Erde zu walten."

French, Spanish and Portuguese), Latin, French from Latin, French from Low Latin, Provençal from Latin, Italian from Latin, Spanish from Latin, Portuguese from Latin, Low Latin, Greek, French from Latin from Greek, Slavonic, Lithuanian, Asiatic Aryan Languages (Persian, Sanskrit), European nonAryan Languages, Semitic Languages (Hebrew, Arabic), Hindustani, Malay, African Languages, American Languages, and Hybrid Words (made up from two different languages).1

The two principal sources are the German, or Anglo-Saxon, and the Latin, or Norman-French; the other elements are small side-currents which have enriched to a greater or less extent almost every other civilized language of modern Europe.

THE PROPORTION OF SAXON, LATIN, AND OTHER ELEMENTS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

The authorities which I have consulted differ in their estimates of the proportion of these various elements which enter into the English language. Dr. R. G. Latham, the late distinguished professor of the English language and literature in the University College of London, supposes that of forty thousand English words thirty thousand are Anglo-Saxon, five thousand AngloNorman, one hundred Celtic, sixty Latin, fifty Scandinavian, and the rest miscellaneous. The number of words of direct Latin origin seems here considerably understated.

2

Archbishop Richard Chenevix Trench estimates that of a hundred parts of the English language sixty are Saxon, thirty Latin and French, five Greek, and the remaining five from all other sources which have contributed to its stock.3

This is probably correct as an average estimate. But we must make a material distinction between the language of the dictionary or the language at rest and the language in actual use or the language in motion. The latter is more predominantly Saxon than the former.

The entire vocabulary of the English language as found in the

Etymol. Dict., pp. 747-771.

2 A Handbook of the English Grammar (American ed., New York, 1852), pp. 62, 63. Comp. Preface to his enlarged ed. of Johnson's Dictionary. English Past and Present (New York ed., 1855), p. 19.