ment of thought." In those fine days, "the good, the evil, the beautiful, the ugly, the mediocre even, will be equally interesting." Then will come that "high, placid, philosophic state, when, having passed the sphere of dispute and contradiction, it comes at last, as they used to say, to rest in God."

Such are the fine things he tells us about, without taking the trouble of supporting them by the slightest proof. As to the leading position, that morality is to be kept apart from all positive and special doctrines, appeal is sometimes made to the authority of Kant. But as the baggage of the sage of Königsberg, after the German fashion, was a great deal too heavy to be transported across the Seine, faith in immortality and faith in God have been dropped on the way. And then, all this is given to the public under the title, Essays in Morals. We confess that we should like to have had a glimpse of the face of the author, when he hit upon so appropriate a title to his volume; it was undoubtedly lighted up with a very "refined smile."

ART. VIII. -MARSH ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

BY REV. F. A. ADAMS, ORANGE, N. J.

Lectures on the English Language. By GEORGE P. MARSH. New-York: Charles Scribner. 1860. Pp. 697.

THIS Volume contains thirty Lectures, delivered in the winter of 1858 and 1859, as a part of the Post-Graduate course of Instruction recently provided in Columbia College.

The subjects discussed are: the sources and history of the English Language; its present condition; its undeveloped resources, and its prospects.

The Lectures are general in their character. They were not written for philological students, but for young men fresh from college, and others who, from a love of study, would be led to

listen to them or read them; and from the necessary limitations of a single course of readings, they are only introductory.

The author has faithfully observed the restrictions imposed by this general aim, avoiding all useless discussions, and even useful ones, when unsuited to his audience, when they would lead him into anthropology or psychology, and so away from the intelligence of his hearers. This reserve apparently costs him nothing, for his thorough culture proves adequate to producing ripe and abundant fruits from his limited field.

The publication of these Lectures is a timely service. The causes which have operated to give to the Latin and the Greek the almost exclusive domain of language in the course of liberal study are losing their preponderating power. Among the new studies that are claiming increasing attention, the modern languages, and, first of all, our own, holds an important place. The number of students is already large who will gladly ac. cept aid to a more thorough knowledge of the English language than was possible in former times, when almost all that was known of it was through its use in translating the Latin and the Greek. It lies, too, in the nature of the case, that our best help in this study will, for the present, come from those who, to the general qualification of scholarship, shall add the special endowment of an intimate knowledge of our language in its Gothic or Saxon sources. Among the scholars who are fitted to afford this special help, the author of these Lectures has long held a distinguished place. And his manner of working in the case before us is worthy of all praise. While he is wisely reticent where nothing to the purpose can be said, he has the instinct to say with the heartiest will whatever the matter in hand seems to demand. The book has not only much learning, but a good deal of individual character-animosity, we would say, saving the modern damaging association, and holding the word to its original meaning. The reader who accepts the guidance, and this will almost always be safe, will know whither he is bound, and will reach the point without needless delay, while he who has the boldness to deny, is left in no doubt what it is that he is denying. The acknowledgment of

merit, and the praise of it where it is deserved in the labors of others, is hearty and unfailing.

Over and above the thorough excellence of these Lectures as a whole, we would specify several points as specially inviting attention. These are, the Etymological Proportions of the English Language; English as affected by the art of Printing; Orthoëpical Changes; the English Bible; and Corruptions of English. These topics are discussed with a scholarship, skill and completeness that we have not seen approached elsewhere in the treatment of the same subject.

Leaving the student of the English language to find for himself the many important helps which this book will afford, we proceed to notice a few points on which the views of the author will probably invite some dissent.

The first is a point in phonology. "Rask," says our author, critically one of the most eminent of modern philologists, and a discriminating phonologist, fancied that he could detect, what no Englishman or American ever did, a difference between the pronunciation of our two English words, pale, pallid, and pail, a water-bucket."

Now it is easy to make a denial like this, and if it were only meant that, in ordinary use, the difference in the sound of these two words is not apparent, or that many persons could not detect it, or that the author, speaking for himself alone, could not detect it, it might all be quite true. But standing as it does in a critical essay on the topic Phonology, where the nicer shades of sound demand recognition, it is reckless in tone and contrary to fact.

Instead of no Englishman or American ever detecting a difference of sound in these two words, the fact is, that just as many detect it as have cultivated their ear to apprehend the more subtil distinctions of vocal sound. There is a difference in the length of the vowel-sound, there is a difference in the form of the vowel-sound, and a difference in the proportion in which the two elements, the initial and the vanishing, enter into the sound, and, finally, there is a difference in the position of the organs. We might add, speaking from the dynamic

point of view, that there is a reason in the motion of the utterance why there should be a difference in the sounds. The words here adduced are only specimens of a considerable class in the English language.

We observe that the author, in comparing the German and the Italian languages, explains the greater fatigue caused by reading or speaking the latter by its fuller grammatical inflexions. We think he has missed the most important reason, which is, the muscular stress required in Italian in uttering the double consonants which are brought by phonetic attraction under one organ. When the Latin pectus is changed to petto, and factum to fatto, the vocal organs have fewer changes to make; but this gain is more than counterbalanced by the greater muscular effort necessary to pronounce the double consonant. The English words which have two consonants like the above, furnish no true indication of the pronunciation in Italian. A native of Italy, guided by the eye alone, would pronounce the words better, letter, setter, with twice the muscular stress on the double consonant which we employ, and, conversely, the Englishman and the American naturally pronounce the Italian words with too little stress on the double consonants, and, from the same cause, estimate their exhaustive power too low.

The author compares at some length a homogeneous with a composite language, and draws the conclusion that a language of the latter class has important advantages in the greater number of its synonymous words and the greater selectness of association with its synonymous roots, each of which is restricted to a particular department of thought. Thus the English has advantages over the German, whose vocabulary has grown up from its own roots, and whose words must therefore bear in their radical part the taint of whatever low use any words from the same root have submitted to; while the English, drawing its vocabulary from two sources, uses the words from the Latin and the French for dignified subjects, for history, politics and society; and those from the Saxon for the lower, home-felt wants of common life.

Now if the case were just as here stated, the advantages

would not be all on one side. It is well for a language to have the words that suggest the higher objects and thoughts enlivened by something that is home-like and actual in the lowest experience. The Divine wisdom has made the body so that the blood of every member shall flow through them all; and when a language, the spiritual organism of a people's life, shall show a fact completely analogous to this, that people is, through the Divine goodness, most highly furnished for the manifestation of its moral and spiritual life. Where this is not the case, there is danger that the life of a people will fall asun-, der, and those whose interest it is to use language to conceal thought, will find utterance for themselves in some lofty emptiness hardly better than the language of French diplomacy; and the rest, cut off from communion with all higher thought, will grovel in a speech grown altogether base. The English races have escaped this disaster to their life not through the good fortune of their language, but in spite of its disadvantages, by the inspiration of the great truths of the Reformation and the political struggles of past times.

But looking for a moment to the incidental disadvantages of a homogeneous language, where the same root does duty in all words, high and low, and so the high may seem in danger of losing something of their prestige from this association, it should be borne in mind, that in proportion as the association is extensive, the bond becomes light. As a clergyman, because he belongs to the whole of humanity, can go through all ranks and acquire no social taint from his companionship with the lowest, so these true human roots of language have the freedom of the whole realm of life and thought, and suffer no debasement by the lowliest service. Even in the English language, where the association is much more strict, a word will instantly divest itself of all that is unseemly in its antecedents, when called by adequate authority to do service in a higher sphere. A word that seems fastened to the narrowest rustic use, suggestive only of bullocks and him that handleth the goad, asserts at once its freedom when summoned by a master to an unwonted service; it casts off the exuviæ of the clown, and consorts with princes like one to the manner born.