or other languages, or from the classical languages, which are, in common parlance, synonymous with words derived from the Anglo-Saxon, so that a writer may have his choice whether to use the Romanic or the Gothic elements. Thus it has happened that, from the composite character of the language as well as from its natural growth with the growth of knowledge, there are abundant materials for every species of writing. It is said by DE PAW that no book can be translated into the Algonquin or the Brazilian languages, nor even into the Mexican or Peruvian, solely from their want of words. On the other hand, the vocabulary of the English language is perhaps as copious as any other. It contains, in WEBSTER's and WORCES TER's dictionaries, something like one hundred thousand words. THE NUMBER OF ANGLO-SAXON WORDS. § 100. Whether we take into view the number or the sorts of words, the Anglo-Saxon is less an element than the mothertongue of the English. In the English language there are as many as twenty-three thousand words of Anglo-Saxon origin. From an examination of passages from the Bible, Shakspeare, Milton, Cowley, Thomson, Addison, Spenser, Locke, Pope, Young, Gibbon, Johnson, it appears that in one thousand four hundred and ninety-two words in sentences taken from these authors, there are only two hundred not Saxon. Upon this basis of calculation, it appears that four fifths of the words in actual use are of Anglo-Saxon origin. See § 108. THE KIND OF ANGLO-SAXON WORDS. § 101. The names of the greater part of the objects of nature; as, sun, moon, stars, day, light, heat; all those words which express vividly bodily action; as, to sit, to stand, to stagger; all those words which are expressive of the earliest and dearest connections; as, father, mother, brother, sister, are Anglo-Saxon. Moreover, all those words which have been earliest used, and which are invested with the strongest associations; most of those objects about which the practical reason is employed in common life; nearly all our national proverbs; a large proportion of the language of invective, humor, satire, and colloquial pleasantry, are Anglo-Saxon. While our most abstract and general terms are derived from the Latin, those which denote the special varieties of objects, qualities, and modes of action are derived from the Anglo-Saxon. Thus, color is Latin; but white, black, green, are Anglo-Saxon. Crime is Latin; but murder, theft, robbery, to lie, are Anglo-Saxon. THE EXPRESSIVENESS. § 102. From the last statement we can understand why the Saxon element is so much more expressive than the Latin part of the language. "Well-being arises from well-doing," is Saxon. "Felicity attends virtue," is Latin. How inferior in force is the latter! In the Saxon phrase, the parts or roots, being significant to our eyes and ears, throw the whole meaning into the compounds and derivatives, while the Latin words of the same. import, having their roots and elements in a foreign language, carry only a cold and conventional signification to an English ear. "In one of my early interviews with Robert Hall," says his biographer, "I used the term 'felicity' three or four times in rather quick succession. He asked me, 'Why do you say felicity? Happiness is a better word, more musical, and genuine English, coming from the Saxon.' 'Not more musical,' said I. Yes, more musical, and so are all words derived from the Saxon, generally. Listen, sir: My heart is smitten and withered like grass. There is plaintive music. Listen again, sir: Under the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice. There is cheerful music.' 'Yes, but rejoice is French.' 'True, but all the rest is Saxon; and rejoice is almost out of time with the other words. Listen again: Thou hast delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. All Saxon, sir, except delivered. I could think of the word tear till I wept.'" The word Gospel, in the Anglo-Saxon, was Godspel, that is, God's speech. The Saviour they called All-heal, that is, all health; the Scribes, boc-men, that is, book men; the Judgment, dome-settle, the settling of doom. By dropping words like these for the Latin equivalents, the language has evidently lost in expressiveness, whatever gain there may have been in other respects. Some of them might be advantageously restored. ENGLISH GRAMMAR AND THE ANGLO-SAXON. § 103. English Grammar is almost exclusively occupied with what is of Anglo-Saxon origin. The few inflections that we have are all Anglo-Saxon. The English genitive, the general mode of forming the plural of nouns, and the terminations by which we express the comparative and superlative of adjectives, er and est, the inflections of the pronouns and of the verbs, and the most frequent terminations of our adverbs, ly, are all AngloSaxon; so are the auxiliary verbs. THE STABILITY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. § 104. "Look at the English," says Halbertsma, "polluted by Danish and Norman conquests, distorted in its genuine and noble features by old and recent endeavors to mould it after the French fashion, invaded by a hostile force of Greek and Latin words, threatening by increasing hosts to overwhelm the indigenous terms. In these long contests against the combined might of so many forcible enemies, the language, it is true, has lost some of its power of inversion in the structure of sentences, the means of denoting the differences of gender, and the nice distinctions by inflection and termination; almost every word is attacked by the spasm of the accent and the drawing of conso nants to wrong positions, yet the old English principle is not overpowered. Trampled down by the ignoble feet of strangers, its spring retains force enough to restore itself; it lives and plays. through all the veins of the language; it impregnates the innumerable strangers entering into its dominions, and stains them with its color; not unlike the Greek, which, in taking up Oriental words, stripped them of their foreign costume, and bid them appear as native Greeks."-BOSWORTH's Dict., p. 39. THE ENGLISH THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE. § 105. The time was when the Latin was the universal language of the civilized world, so far as any language can be said to have been universal. From Rome, as a common centre, went forth the Christian religion in the Latin language, which was read and written by all learned scholars. More recently, the French has had a stronger claim than any other to be considered the universal language. It was more generally studied and spoken than any other in Europe. "Several foreigners," says Gibbon, "have seized the opportunity of speaking to Europe in the common dialect, the French; and Germany pleads the authority of Leibnitz and Frederick, of the first of her philosophers and the greatest of her kings." When Gibbon submitted to Hume a specimen of his intended history composed in French, he received a remarkable letter in reply. "Why," said Hume, "do you compose in French, and carry fagots into the wood, as Horace says in regard to Romans who wrote in Greek? I grant that you have a like motive to those Romans, and adopt a language much more generally diffused than your national tongue. But have you not remarked the fate of those two ancient tongues in following ages? The Latin, though less celebrated, and confined to more narrow limits, has, in some measure, outlived the Greek, and is now more generally understood by men of letters. Let the French, therefore, triumph in the present diffusion of their tongue. Our solid and increasing establishments in America, where we less dread the innovations of barbarians, promise a superior stability and duration to the English language."-T. WATTS, Lond. Phil. Soc., vol. ii., p. 211. How have the prospects of the English language brightened. since this prophecy of Hume was written, nearly a century ago! How are the evidences increasing of the final accomplishment of that prophecy in its becoming the universal language! It is calculated that, at the close of the present century, it will be spoken by at least one hundred and fifty millions of human beings. It should be added, that the English is a medium language, and is thus adapted to diffusion. In the Gothic family, it stands midway between the Teutonic and the Scandinavian branches, touching both, and, to some extent, reaching into both. A German or a Dane finds much in the English which exists in his own language. It unites by certain bonds of consanguinity, as no other language does, the Romanic with the Gothic languages. An Italian or a Frenchman finds a large class of words in the English which exists in his own language, though the basis of the English is Gothic. Thus it is adapted to spread among the races that speak those languages, both in Europe and America. What it has in common with these border languages, gives it power to replace what is peculiar to them, and thus to identify them with itself. PROSPECTS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. § 106. Having looked at the past history of the English language, and at its present character, we naturally inquire what will be its ultimate Destiny. Will it ever cease to be a living language, and, like Sanscrit and Greek, Latin and AngloSaxon, be studied by the scholar on the printed page, but not heard from the lips of the people? Will the nations who speak it ever be overrun by a race of barbarians, as were the Classical nations of antiquity? Will another Julius Cæsar, another Hengist and Horsa, another Danish Canute, another Norman Conqueror, in turn gain possession of England, and change the dynasty, the laws, and the language of the land? And, then, is the fate of the mother-country to be our own? Will a band of irresistible warriors come from the ocean to change our institutions, our laws, and our language? Will our mother-tongue become a dead language, and be found only in books? To this it may be replied, that the experience of the past is not to be the mould of the future. From the horoscope of the present a brighter destiny may be predicted. The application of the art of printing on the one hand, and popular education on the other, have so multiplied books and readers, that the language has become fixed not only in multitudes of standard works pubblished, but also in the minds of the people who read it and speak it. It will not, therefore, experience any great change, like that of the Latin into the Italian. The Anglo-Saxon race will not only keep their own institutions and their own language, but they will impress those institutions and that language upon others. Besides the natural growth of population, that grasping spirit, that love of conquest for which they have been distinguished ever since they traversed the German Ocean in their frail boats, pursuing plunder, will help to extend and perpetuate the English language. The love of religious conquest, as when the pious missionary goes forth under the banner of the cross; the love of literary conquest, as when the schoolmaster is |