;·

time, spring, summer, fall, winter, day, night, morning, evening, noon, midnight, year, month, week; the phenomena of nature, light, heat, cold, frost, rain, snow, hail, sleet, thunder, storm, wind, lightning; the various parts of our habitable globe, sea, land, wood, stream, hill, dale; the produce of the earth, wheat, rye, barley, corn, oats, straw, hay, beer; woods and forests, and the trees of which they consist, oaks, birches, beeches, elms, ashes; the animal creation, lamb, sheep, goat, kid, ox, cow, steer, heifer, calf, swine,* dog, hound, cat, horse, mare, cock, hen, chicken, dove, bear, boar, wolf, fox, hart, stag, doe, deer, hare; these all are Germanic words, and are just the words which form the largest part of the conversation of every-day life. But further, from the same source are derived all the terms which represent the positions and motions of animated beings, to sit, stand, lie, run, walk, leap, stagger, slip, slide, stride, glide, yawn, gape, thrust, fly, swim, creep, crawl, spring. From Germany we have received all the words which express the most endearing and intimate relations, and which are therefore enshrined in the hearts of the people; father, mother, husband, wife, brother, sister, son, daughter, child, bride, home, kindred, friend, hearth, roof, fireside, love, hope, sorrow, fear, smile, laugh, sigh, blush. Germanic is the language of the merchant, the farmer, the seaman ; Germanic are almost all our proverbs and popular sayings; Germanic the language of all strong emotions, of hatred and contempt, of anger and love. Of French extraction, on the other hand, are the expressions of science, of the learned professions, and of fashionable society; hence it comes, that general terms are French, while all the individuals comprised under them are Saxon; motion is French, but to go, walk, ride, drive, run, lie, stride, are Saxon; sound is French, but buzz, hum, clash, splash, hiss, are Saxon; color is French, but white, black, green, yellow, blue, red, brown, are Saxon; member and organ are French, but ear, eye, hand, foot, lip, mouth, hair, finger, are Saxon; animal is French, but man, ox, cow, sheep, calf, dog, cat, are Saxon; number is French, but every single number, except million, is of Saxon origin. All the terms of the law, all the expressions referring to ju

* But when they were taken from the woods and fields, and had the honor of appearing upon the tables of the Norman nobility, they became French, as beef, veal, mutton, pork, venison.

dicial proceedings, parliament, session, jury, judge, advocate, plead, defend, condemn, forfeit, and the whole vocabulary of the physician, are of Romance extraction. In fine, when we would be forcible, energetic, easily understood, we should seek for Germanic words; when we would be learned, refined, polite, we should express ourselves in those which are borrowed from the French. The English language furnishes many examples of synonymes, and it will be found to be a general rule, that the Germanic word is forcible, but vulgar, the French less expressive, but better adapted to ears polite; such, for instance, are to sweat and to perspire, to be drunk and to be intoxicated.

We have thus given a brief outline of the history of the English language; it has necessarily been so brief that it could not be otherwise than defective. We will conclude, as we commenced, with expressing a hope that the publication which has called forth our remarks will exert an influence in directing the attention of the public to the literature of our forefathers, and more especially in encouraging the study of the Anglo-Saxon language, the long and strange neglect of which we cannot but regard as a disgrace to England, and in a less degree to this country. In England, as we have already remarked, great efforts are now making to recover the lost ground, and we would fain be permitted to hope, that in this, as in every thing else that is good and useful, we shall be ready to compete with her in honorable rivalry. "The literature of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers may be regarded as a creditable feature of our national history, and as something of which we might justly be proud, if we did not allow ourselves to remain in such ignorance of it."

ART. III.The Crescent and the Cross; or Romance and Realities of Eastern Travel. By ELIOT WARBURTON, Esq. New York: Wiley & Putnan. 1845.

SINCE the day when the Hebrew, grown up from the small beginnings of Joseph and his brethren to be a terror to the powerful people of the Pharaohs, went out from the

land of Egypt, its soil has not ceased to be the theatre of deeds as bold as those that marked the career and formed the fame of the great lawgiver of Israel, and as dark as the doom from which a homeless people were rescued by the angry waves of an avenging sea. Her river was the nucleus of the only nationality which has survived the dreary centuries that immediately followed the flood, and on its banks have shone, in never-ceasing succession, Pharaoh and Ptolemy, king and emperor, consul and satrap, caliph and pasha, Napoleon and sultan. The Pharaohs have been laid in the pyramids or the catacombs, and the Ptolemies are with them. The names of most of the places that knew them are forgotten. The Nile in elder days had brought its rich tribute from the highlands of the south; the revenues of the granary of the world gleamed in the coffers of its queen; pearls melted in the wine-cup of the foe of Cicero. The master of half the world was at the feet of the mistress of Egypt, his victorious captive. Her beauty had done its work, and bound to her car the first of Cæsar's iron captains; it wooed the venom of the asp, and, passing from earth, won for its mistress an apotheosis in the poetry of that clime whose sons are gazing from out an isle of the Atlantic upon the country of Cleopatra, and already in their strong will are moulding it into the tributary thoroughfare to their empire in the East. The leading of the world was staked at Actium. The queen of Egypt had favored the vanquished rival; her love, burning under the same sun that now looks fiercely down on the intruding Frank, was the fatal gift that at once crowned his fame and clouded his career. At the hour when his strength was broken, her country became a fraction of that power whose capital on the seven hills of the Tiber gave laws to a realm coextensive with the known earth; and the clime that Rome bid furnish corn to her teeming millions is now in name a province of the empire founded by the successors of that Arabian prophet who traced, amid the mouldering temples of the religion of Numa, the foundations of a faith itself now gray with years.

Egypt is in name a province of the Ottoman empire. And in saying that it is so but in name, that, nominally a dependency of the Porte, it is actually at this hour the foremost nation that musters its forces under the crescent, that within the lifetime of one man it has arisen from provin

cial insignificance to alarm by its formidable progress the nations of Europe, we have but to pronounce in explanation the name of Mehemet Ali.

In all the elements of national power and greatness, in the development of agricultural resources, in the improvement of towns, in the refinements of social life, in the dissemination among the people of literature and science and arts, the movements of Egypt since the days of her beautiful queen have been but stages in the march of degradation. Her present ruler is involved in this reproach, for her peasant was once the proprietor of the soil he tilled. Whatever was the tenure, whatever were the exactions of government, the peasant, watching tremblingly the rising of the river which he calls the sea, knew that it would fertilize earth that he could deem his own. But the ruler rose up one day and uttered the word that he was the owner of the land of Egypt; that he was lord of the country, and that its soil was his; and from that moment the Fellah became a mere adjunct of the glebe he wrought upon.

The character of a people sinking daily, while their country is taking long strides in power and consideration, is a spectacle that contrasts sharply with the tendencies of the age; and one may well be curious respecting the causes of such a result. Arithmetic will aid us but little; figures that are so eloquent with us give but little information about the East; political economy is there at fault. One inquirer will be satisfied when he is told, "So it is in the East"; another will seek to solve the problem by an examination of Oriental institutions. But we cannot institute such an inquiry, nor attempt to delineate these institutions here. Could the subject be pictured, our limits are too narrow for so vast a painting, and we must rest content with offering an outline sketch of the figure in the foreground.

When the present ruler of Egypt, sent by the governor of his native province to act with his contingent against the French, landed with his three hundred Albanians on her shores, he found the soldiers whom he was to join, and who formed her army, were a mutinous rabble, whose tactics were in no respect unlike those of the Arab hordes who prowled in the deserts around them. A set of disorderly ragamuffins, under the squeaking discord of Moorish fifes, no two dressed alike, each bearing a pipe while a servant bore

his gun, formed altogether an array that would have shamed a village muster. Soldiers smoked, sang, or shouted in the ranks, if ranks those groups of stragglers could be called, who moved just as they pleased, and obeyed such orders as they saw fit. If the state of the army in such climes is a decisive sign of the condition of the country, it was in this instance neither the darkest nor the only indication of her weakness. Her finances were exhausted by the mismanage ment and wastefulness of agents, who, under one title or another, exercised the authority of the sultan, and, so far from relaxing their hold upon a dollar of the revenues they ground from the wretches under them, had the audacity to demand from Constantinople funds to build and repair public works in the country they pillaged. The rapacity of the ruler for the time being, whose exactions exceeded even the proverbial rapacity of military rule, was not the only drain upon the resources of the country. The corps of Mamelukes alone absorbed a sum that would be deemed a large appropriation for any department of our federal administration. Their annual extortions amounted to no less a sum than seven millions. The government was but a succession of different phases of anarchy, whose mutations none could foresee. The cry of slaughter at any hour might resound through the land, and the people heard with stupid indifference that the career of their late ruler had ended in flight or death. To-day the Mamelukes, whose horsemanship formed a bond of sympathy between them and their allies, the Bedawee Arabs, were masters of the capital and the country. Their splendid apparel and magnificent trappings gleamed in the courts of a victorious chief. The night brought tumult; scimetars flashed, and on the morrow some Turk held mastery, and arrogated to himself the pashalic of Egypt. Anon, Albanian soldiers, in whose constitution a craving for butchery seems innate, mutinied for pay or from the love of mutiny, and the government was again overturned, and a favorite chieftain made the disposer of viceregal power. Private property was his who held it by the right of possession and a strong sword. The marine of Egypt was a forgotten word. Commerce had died out on the shores of the country that once furnished the richest traffic of the world; and the city that bore the name of the Macedonian conqueror, the happy creation of his genius, and the emporium of the commerce of his time, the