is a language with hands. Here at last is a people who do not fly along on the wings of verbal suggestion, but have true hands and fingers, and an edged brain, and shape speech with art to suit their ever active thought. In this respect also the English differs from the Anglo-Saxon.

The observer might notice a third fact about the new language; it ceases to compound its words. The Saxon compounded freely like the German, and the rejection of the habit is the strongest mark of the despotic dominance of the analytic spirit in English. For it is the desire of all thinkers, especially of all poets, and orators, to fix the permanent stamp of their own thought upon every object they speak of. A compound is such a stamp. But the same cause which prevents our new language from using permanent indefinite terminations for inflections, prevents also the formation of new permanent compounds. This distinguishing mind, ever alert, chooses to say, each time it speaks, exactly what it then and there wishes to say. It will not take up an indefinite general descriptive, nor will it mix in one what it knows to be two, and means to keep two. It had rather split the one, than glue the two. In this radical point the English differs from the Saxon, and agrees with the Norman.

The observer might notice a fourth fact in regard to the new language. It uses a new gamut of sounds. There is a stable adjustment of mind and vocal organs in the Arian races, so that an idea naturally expresses itself every where by the use of the same organs. The consonants of the root syllables, and the relational consonants, remain letters of the same organ through all ages of all languages of the Arian stock. But there are smooth, middle and rough letters of each organ. New speech begins with the vigorous, the broad, and loud, and strong, and rough, and gradually becomes more refined and attenuated. The consonants of any radical sound change. The vowels change also. Diphthongs attenuate into vowels; the broad sounds flatten; the harsh sounds soften; the strong sounds weaken; all runs into whispers and is (ees). The Greek, for example, which must have run and roared with every sonorous variety of musical utterance in the time of Homer, has in

sensibly thinned away, until the modern Greek has nothing but ee (i) to give us for three of the vowels and three of the diphthongs of the written tongue. The new life and vigor of the English shows itself in reversing this course of attenuation. It gives the weak strength; the flat, roundness; makes the thin vowels broad; delights in new and sonorous diphthongs, and decisive strong consonants, nor does it fear a masculine harshness. It has the phonology of a vigorous youth.

It has moreover a peculiar gamut of vowels. It took up the Anglo-Saxon sounds for the objects of nature, and of home, and the heart; it took up the Norman sounds for artificial manners; but in adjusting them to each other, so as to make a scale of sounds, each was varied by the new instrument which sounded them the vocal organs of the Englishman; and inspired with a new quality and tone, to render them expressive of the new soul which was speaking, in them, the vital spirit of the English race. The result has been strongly stated by Grimm. He says that in the richness and fulness of its free middle tones, it has a real power of expression, such as perhaps no other human speech could ever command. He adds, that these tones cannot be taught-they may be caught.* The separate sounds of single words may be caught, but to speak English is one of the fine arts. The same letters in different words the same words in different connections, vary freely by shades of tone so delicate, that no notation could give themno teacher could repeat them as a matter of artifice, without the life and soul to inspire them. To read a page of Milton to the height of the great argument, or a scene of Shakspeare, with its proper harmony and spirit, demands a happy genius and organization, and could never be taught or caught. While the capacities of the language for harmonious and powerful expression are not used to the full by either of these mighty masters of it. It has combinations of sound grander than ever rolled through the mind of Milton; more awful than the mad gasps of Lear; sweeter than the sighs of Desdemona; more stirring than the speech of Antony; sadder than the plaints of Hamlet; merrier than the mocks of Falstaff.

* "Nicht einmal lehrbaren, nur lernbaren." Ursprung der Sprache, p. 50.

Our observer might perceive, in the fifth place, that the syntax of the new language was as new as its etymology and phonology, and a further expression of the same analytic spirit. It flings away all that is complex and artificial in languages, like the Latin and Saxon, where sentences are made by an adjustment of final sounds, where every word has its mortise or tenon, and a whole sentence is dovetailed, so that speaking is like putting a Chinese puzzle together, or a perpetual game of dominos. The syntax turns on the thought, not on the sounds, and in its general laws is a pure logic carried to the limits of the most refined analysis. No language has ever been spoken where words did the reason so much and obstruct it so little; so little impose their laws on thought and wrest reason from its natural processes. These remarks apply only to the general laws of syntax.

For our observer who is watching the growth of the new language, will, in the sixth place, see gradually taking their places in it, idiom after idiom of every variety and shade of structure, the ganglions of the linguistic body. This is the field where the free will of the individual man does its freest work in language. In its general laws a language is the result of the relation between the general traits of a race and the nature in which they live; but free will disports itself in the idioms. These are the contributions which genius makes to its national tongue: genius, whose motions always hover on the verge of mystery, basks in idioms.

The inexplicable coils of words instinct with electrical life, which send a thrill to the people's heart no one knows how; hard knots of words where the soundest sense is tied up the tightest; touches of nature that make the whole world kin; leaps of thought which grammarians balk at; every means, simpler or more vivid than reason can command, which poetic genius, or patriotism, or any breathing or beaming of the free soul has found to convey thought or feeling; every form of speech which the linguistic sense of the people recognizes as a stroke of genius which it cannot willingly let die, adds to the stock of idioms, and to the peculiar treasures of a national language.

It is the glory of the English speech that its idioms speak for truth and freedom, and law and religion. It grew up in the midst of struggles for religion,-in the midst of the contests of freemen,-in the midst of a people fond of nature and home. Its idioms have been dyed in the blood of martyrs, or taken their festive colors in the secret heart of patriots or poets; they are tinted less in the colors of fancy than in the veritable hues of sky and cloud, wood and field, and ocean, wrought into unity of meaning under the solemn and earnest gaze of imagination.

We shall only mention further, in the seventh place, that the English language may be known as new by its stamp and flowering in literature.

A people do not come to consciousness until they have a classic language. Barbarians have feelings, instincts, sentiments, but not reflections or ideas to be the basis of literature; the people is still unorganized, public spirit is still to be born. As soon as it is born, it will make itself heard in a speech which is then and there classic. Now, to use our old figure of the birth of an animal, the first organ that is seen in the embryo is the heart. Some book, written or unwritten, must be the heart of a classic language. Homer was the heart of the Greek language; the laws and ballads of Rome, the heart of the Latin. The Bible was the heart of the English.

We yield to no one in love for Homer. College recollections of it still hallow the memory of him whose enthusiasm gave life to the antique lines. We are told that tropical fruits must be eaten under the trees to know their proper taste; but I am sure that when our Greek Professor visited the classic shores of the Mediterranean, neither orange, nor date, nor olive, gained in flavor, as did the songs of Homer. Years ago, while fresh from this bracing air, stricken by sickness, with the heart of an exile, I spent solitary months beneath the palm trees under the tropical sun, on the beach of a tropical sea. Day by day as I walked the beach, I heard again the song which Homer sang; and it gleamed and flashed with a new light, as I gazed on the strange brilliancy of that tropical sea and sky; and it rippled, and ran, and roared with new music,

as I listened to that many-voiced sea. A new love and sympathy for this wondrous song grew up in my mind. 'It seemed the very echo of nature from the seat where beauty and music sit enthroned in the heart of genius. It is worthy to be the heart of the language of Greece. But the Bible was the heart of the English.

The laws and ballads of Rome (the heart of the Latin language) have been stronger food for heroes than the hearts of lions. The trumpet blast which rings through the pages of Livy and Plutarch has roused the heroism of all succeeding generations. Here are the stories of heroes whom Shakspeare rejoiced in more than in all the great names of Greece. Here are the heroes whose trophies gave the old knights of France no sleep,-who inspired the men and women of the first Revolution, when Madame Roland carried Plutarch's Lives to church, and wept that she was not a Roman. This has been called the Bible of France, and it is worthy to be the heart of its courtly language.

A thousand

But our Bible was the heart of the English. years this book had been waiting the advent of the English race. As in the geological eras, so in the history of man, in the progress of redemption, advance is not in the continual development of a single race. Singularly developed individuals of a race give promise of a higher type; a new race. springs up and realizes the type, while the old race decays. To the Jews, for example, the Christian Apostles came as the harbingers of a new type. The new race came, but not from the Jewish or other Shemitic stock. A new and different race were to embody the advancing ideal, while the Shemitic stock, having borne its flower and fruit, stands barren and decaying, as if exhausted by the ripening of such a fruit. In the English at last came the race which was to be the race of the Bible.

It was in no spirit of scholarship or literary enthusiasm that the English Bible was made. The Saxon race had received Christianity with an intensity of feeling like their old Berserker madness. Not Dante had such appalling visions of hell, or such rapt musings of heaven. Wyckliffe and his fellows wrote