respects they are subjected. The imperative mood of the verb, and the vocative case of the noun substantive, are alone exempted from those diminutive attendants, and may be placed without obstacle at the head of a sentence. A question relating either to present or past time may also advance the verb to the first post. These are all forms of discourse, which generally imply a degree of excitement in the feelings of the speaker; and in these the modifications of our language afford him great facilities for communicating that excitement to his hearers.

Thus much has been said upon the grounds of election for the first word in the sentence. The next word in point of importance, as respects the effect of arrangement, is the last. The same analogies apply to the practice of all the arts. The arguments of an oration, the words of a sentence, and the force of an army, should all be marshalled on one and the same principle. The stations of honor and distinction are the first and the last.

The whole structure of the sentence must in a considerable degree be regulated with reference to these two words. The inversion sometimes reverses the whole order of the sentence, and sometimes occasions a necessary change of only two or three words. The Latin construction, as I have

before observed, delights in closing the sentence with the verb; a modification well adapted to engage the attention of the hearer, by suspending to the last moment the action, generally the essence of the thought.

The internal arrangement of words, between the commencement and the close, must be governed by the rules of grammar, by the principles of perspicuity, and by the instinct of the ear. The concords of the substantive and adjective, not being marked, as in the classic languages, by similar terminations, must generally be denoted by the juxtaposition of the words. The minor parts of speech must discover by their proximity the noun or verb, to which they belong; and the varieties of their position may be selected for the purpose of giving either precision to the sense or harmony to

the sound.

To the harmony of sound we must also recur for the directions necessary or proper concerning those parts of composition, termed juncture and number; the consideration of which will be resumed at a future day.

LECTURE XXVIII.

JUNCTURE. NUMBER.

and

IN all our inquiries concerning the formation progress of languages among mankind, the spirit of true philosophy, no less than the doctrines of our religion, requires, that we should resort to the facts recorded in the sacred scriptures, in order to account for many of the phenomena, which we all witness. Whenever we attempt to trace the origin of speech, we shall find it utterly impossible to account in any rational manner for the system of articulation, by which human beings convey their thoughts to one another, and for the varieties in the modification of that system, displayed by the various original diversities of the families of men, without reference to the power of speech, first imparted by the Creator

to our original ancestor, and to that miraculous confusion of speech, which scattered abroad upon the earth the builders of Babel.

After that period we are expressly told,* that the islands of the gentiles were divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations, by the descendants from Japhet, the third son of Noah.

From that time we are to consider the formation of the languages spoken in modern Europe to have commenced; and one of the most remarkable circumstances, which here commands our attention, is the difference in the facility of articulation between the primitive languages, which were formed in the southern, and those which arose in the northern regions of Europe. It has been sufficiently ascertained, that in both cases the primitive words are very few in number, and are all monosyllables. The difference between them seems to have arisen chiefly from the different proportions of consonants and of vowels, which they employed in this first stage of formation of the respective languages. The roots, or primitive words, are almost universally nouns; and generally substantives, in the northern tongues; but in the Greek language

• Gen. x. 5.

there appear to have been a small number of primitive verbs. They were formed altogether by a combination of vowels. The termination was uniformly settled upon the same vowel, w. The commencement was varied through all the other vowels, a, ε, 1, 0, and v; and by the introduction of one of the eleven consonants, originally used by the Greeks, between the variable vowel at the beginning and the permanent vowel at the end, a number of primitive words was provided, which was again increased by prefixing the consonant before the two vowels, and still further enlarged by the use of two consonants, the one prefixed, and the other between the vowels. From the first of these combinations was formed the words aw, εw, sw, ow, and uw. From the second came αγω, ασω, ακα, αλω, αμω ; and the others form. ed by placing the consonant between the two vowels. The prefixing of the consonant gave another series of words; and when the letters were increased to four by the addition of the second consonant, as in γανω, δεκω, καλω, λαβω, πέρω, and the like, they furnished a fund sufficiently copious for a foundation, upon which the whole superstructure of the Greek verb, with all its appendages, was erected.