thousand five hundred that had become obsolete since the days of the last commentator. Even the Chinese, spoken by a people proverbial for their strange but consistent opposition to all progress and change-even this most stationary of all known tongues, shows a marked difference between the modern forms and those used in monuments of earlier ages.

Language follows, in this respect, the universal law of all that the will of God has created and made subject to the mind of man. The same mind that first fashioned language, changes it also by its own unceasing activity, making it ever afterwards the outward witness, the faithful herald of all the events of its inner life.

These changes, it is true, are not perceived at once; they become visible only at the expiration of long periods, when they strike us in the works of some great master, which challenge admiration, and call for accurate and minute study. But they are not, on that account, arbitrary or accidental; they are progressive, and thus far, historical.

It is with the language of man not as with the language of nature around him, where changes are as regular as they are frequent; indefinitely numerous, but always returning in the same circle to first, immutable forms. One generation of plants is like the other, though each may progress from the least of all seeds to the tree in whose branches the fowls of the air come and lodge. The bird builds its nest to-day with as marvellous skill as of yore, but nowise more skilfully; the bee gathers golden honey now in the far-west of America, in the same exquisite chambers that she built in the sunny plains of the East in the days of the lion-slayer-but the skill of animals is not

progressive. It has no history; nor has their language. The nightingale sings yet the same sweet liquid notes that close the eye of day; but man does not speak now as he did before the Deluge; his words of to-day are not the words of yesterday. In nature we admire skill, instinctive skill; in man it is art, the work of a divine mind.

Language has, then, a history, and this history may possibly be traced back to primitive sources. The opinion is gaining ground, that all the various languages of the earth, emanating from one common source, extend, like the harmonious works of nature, in all directions, exhibiting not only great idioms, which may form a general language, unknown to human ear, but intelligible to Him who understands all, but also particular languages, diversified by provincial dialects, and still more minutely subdivided by peculiarities expressive, in each individual, of his character, and varying with the periods of his life and the changes of his mind.

This diversity is, however, restricted by the fact that man, notwithstanding the great variety of his fate, has, after all, much that is identic, or, at least, corresponding, and necessarily, in the most important points, common to all races. The history of all nations follows, in its great outlines, the same course of development and decay, and a similar rule is observed in the history of languages. This resemblance becomes the more striking, the more languages are contemplated simultaneously, and the points they have in common become more numerous, as we learn more of them. Their history, we thus find, has its principles, its periods, its common causes and common results.

But what kind of history is this? Is it the same as history

generally, or do we find that language, like all life-endowed, organic creation, has its own laws of life and its peculiar mode of development?

This question we cannot answer without some knowledge of the elements of language and of its nature.

CHAPTER I.

WHAT IS LANGUAGE?

First Connection between Thought and Word-Theories of the AncientsErroneous Theories-The Materialists-The Spiritualists-Language a Gift of the Creator.

LANGUAGE is commonly called the articulated expression of the inner life of the human mind. By the will of the Almighty the divine, immortal spirit of man dwells in a frail, earthy body. It seeks utterance for its thoughts, for whatever it conceives or produces, and this instinctive desire to find an outward form for each mental effort, is as inseparable from thought, as the body itself from the heaven-born soul. There are, of course, feelings and forebodings in the human mind, unutterable and too ethereal for human speech; but thought itself, as a clear conception, springs forth from the mind, already embodied in some tangible shape. Thus only can it emerge from the innermost recesses of the mind, thus only become intelligible to ourselves, though it has moreover to be uttered, in order to be comprehended by others. Nor is it in speech alone that the life of the mind manifests itself. The frail canvas and the unwieldy rock teem alike with the impress of the genius of man. A tear, a smile, a shrug, a glance-what indescribable witnesses, what

eloquent heralds are they not of a thousand thoughts, and wishes, and feelings! Soul can thus speak to soul, and with the rapidity of lightning; but of all these modes of expression, language is at once the frailest and the most independent. The frailest, for what is lighter than breath? It is mere air, but air moulded by the power of the divine spirit into an expression of its thought, to vibrate, it may be, through infinite space, to the very end of time. And yet, through it, mind speaks to mind, thought passes from man to man, and thus it becomes not merely the means of communion, but the very embodiment, the most glorious manifestation of the human soul. Freely it passes through imperceptible air, not fettered and chained by earthy matter, but at once loosened from the immediate control of the body, with which all other expressions of thought remain indissolubly connected.

The spiritual life of man needs, however, the word not only for communicating thoughts, but depends upon it, in spite of its unlimited dominion, for its own clearness and distinctness. As the soul within us can act only through the outward body, so we cannot even think without language; we must clothe our thoughts in words and speak them, at least in our mind, or they remain mere fleeting impressions. Who has not experienced the relief felt after long mental efforts, when at last the proper words are found, and our conception stands before the mind's eye, in all its clear beauty and precise meaning? Why else remains the use of a foreign tongue a sore mechanical labor, until we learn to think in that idiom, as we call it, that is, to clothe, at once, and without mental translation, our thoughts in the unaccustomed foreign garb?