PAST AND PRESENT.

A STUDY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

BY RICHARD GRANT WHITE.

NEW YORK:

SHELDON AND COMPANY,

498 AND 500 BROADWAY.

1870.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, BY RICHARD GRANT WHITE,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

STEREOTYPED AT THE BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY,

No. 19 SPRING Lane.

TO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

MY DEAR SIR:

When your forefather met mine, as he probably did, some two hundred and thirty or forty years ago, in the newly laid out street of Cambridge (and there is reason for believing that the meeting was likely to be about where Gore Hall now stands), yours might have been somewhat more grimly courteous than he doubtless was, had he known that he saw the man one of whose children in the eighth generation was to pay one of his, at the same remove, even this small tribute of mere words; and mine might have lost some of his reputation for inflexibility had he known that he was keeping on his steeple-crown before him without whom there would be no "Legend of Brittany," no "Sir Launfal," no "Commemoration Ode," no 66 Cathedral," no "Biglow Papers," without whom our idea of the New England these men helped to found would lack, in these latter days, some of the strength and the beauty which make it worthy of our respect, our admiration, and our love, — and without whom the great school that was soon set up where they were standing, to be the first and ever the brightest light of learning in the land, would miss one of its most shining ornaments.

We may be sure that both these honored men spoke English in the strong and simple manner of their time, of which you have well said that it was 66 a diction which we should be glad to buy back from desuetude at almost any cost," and which

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