twisted them into a rope, lengthened the cord, looped it around an embrasure, and, lowering himself over the rampart, and the rugged rocks it overlooked, reached the bottom in safety. There he found. his attendant stretched on the ground, with his thigh-bone broken. Unwilling to leave behind him, to the mercy of his enemies, one who had been so faithful, Albany, with a sentiment of gratitude which seems almost incompatible with his previous ferocity, lifted him on his shoulders, and, being a man of gigantic_stature and uncommon strength, carried him thus with ease to Leith, where they embarked without delay; and, setting sail before the rising sun brightened the German sea, cast anchor under the towers of Dunbar, the patrimonial castle of Albany. During the whole night nothing was known of his escape; but daylight revealed the rope and twisted sheets hanging over the northern ramparts; there was immediately given an alarm, which the dreadful stench in David's tower must have increased. His flight was discovered, and the half-consumed corpses were found in the fire-place of his chamber. Enraged and confounded, James III. refused to credit the intelligence until he had examined the place in person.- Memorials of the Castle of Edinburgh, p. 52-55. THE LATIN ELEMENT. Had I pass on to the Latin element in the English language. That element can by the ordinary student be appreciated and acquired but imperfectly. I will, however, do what I can to aid him. I had the direction of his studies from the first, I would have done my best to make him at the beginning master of the Latin language. As it is, I must content myself with offering to his diligent attention the chief Latin roots which enter into the body of our tongue. Possessed of these, together with their signification, he will in general be at no loss, even without the aid of a dictionary, for the meaning of a word of Latin parentage. Seldom, however, do the words in English which may be traced back to the Latin, come into our tongue directly from the Roman soil. They have generally passed through intermediate countries. From the Latin are formed several modern languages, namely, the French, the Italian, the Portuguese, and the Spanish. These are called the Romance languages, because they are essentially Roman in their origin. Some say they received the name because in them the first romances were written; more probably is it, that the fictions so called were denominated from the languages in which they appeared. This It is not immediately from the pure Latin of the Latin classics, such as Livy, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, and Tacitus, that the Romance languages are derived, but rather from these so far as they were found in the vernacular tongue, the spoken language of the population in the great centres of intercourse and in rural districts. vernacular tongue would be regarded by the Roman purists as a corrupted form of the Latin. Corrupt, doubtless, it was, for it contained many words of merely local prevalence, of low origin, and of no authority. Nevertheless, in it were preserved both terms and forms which, being of a very early origin, like our English dialects, belonged to the very substance of the language. Already in the bloom of the Roman power, the Latin language had received a very large infusion of foreign elements from the several nations which lay around it as a centre, and over which it had established its sway--the countries which we now term France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Though the original population of these wide districts had, in common with the Romans, a Celtic basis for their language, yet, from locality and diverse culture, they had each for themselves formed a different tongue, and these diversities, when the Roman authority became supreme, and the Roman language was introduced under the wing of that authority, readily blended themselves with the more refined diction of the metropolis and of the great Roman writers. Causes of diversity did not fail to appear on the establishment, in a land, of the Roman despotism. Those causes went on in their operation. At last a new cause, a cause of tremendous power, came into play-the invasion of the northern Barbarians. The blow broke the Roman empire i pieces. Out of the consequent ruins arose new forms of government the forms of our present European kingdoms. With the formation of new centres of political power and social influences, new languages were formed; the French, the Italian, the Spanish, the Portuguese; at least, these are the main branches that shot forth from the old trunk and grew, until in separate literatures they each produced fruit. Our English was not without an influence from the general shock; but chiefly from the Romance languages, when they had received each its individual form and character, did the Saxon basis of the English tongue receive additions and incorporate elements. Latin came to us in the conquering train of William of Normandy. His Norman-French, a Romance tongue, like his bold barons, and generally his superior culture, made war on the old Saxon element of our land, defeated it, took it prisoner, and went far to make it do its own bidding. So overpowering was the influence of the court, and so imperious was the sway of fashion, that the first accents of our English literature were compelled to take a Gallic shape and tone, retaining their mother Saxon as best they might, and uttering the native sounds "with bated breath." The Italian branch of the Romance language inoculated our English through the medium of the Catholic church, whose Latin, of universal prevalence, was a sort of medium, and as a medium, so a stepping-stone, between the classic purity of the old Latin language, and the new languages of medieval Europe; and whose forms, ceremonies, officers, laws, and courts, combined to infuse into English a copious and pervading Latin element. As the Spaniards and Portuguese made their conquests in foreign climes, and, becoming masters of the ocean, held commerce in their hands, so they, in conducting their maritime and commercial transactions, gave to all modern languages words belonging to their own tongue, and the names by which, with more or less accuracy, they denominated the articles of foreign produce which formed the staple of their trade. At late minds, too, the Romance languages have exerted an influence over the English, and left bequests which remained after the source of that influence had ceased to exist. I may instance the reign of the profligate Charles II., when, with a Portuguese princess for his queen, that monarch, dependent on French bounty, allowed French writers and French tailors to set the fashion in England, and the language of high life, and partly of books, became a mongrel of bad French and worse English. Abbreviation is one of the forms through which languages pass in their natural development. By abbreviation has the Latin passed into the Romance languages. The abbreviation has not been in the Structure of sentences; for in the structure of sentences expansion has taken place, and fulness ensued, so that it is difficult to render by the same number of words a passage from a Latin classic into a Romance tongue. The abbreviation has been in the forms of the words; the inflexions have been curtailed; caseendings and person-endings, even to some extent tense and moodendings, have been diminished or done away. The words thus set free from bonds have followed new impulses of development, and given birth to new modes of utterance conformably with the progress of our modern civilisation; and even produced new languages, any one of which would not suffer in comparison with classic Latin. I have already intimated that the Saxon did not receive any very large inheritance immediately from the confused mass of words and tongues which ensued from the social collision of the North and the South. Yet do we owe to the Romance languages so much, that I am not at liberty to pass on until I have given some particulars, the rather that without the facts that ensue, a knowledge of the English lacks an important element. Out of an original Latin term two or more English words were formed, either by some change in the body of the word, or some change in its termination; of these newly-coined words, one will be found to bear a close resemblance to its original; another will have departed from it in form and in meaning to a greater or less extent: the former is the older, probably the more scholar-like; the latter is the more recent and the more popular. I subjoin a few instances, annexing_contractions to show whence the terms have come to us, thus: Fr. shows that the word is derived directly from the French; It. from the Italian; and Sp. from the Spanish. When the English word seems to come to us immediately from the Latin, the contraction Lat. is prefixed: blasphemare, to revile calculus, a pebble campus, a plain canalis, a pipe cantus, a song caput, a head causa, a cause Fr. to blaspheme, blame Fr. cause, causation, accuse clamare, to shout commendare, to entrust comparare, to get together consuetudo, custom divinus, divine dominus, a master dubitare, to doubt dubius, uncertain donum, a gift a leading; Fr. claim, exclaim, reclaim Fr. divine, a divine, a diviner Fr. dominate, dominion Fr. dubitation Lat. dubious, dubiety Sp. donation; Fr. donative Fr. duchy; ducatus, {Med, Lat. a duchy It. duke, doge factio, a making fragilis, easily broken Fr. faction, fashion Fr. fragile, frail Fr. grave, gravity, gravita Fr. imply, implicit Sp. mister, mistress, master Fr. piety, pity Fr. potion, poison Fr. redeemed, redemption Fr. Roman, Romance Fr. sire, sir Fr. save, safe, salutary Fr. surface, superficies, super- This list pretends to nothing more than to give instances in which two or more words accrued from one Latin term. In some instances it is not easy to determine whether our English word came immediately from the Latin, or through some one of the Romance languages. If, however, the facts above set forth are correct in the main, then we learn how much our language has been enriched by the Romance tongues, and that we are chiefly under obligations to the French. Were this the place to enter into a statement and comparison of the words and forms in the Romance languages borrowed from the Latin, we should be able to do much to enforce on our pupils the study of the Latin as the mother tongue, and as the key to the French, the Italian, the Spanish, and the Portuguese; nor do we doubt that the knowledge of comparative philology which, thanks to German scholarship, is now rapidly spreading over the civilised world, will ere long lead to what may be termed the genealogica. study of languages. Instead of spending many years in learning some little Latin and less Greek, after the tedious and almost futile plan of our ancient grammar-schools, the young will be led to study languages in their natural groups: the Indo-European group; the Shemitic group; the Celtic group; and in subordinate classes, the Greek, the Latin, and the German group. With a good knowledge of Latin, which ought not to cost a boy above three years, a student, if rightly directed, could acquire the French, the Italian, the Spanish, and the Portuguese within two years, and at the same time receive great aid toward a minute and accurate knowledge of the English, especially if at the same time he was studying German together with its cognate tongues. The commercial prospects which are opening out in South America, and the dawn of civil liberty which seems rising in the south of Europe, will probably aid in accelerating the time when this new and effectual method of linguistical study shall supersede the present empirical, piecemeal, and uninstructive plans. COMPOSITION. Form each of the ensuing words into a sentence. Words with their proper Prepositions. Report the following anecdote :-— A PARDON AT THE RIGHT MOMENT. On the 29th of May, the whole garrison was paraded on the Castle-hill, at Edinburgh, and formed in three sides of a hollow square, facing inwards. With drums muffled and rolling, while the band played a solemn dead-march, three of the Highland recruits, each stepping slowly behind his open coffin, were brought by an armed escort down the winding pathway from the citadel, and placed in the vacant space of the square, opposite a numerous firing party, under the orders of the provost-marshal. It was a bright and beautiful summer morning, but there was a dark cloud on every face, for no ceremony is more impressive and terrible than a military execution-and on that morning three soldiers were to die. They were desired to kneel down beside their open coffins, while the following paper was read by the adjutant-general: - |