forte, piazza, the boatman of a gondola a standard a standard bearer the chief magistrate in Venice a ture soft in music strong in music a walk under a roof supported by pillars, Strikingly and painfully does the Italian language by certain words betray the character of the Italian people. What shall we say of a nation with which a lover of art (virtuoso) is the virtuous man; which makes the opera (work) the work of their lives; which finds in a loquacious and ignorant guide (cicerone) their representative of Cicero; and which identifies a cut-throat with a brave man (bravo)? ENGLISH WORDS FROM THE SPANISH. From very various sources words have come into our English. Razzia is a very recent term. It came into existence within the last few years, to describe the sweeping destruction with which the French laid waste whole districts of northern Africa, in order to bring the country under their usurpation. According to Fuller, the term plunder is of German origin, and was brought hither by the soldiers who returned from the campaigns of Gustavus Adolphus. Frightful crimes may lead to the prevalence of a word, as in the term to burk, derived from the name of the first criminal; cannibals, as designating man-devouring savages, came into use with the great discoveries in the western world made in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. From the Arabic we have divan, vizier, cipher, zero, arabesque; from the Hebrew we have, besides very many proper names, Jehovah, amen, Jeremiad, lazaretto, lazaar-house, cherub, seraph, hallelujah. The birds called canaries have brought their name with them from the Canary Isles, and our pheasants from the Asiatic river Phasis, said to have been their original home. Philippic, an invective, comes to us from the title of the orations delivered by Demosthenes against Philip king of Macedon, of whose designs against the liberty of Greece he was aware. The word cabal has two origins. In one sense, and generally, cabala, is Hebrew, and denotes the science (falsely so called) of the Jewish rabbis. In another, it designates a political intrigue, and owes its existence to the initials of the names of Clifford, Ashley, Buckingham, Arlington, and Lauderdale-C. A. B. A. L., the five celebrated cabinet ministers of Charles II. We have in English words the names of natural objects, taken from the names of the places where the objects were produced; e. g., peach, Fr. pêche, that is Persh, or Persian; Bergamotte (Bergamum), Indigo, Mocha, Champagne, Burgundy, Madeira, Port, and other names of wine. We have names of the products of art taken from the places where they were fabricated e. g., bayonet, invented at Bayonne, in France; cachemir (shawls), from Cachemir, in India; cambric, from Cambria, in France; cordovan, leather prepared at Cordova, in Spain; damask, from Damascus, in Syria; muslin, from Mossul, in Asiatic Turkey; nankeen, from Nankin, in China; pistol, from Pistoia, in Tuscany; morocco (leather), from Morocco, in Barbary. Having shown the connexion of the English with the Romance languages, I subjoin another table, showing its connexion with the Teutonic languages. The latter is the more needful, because the latter are our cousin-germans. 179 THE LORD'S PRAYER IN TEUTONIC LANGUAGES. Common English of German of Lower German Gothic of Luther. This table is full of instruction. Go through it carefully word for word, making due allowance for diversity of spelling; for instance our word come re-appears in come to, comme, to comme, chweme. and quimai. In the bist" of the Lower Saxon I recognise an old mood common in the South of England in my boyish days, where and when the present tense of the verb to be was thus conju. 180 gated, I be, thou bist, he bees, we be, you be, they be. The Gothic of Ulphilas offers the most striking points of comparison. I will go through it and point out the words which still form a part of the English tongue; unsar, our; thu, who; in, in; himinam, heaven; weihnai, vowed; thein, thy; namo, name; quimai, come; wilga, will; ana, on; airthai, earth; gif, give; uns, our; daga, day; unsarana, our; hlaif, loaf; briggais, bring; lausei, loose; af, of; ubilin, evil. It is thus seen that our mother tongue had a substantive existence as early as the year of our Lord 360. And it is curious to observe that in this the oldest form of the Teutonic languages we find in several instances the nearest approach to our modern words and forms: e.g., himinem, heaven; thein, thy, thine; airthai, earth; gif, give; uns, us; daga, day; hlaif, loaf, the ancient word for bread; briggais, bring; lausei, loose. These facts will enforce the advice I have given to the effect that you should let the Saxon come in for its full share in your phraseology. But here, as in all cases, moderation is necessary. And doubtless some usages connected with the Saxon are to be avoided. How freely and how loosely is the verb to get employed in ordinary life. I am not fond of giving specimens of bad English as a means of teaching persons to speak and write good English, for I think such a practice subversive of its object, and, therefore, I abstain from supplying you according to the usual practice with exercises in bad English for correction; but I may, and from time to time I shall, explain and enforce my meaning by examples of what is wrong, particularly when the examples given are so gross as to be beyond imitation. Here is a specimen of the hard labour which get is made to undergo. On getting home, I got my dinner; and, getting the bad news you sent, got on horseback within ten minutes after I got your letter. When I got to Canterbury, I got a chaise for town, but I got wet through in getting to the inn; and I have in consequence got such a cold as I shall not be able to get rid of in a hurry; happy shall I be if I get hither by the time you get back. Being, however, compelled to see the minister, I got shaved and dressed as soon as I arrived in London, and getting some refreshment, got to the Treasury. I soon got into the great man's favour, and got out of him the secret of getting a memorial before the board, but I could not get an answer then; bowever a few days ago I got intelligence that I shall get an answer shortly. On my way back I got a beefsteak, and while trying to get the newspaper, I got my foot under a chair and got thrown down. I got up as well as I could and getting back to my own inn, got my supper, and got to bed. It was not long before I got to sleep. When I got up in the morning, I first got my breakfast, then getting a walk, I got a bath. After that, I got dressed, got a morning paper, and, ordering the waiter to get me a cab, got into it forthwith that I might get in time to get an answer to my memorial. I got the answer, and without delay got pen, ink, and paper to write to you; and this is all I have got to say. THE CELTIC ELEMENT. THE Celtic element in the English language has received far less attention than it deserves. Till recently, indeed, its existence was scarcely known; and when at length it compelled recognition, its appearance was restricted to names of places, particularly the great outlines of the country, such as hills, mountains, headlands, rivers, &c. The ordinary teaching of the schools was, that the original British natives of these islands were extirpated by the invading and con: quering Saxons to such an extent that the former were able to sustain themselves only in the mountain fastnesses of the extreme parts of the country, Scotland in the north, Cornwall in the south, and Wales in the west. In those parts, unquestionably, the native British successfully withstood their Saxon invaders, and there transmitted their vernacular tongue from generation to generation. Not less is it true that the British element in the population of the lowlands was neither uprooted nor absorbed. Extermination is a rare event in the migrations and changes of tribes and nations. Scarcely would it be too much to affirm that extermination never takes place. And even absorption is only partial. Besides, if blood is absorbed it does not lose its primitive qualities. Still less easy of absorption is a language. A living language, that is, a language vernacular to the aboriginals of a country-stamps itself on the entire land and on the whole life of the people. That impres. sion is all but indelible. Only the attrition and abrasion of centuries can wear the image down, much less wholly efface it. The language of the cottage is one of the few permanent things on earth; and when, by the extruding power of the language of the court, and of books, and of commerce, it is compelled to withdraw into narrower and narrower limits, it ceases to be a language only to become a dialect and a patois (the language of the peasants of a province); and still maintains an existence in what we call provincialisms and vulgarisms, when at length it is wholly banished from cultivated society. Nor only there does it survive; it lives on in the warp and the woof of the spoken and written tongue. These allegations are borne out by the fact that in our present English, the original Celtic of these islands still remains to no inconsiderable extent. The Celts (or, as the fashion now is, the Kelts), as far back as history goes, were the primitive inhabitants of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. The race at large, in an ante-historic period, migrated from Central Asia into Europe, and, spreading. over its surface, penetrated to its western limits. The Celtic language is now acknowledged to have affinities with the important group of languages denominated the Indo-Germanic, of which the Sanscrit, the Greek and the German may be taken as representatives. At the same time, the Celtic language, as being a language spoken by an independent family of nations, possesses essentially independent features. There are still six Celtic tongues or dialects recognised in Europe. Of these, four belong to the British islands. A fifth, the Cornish, now nearly or quite extinct, also pertained to the same |