** The Editor desires to express his best thanks to those Authors and Publishers who have kindly allowed him to incorporate their copyright extracts in this volume.

Hymn before Sunrise in Valley of Chamouni S. T. Coleridge

Memoir of Charles Lamb

Original.

Rosamund Gray

Charles Lamb

96

Sixth English Reading Book.

PART I.

ON LANGUAGE.

Arranged, placed in order.
Practised, acted out.
Inverted, in backward or con-
trary order.

Intelligible, capable of being
understood.

Recognised, commonly known
and received.
Pronunciation, mode of saying
or sounding words.
Similarity, likeness.
Infusion, that which mixes with
and is absorbed by another
body.

Structure, the building up part
by part.

Denotes, points out, or shows.
Provincialisms, words or phra-

ses used only in a province or part of a country. Modifications, minor changes of form. Monosyllabic, consisting only of one syllable.

Teutonic, belonging or relating to the Teutons.

Nucleus, the kernel, the headquarters.

Telegram, a message conveyed by the telegraph.

Translating, putting into ano-
ther language.

Photographic, relating to pic-
tures made by light.
Obsolete, passed out of use.

WHEN we wish to make known our thoughts, wishes, or feelings to another, we do so mainly by means of words. We say or tell what we know; we inquire or ask questions about what we desire to know. In other words, we carry on intercourse in words, and words thus used to convey thoughts form language.

Very young children learn to talk. First, they apply names to their parents and other persons and things about them; then they ask for what they want, and by-and-by they tell what they have seen and heard. The language

thus learned in infancy or childhood is called the mother tongue. The English language is our mother tongue.

To convey thoughts by means of language, it is not enough merely to know the words of that language and their exact meaning: the rules by which such words are arranged must also be known and practised. If you were to read the words of this lesson, or this sentence, in their inverted order, instead of teaching you anything, they would form mere nonsense. Or, if again you were to read down a column of words as arranged at the head of this lesson, these too would convey no idea or thought. To be intelligible, we must use known words in their recognised sense, and these words must be arranged in some understood order.

A child born in France, of French parents, very soon learns its mother tongue, the French language; but such child being brought into England, and there placed in an English family, the children of the two countries would not be able to converse together; for though each would know its own language, neither would know that of the other. But if these children were now to write their thoughts, the one in French, and the other in English, they would see that the two languages in their written form are more alike than they appeared to be in their spoken form. Some words would be found common to both languages, having the same written form and meaning, though differing in pronunciation.

Again, a person living in one part of England, as Lancashire or Yorkshire, would find, on removing to some more or less remote part, say Gloucester or Sussex, a general similarity in the composition and structure of the language used, yet with a sensible infusion of new words and phrases. The great difference in the first case denotes two distinct languages; while the latter marks only the existence of provincialisms. When, however these modifi