Cowden Clark, who made a concordance of Shakespeare's works. Milton did not exhaust his native tongue, for he only employs 8,000 words. We are told that the translation of the Scriptures, under James I., 1611, required 773,746 words, about nine-tenths of which are proper names, repetitions, and particles; that the insignificant word and occurs 46,219 times; and that few good authors use 10,000 words, while ordinary people employ but 3,000, which is but a fraction of the 80,000 popular, scientific and technical words mentioned in Noah Webster's preface to his Dictionary of 1840, in which he says: "It has been my aim in this work to furnish a standard of our vernacular tongue, which we shall not be ashamed to bequeath to five hundred millions of people, who are destined to occupy and hope to adorn the vast territory within our jurisdiction." Since then Texas, California and Alaska were added.

Stenographers found that 1,500 words sufficed for a long evening's debate in the English Parliament. Trench, in his "Study of Words," corroborates the superiority of language over authors in this felicitous strain: "Far more, and mightier in every way, is a language than any one of the works which may have been composed in it; for that work, great as it may be, is but the embodying of the mind of a single man-this, of a nation. The Iliad is great, yet not so great in strength, or power, or beauty, as the Greek language. Paradise Lost is a noble possession for a people to have inherited, but the English tongue is a nobler heritage yet."

English, now the easiest language as to grammar, combining the elegance of the Greco-Latin with the vigor of the GothoGermanic tongues, would be ready for universal adoption, if the English-speaking peoples would adopt the plain phonographic German rule: "Write as you pronounce, and pronounce as you write." In other words, write the same letter or letters for one and the same sound, wherever that sound is required, and utter the same sound for the same letter or letters wherever you find them. This same rule has been applied over two thousand years to Greek and Latin, not only by the nations of continental Europe, but of Asia, Africa, and South America. A Greek or Latin scholar from any part of the world, except England and the United States, can converse in those languages; because,

among all, Greek and Latin are written as they are pronounced, and pronounced as they are written. Strange, the Isle of Britain and North America should stand in their own light, and attempt to carry their inconsistent pronunciation into those classic idioms, which ought to be a sacred universal linguistic medium for the educated of all climes, whether from Oxford, Paris, Berlin, Mecca, Fez, Harvard, or Rio Janeiro. This so-called English pronunciation of Greek and Latin has not as yet obtained in Ireland, where a classic student from any part of the world except Oxford or Yale, can attend divine service and understand every word uttered by the officiating priest; so can they in the Convent of Mount St. Bernard, or of Mount Carmel. Is it not high time the English and Americans should awake, not only from their nightmare pronunciation of Greek and Latin, but from the disharmony between letter and sound in their own superior language, whose universal adoption is thereby retarded? We are told, the German phonographic rule would be impossible in English. If it has been possible for centuries in German, Greek and Latin, why should it be impossible in English or any other language?

As to the destiny of the English language, the ninety millions who speak it in Europe, America, Asia, Africa, and Oceanica, are fully aware of its capacity to become the universal linguistic medium, which may be realized by looking at the map of North America, where the English idiom has, within twenty-five years, spread from the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific and Behring's Straits, and displaced the Spanish, French, Indian and Russian dialects. Cuba, St. Domingo, Mexico, Central America, the Sandwich and Navigator's Islands, are feeling its influence and desire its sway; even exclusive China and Japan seem to lean more and more towards America and the English language across the Pacific. Thus the tide of empire is not only westward, but eastward; it meets and mingles in America.

G. P. Marsh, in his "Lectures on the English Language," p. 121, says: "In order to arrive at satisfactory conclusions on this point (origin of the English language), more thorough and extensive research is necessary." In our extracts and tables the "more thorough and extensive research" urged by Mr. Marsh will be found. There we even supply the want felt by the erudite lecturer, when he says, p. 122: "I have made no attempt

to assign words, not of Anglo-Saxon origin, to their respective sources." We made the attempt, and found that the "respective sources" of the English vocabulary are: Anglo-Saxon, Gothic, Danish, Swedish, German, Dutch, Flemish, and Icelandic; Welch, Cornish, Scotch, Irish, and Armoric; Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese; Russian; Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic. Hence a careful perusal of this analysis will enable any reader to learn, that the English of to-day is a compound of twenty-three idioms, ancient and modern, dead and living. No wonder Wilberforce says: "English is a composite language." To realize that the English dialect has added from six to sixtyeight per cent. of 'Greco-Latin since Alfred the Great must prove interesting to the English-speaking millions all over the globe.

Of all sciences, the sublimest-language-is the most complicated and inconsistent, not for want of votaries, but for want of strictly scientific analysis and synthesis. In our tables, let the reader compare the words of the Greco-Latin and the AngloSaxon columns, and he will find, that nearly all the Greco-Latin are words of progress, civilization, and refinement; whereas almost one-half of the Anglo-Saxon are insignificant particles and words of primary necessity. According to Tyrwhit's "Essay on the Language and Versification of Chaucer," p. 7, the French element in the Anglo-Saxon dialect began with the accession of Edward the Confessor, A.D. 1042, and not, as usually asserted, with the so-called Norman Conquest, which but hastened the fusion of the two idioms.

In our analysis we fully realize what Mr. Marsh says, p. 122: "Words of original Latin etymology have been, in the great majority of instances, borrowed from the French, and are still used in forms more in accordance with the French than with the Latin orthography." No wonder the English, under Edward the Confessor, ceased to cultivate Anglo-Saxon and introduced French. Swinton's adage, "When a tongue becomes petrified, the national mind walks out of it," was fully realized under Hardicanute. The Anglo-Saxon dialect was too poor and contracted for an Anglo-French population, who mixed the two idioms in such proportions as suited their progress in morals, literature, science, art, commerce, and civilization. As they progressed

from Egbert to Victoria, their language advanced towards its present standard of excellence.

The English character is a happy mixture of Celtic wit, FrancoNorman daring, and Germanic gravity, tinged with a peculiar love of enterprise and distant adventure. Perhaps the varied tribal and national elements, that engendered the English, together with their hazy island home, tended to produce a race distinguished for sagacious eclecticism, not only in science, art, mechanics, and manufactures, but in language.

The English idiom is the cream and essence of the Ario-Japhetic dialects: it contains the choicest Greco-Latin, Gotho-Germanic and Celtic elements-a happy medium between French and German; more grave than the former, less guttural, harsh, inverted and cumbersome than the latter; grammatically simpler than either; but very capricious in its orthoëpy and phonography, which might be easily modified. Vowels and consonants are so felicitously combined in English, that the dwellers of the frigid and torrid zones can articulate and speak it with comparative

ease.

Before we close this introductory survey of the English-speaking millions, let us cite a passage from that most erudite living philologist, Max Müller: "Why certain words die and others live on, why certain meanings of words become prominent, so as to cause the absorption of all the other meanings, we have no chance to explain. We must take the work of language as we find it, and in disentangling the curious skein we must not expect to find one continuous thread, but rest satisfied, if we can separate the broken ends, and place them side by side in something like an intelligent order." We shall endeavor to disentangle. "the curious skein" of the English language, and unroll it in "one continuous thread," without separating or replacing "any broken ends."

Some ideas and events connected with the British Isles prior to the advent of the Gotho-Germanic tribes, Jutes, Saxons, and Angles, who formed England, would not be out of place here, before we undertake to give the Origin, Progress and Destiny of the English Language and Literature.

Britain had attracted the attention of Europe, Africa and Asia, as may be realized by observing a series of singular events and

circumstances; for not only the refined nations of genial climes, but the rude hyperborean tribes looked to Albion as a source of heroism and intellectual light. Strabo informs us that the commerce of Britain had become so profitable to the Phenicians that Rome tried to compete; consequently a Roman galley watched the course of a Phenician shipmaster, who, perceiving it, would rather wreck his vessel than go to Britain. For this patriotic deed the Phenician was rewarded by his country. The rich tin mines of Cornwall had for ages attracted the Phenicians and Carthaginians to the British Isles, which, on that account, were called "Cassiterides" from Kassirepos, tin.

Cesar, the greatest Roman general, had used 30,000 veterans and 800 vessels to invade Albion and defeat Casivellaunus, one of the British Kings B.C. 55; yet Tacitus says: "Cesar only gave the Romans a view, not a possession of Britain." Insults, offered to Boadicea and her daughters by the licentious Catus, roused the Iceni, who killed 70,000 Romans; but ultimately the heroic British Queen succumbed at the head of her people, and took poison to avoid falling into the hands of the victors. Such events were surely calculated to turn, not only Rome's, but the world's attention towards Britain. Of all that happened in the British Isles, the capture of the brave Caractacus (Caradoc), who fought the Roman legions nine years, deserves particular mention carried prisoner to Rome, the unfortunate British monarch astonished by his dignified bearing the Emperor Claudius, who ordered his fetters to be removed and treated him and his family with magnanimity. That scene, so vividly and grandly related by Tacitus (annal. lib. xii. 33-39), merits perusal.

It seems the British Royal family had embraced Christianity and fostered it through ST. PAUL, who, in his second Epistle to Timothy iv. 21, mentions Linus (Lleyn), son of Claudia (Gladys), daughter of Caractacus; also Pudens, husband of Claudia, all of whom had become converts and friends of St. Paul in Rome.

When voices whisper to us, not only from distant Asia, but from Gaul, that St. Paul preached in Britain, we cannot help ascertaining, as much as possible, a historic fact so interesting to England's and America's ninety English-speaking millions of the present day. Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus in Syria (A.D. 420