wonted tax on our vocal organs. Old inhabitants of Chicago expend more exertion upon that name than do their children.

We have thus far referred only to languages which have been in the country from the first, and of fruits of these early struggles between them and our language; but the emigration of Germans, Frenchmen, Italians, Celts, Spaniards, Russians, Poles, Turks, and Chinese must be affecting the phonesis at this moment to an extent which we cannot hope to measure. The total phonesis of the race seems represented in these languages, which, brought to our shores by foreigners, are spoken by them for a generation or two side by side in the same mouths, and in curious intermixture of etymology and phonesis with English. If, then, dialectic regeneration acts feebly with us, foreign regeneration-if an awkward term be allowed-exercises a much greater force than dialects usually do.

Even in England this foreign element is very strong. The different branches of Celts contribute each a quota of phonetic force. The Scotch Highlanders, the Welsh, the Manksmen, the Irish, bring into English pronunciation the energy and breadth of their own mother dialects. But this is not all; London is more picturesque in the nationalities of its people than New York. To representatives of all the peoples who come to us she adds natives of her antipodal possessions--Hindoo doctors and Australian peasants. But we not only receive immigrants representing all other countries, we travel and learn the speech of other nations, and in our own mouths reverse the process of our new citizens to produce the same result. And this last fact must be taken into account as acting in every direction and upon all tongues. In an early age two tribes having four consonants each, by uniting, doubled their phonetic wealth. In our age cultivated tongues, by interchange, make common stock of the phonesis of mankind.

Commerce and literary enterprise stimulate men to learn the languages of each other, and the number of persons who can speak two or three is perhaps doubled every year. There is, in every country, a set of men who speculate upon the probable triumph of their own tongue over all others. They usually know nothing of philology, and little of any other than their own tongues; but it is worth while to notice what effects do actually follow the rapid intercommunication of peoples. It is

not the extension of the territory of one speech so much as the enrichment of the vocabularies of all, and the less apparent, but not less certain, enrichment of the phonesis of all. And in this interchange it is the free traders who will triumph. The language which borrows most, which most rapidly absorbs the linguistic wealth of its neighbors, will most nearly realize the dream of a universal language. The tongue which refuses to part with its gold for foreign goods because it believes the gold of more value than the goods will not profit by the commerce of language, or extend the boundaries of its empire.* English has ever been a voracious consumer of foreign vocables. If it continued to devour the speech of every people it might, if it did not burst in the effort, become universal by swallowing all others. This much is certain, that for a long period to come the incessant action of foreign phonesis upon ours will help repair the ruin made by those decaying forces which are eating out the heart of our sound-system.

The influence of classical study and classically-derived nomenclature upon our phonesis ought not to be omitted. The first invigorates the phonesis of all scholars, and indirectly affects all speakers. The second is even more powerful. The number of persons who are interested in these studies is large, and the words given them to speak are numerous and sufficiently difficult of utterance.

Some readers may furnish an unconscious support for this argument by inquiring whether, after all, it is not the prerogative of a higher civilization with a vast literature to dispense with a full phonetic system. One might reason that only the arts of oratory and poetry are strictly dependent upon orthoëpy, and that these are already sickly, and probably destined to pass away with the diffusion of books and their culture. What orator can compete with a newspaper, and what promise is there of a crop of poets? But such speculations, though ever so plausibly supported, depart so far from the plain world in which we live, and imply such an immense advance along the whole line of civilization, that it is hardly safe to found optimist hopes upon them.

Our spoken English is the theater of a great conflict, in *French translates foreign names when this can conveniently be done.

which it has already lost orthoëpical wealth. Whether these losses are the beginning of wide-spread ruin, the first steps toward a national dialect, and thereby to a new written tongue, and the loss of the treasures contained in the classic speech, depends upon the relative strength of the destructive agencies and those reinforcements of the regenerating army which have entered the field too recently to have tested their prowess.

ART. IV.-ORIENTAL INFLUENCE ON WESTERN
THOUGHT AND CIVILIZATION.

AT the earliest historical period the inhabitants of Europe known as the Indo-Germanic races give striking indications of their Asiatic origin. According to Professor Max Müller a large number of their etymological roots exist almost identically in the Sanscrit, and there are remarkable affinities of grammatical forms and inflections which are inexplicable but upon. the theory of a common origin. Later in the historical period we discover palpable proofs of Asiatic migration. Time after time have vast hordes of nomads from the great central plateau of Asia precipitated themselves upon the plains of Europe, leaving numerous evidences of Eastern origin in the languages, physical appearance, and national characteristics of their descendants.

But we design here to refer more especially to the intellectual influences exerted by Oriental philosophy and science upon European thought. The position of the Attic peninsula, almost on the frontier between Europe and Asia, its intimate relations with the East, and the receptive character of the Hellenic mind, caused Greek philosophy to be deeply imbued with the spirit of Orientalism. The Greek traditions all refer to the East as the fountain-head of all knowledge. Athens was itself an Egyptian colony. From Phoenicia Cadmus brought those primitive characters which are the elements of all European literature. Thales derived the germs of his philosophy from Egypt, whose religious creed in turn was deeply tinctured with the older Hindoo thought. The Indian doctrine of metempsychosis in the teachings of Pythagoras betrays the

source of his leading tenets. The Eleatic philosophy, with its superadded theories of emanation from the deity and final absorption into his essence, presents a still greater resemblance to the dreamy pantheism of India. The Greek intellect seized with avidity the subtleties of Eastern thought, which will be found to pervade not only the ideal philosophy of Plato, but the keener dialectics of Aristotle.

The Persian campaign of Alexander was fraught with very important consequences to the intellectual history of the world. Not the least of these was the founding of the city of Alexandria upon the breaking up of his empire, and its subsequent influence on the civilization and literature of Europe. That influence has hardly been excelled even by that of Athens itself. It made an impression on the intellectual career of the West so powerful and enduring that we feel its results to this day. In the dynasty of the Ptolemies literature and science found a patronage more munificent than that of Pericles, of Lorenzo il Magnifico, or of Louis le Grand. Never had learning such a comprehensive organization and such vast endowments as in the Museum of Alexandria. Neither the French or Florentine Academies, nor the Royal Societies or Universities of Europe, so fostered it. It became the university of the world. At one time fourteen thousand students thronged its halls, and its library contained seven hundred thousand books and scrolls.

The glorious achievements of the Alexandrian school in physical science anticipated many of the discoveries of modern times. The geometrical demonstrations with which Euclid delighted the acute Alexandrian mind two thousand years ago are studied to-day in all the schools of Europe. The Mechanical Construction of the Heavens of Ptolemy, no mean prototype of the Principia, calculates the size of the earth from a measurement of a degree on the shores of the Red Sea. Although much of the Alexandrian learning perished during the darkness and confusion of the Middle Ages, yet much was preserved by the Arabs, and became the germ of modern science. The magnitude and importance of the boon conferred upon the Hellenistic races by the Septuagint translation of the Scriptures confer an imperishable renown upon the name of Ptolemy Philadelphus, at whose command it was undertaken. How remarkable that providence which delivered all the East into the

hands of the Greeks, that their language, the most copious and flexible ever spoken, might become almost universally understood, and be thus the fitting vehicle for the diffusion of the knowledge of the true God, and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent!

The progressive conquest of the Greek monarchies by the Roman power was still another step of preparation toward that momentous event which was to mold the destinies of all future time. At this juncture a new element was introduced into society, which was destined

"To leaven with its fiery leaven

All the hearts of men forever."

"Every-where," to use the fine image of Kingsley, "the mangled limbs of the old world were seething in the Medea's chaldron, to come forth whole and young and strong." The old faiths were fading out of the firmament of human thought, before the rising of the Sun of Righteousness, as the stars of midnight vanish at the dawn of day. The old gods reeled upon their thrones, and, like Dagon before the ark, fell before a mightier than they ;

They feel from Judah's land

The dreaded Infant's hand;

The rays of Bethlehem blind their dusky eyes."

The oracles were stricken dumb, their shrines became deserted, Pythia staggered on her tripod,

"And Dodona's oak swang lonely

Henceforth to the tempest only."

But the purity of the Christian faith became speedily corrupted. The effects of Oriental influence were seen in the numerous heresies that infected the Church in the early Christian centuries. Alexandria, especially, became a very alembic for the fermentation of thought. Neo-Platonism, that hybrid between Christianity and Paganism, tried to refine away the grossness of the ancient superstitions into a beautiful mythus— a sublime inner meaning-in harmony with the doctrines of Christianity. Christianity itself became strongly imbued with this allegorizing spirit. Origenism and Mysticism marred the symmetry and corrupted the simplicity of the primitive faith. Even the acute mind of Augustine, and through him Latin Christianity, was much affected by this visionary philosophy.