Three hundred years later, our Shakespeare wrote:

Romans, Country-men and Louers, heare mee for my cause, and be silent, that you may heare. Beleeue mee for mine Honor, and have respect to mine Honor, that you may belecue. Censure mee in your Wisedom, and awake your Senses, that you may the better Judge. If there be any in this Assembly, any deere Friend of Cæsar's, to him I say that Brutus' love to Cæsar was no less than his.'

From these illustrations, the student will see, as other examples may have suggested, that our language had not always its present form; and this is only a particular instance of the changes that are always going on, everywhere. Thus the language of a people in one age may become unintelligible to their descendants in another: or, if a people have parted company, one portion going forth to new seats, while the other remained in the old; or, if both have travelled on, separating continually from one another, either section may cease to be understood by the other, and their once common speech, by the gradual unfolding of differences, may be separated into two. Thus the Celts in Britain were, in time, unable to communicate with the Celts in Gaul; and the Britons in Wales could no longer converse with the Britons in Cornwall, from whom they were separated by the intrusion of a hostile tribe, like a wedge, between them. Thus the Russian, and German, and Icelandic, and Greek, and Latin, and Persian, and French, and English, were all produced from one language, spoken by the common ancestors of these nations, when they were living together as an undivided family; and the multitude of human languages- certainly not fewer than seven hundred and fifty in number- sprang, if not from one, from two or three original tongues. The causes of this divergence are:

1. Difference of occupation.-The vocabulary of a farmer must differ from that of a mariner, for his subjects of thought are different. When the Aryans distributed themselves over the poetic hills of Italy and Greece, they became, in the former, a nation of warriors- -wars engrossing their thoughts for seven hundred years; in the latter, a nation of warriors, statesmen, orators, historians, poets, critics, painters, sculptors, architects, philosophers; and this difference was evermore at work to make two the languages that once were one. Language, in the former, became copious in terms expressive of things political; in the latter, it became universal, like the ideas for which it stood.

2. Difference of progress in the sciences and the arts.-New

facts or new ideas require new words. Wherever any science is progressive, there must be a corresponding progress in its forms of expression. Any considerable change in society-in its government, religion, or habits-demands the invention of words which in a former period were not required.

3. Difference of geographical position. When a people with a common tongue is divided into separate tribes by emigration, or by any of the causes which break up large nations into smaller fragments, their speeches become distinct, as differences of character are developed, or in the degree in which communication between them is interrupted. (a.) One branch comes into contact with new races or objects which the other does not encounter, and so upon the old stock engrafts numerous words which the other does not. (b.) In one branch a word will perish, or be thrust out of general use, but live on in the other. For example, the words snag, bluff, slick, and others, would now be lost to the English tongue, were it not for the American branch of the English-speaking race. (c.), Words will gradually acquire a different meaning in one branch from what they have in another. Thus, in Northumberland, they 'shear' their wheat; here, we 'shear' our sheep. (d.) The pronunciation and spelling of the same word will, in one, be different from what it is in the other. Thus the Germans and the English, using the very same word, pronounce and spell it, the former, 'fowl'; the latter, 'vogel.' (e.) The language of one section may remain stationary, because their ideas remain so; while that of the other is kept in motion, because their understanding is ever advancing, and their knowledge is ever increasing.

4. Difference of climate.-Influences of climate and soil account, in large measure, for the harsh and guttural sounds muttered by those who live in moist or cold mountainous regions, and the soft and liquid tones of those who live in fertile plains under a more genial sky. Thus Byron:

I love the language, that soft bastard Latin,
Which melts like kisses from a female mouth,
And sounds as if it should be writ on satin,
With syllables that breathe of the sweet South.

And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in,

That not a single accent seems uncouth,

Like our harsh, northern, whistling, grunting, guttural,
Which we're obliged to hiss, and spit and sputter all.'

Physical circumstances reach far in their effects, not alone upon the organs of speech, but upon the character as well. It is not too much to assert that the profound differences which are manifest between the German races on the one side, heavy, bent on fighting, prone to drunkenness and gluttony, and the Greek and Latin races on the other, ready, flexible, inquisitive, artistic, loving conversations and tales of adventure,- arise chiefly from the difference between the countries in which they are settled. Religion, to the Greek, is an epic; to the Teuton, a tragedy.

Dialects. Whenever a homogeneous people is divided into separate and unconnected tribes by emigration or local causes, the speeches of the different members of the race become, therefore, more or less distinct; and each, in this changed condition, is called a dialect: in other words, a dialect is a branch of a parent language, with such alterations as time or revolution may have introduced among descendants of the same people, living in separate or remote situations. Dialects, then, are those forms of speech which have a certain character of their own by which they are distinguished from one another, yet a common character by which they are allied to one another and hence to some mother tongue, just as indigo and sky-blue are different shades of the same color. Their common character will be shown first, by their similar grammatical forms, such as the endings of nouns, verbs, and the like; second, by their having many of the most common and most necessary words essentially the same. Thus, when the Teutons settled in the western provinces of the Roman Empire, there arose a new state of things, which was neither Roman nor Teutonic, but a combination of both. Being much fewer in number, the conquerors adopted the religion, and a great deal of the laws and manners, and especially the language of the conquered. At this time, the common language of Spain, Italy, and Gaul, was Latin - not quite the same as the earlier Latin of Cicero, and, no doubt, more or less different in different localities. As the Germans had to learn this Latin in order to get on with the people, many German words crept into it, and it naturally became still more unlike what it had been. At last, men began to understand that quite new languages had really grown up. Thus, from the mixture of the Teutonic settlers with the Roman inhab

itants, there slowly arose the modern nations of Spain, Italy, and France, and from the mixture of their languages, there gradually sprung the modern Spanish, Italian, and French,each, when considered with reference to the Latin, called a dialeet; but viewed by itself, as distinct from either of the others, a language. These newly formed languages, derived by more or less direct processes from one and the same ancient tongue — the Roman Latin- are known as the Romance tongues. Their homogeneity is clearly traceable in the following versions of the first verse, first chapter, of St. John:

Latin. In principio (beginning) erat (was) Verbum (Word), et (and) Verbum erat apud (with) Deum (God), et Deus erat Verbum.

Italian.-Nel principio la Parola era, e la Parola era appo Iddio, e la Parola era Dio. French. Au commencement était la Parole, et la Parole était avec Dieu, et cette Parole était Dieu.

Spanish.- En el principio era el Verbo, y el Verbo estaba con Dios, y el Verbo era Dios.

Again, any of these, as split up into different local forms or provincial idioms, may be regarded as composed of an aggregate of dialects proper; for every language is marked by certain peculiarities in different quarters of the same country. Thus two hundred years ago, a man in London would say, 'I would eat more cheese, if I had it.' One in the Northern counties would have said, 'Ay sud eat mare cheese, gin ay had it.' The Western man said, 'Chud eat more cheese, and chad it.' The rustic Westmorelander, to the question, 'How far is it?' replies, "Why, like it garly nigh like to four miles like.' The conjugation of the Southern slave is, 'I was done gone, you was done gone, he was

done gone.'

We are not, however, to think of a dialect as a vulgar form of the classical or literary speech, and its modes of expression as violations of grammar, but rather as one of the forms in which language, passing through its successive phases, once existed. Here and there its departures from what we have been used to, may be set down to the ignorance or stupidity of the speaker. But much oftener its words, its singular combinations, which appear to us as barbarisms, were once reputable, employed by all, and happen to have found an abiding place in certain districts which have not kept abreast with the advances which the language has made. Thus, in parts of England, for 'we sing,' 'ye sing,' 'they sing,' they yet use the plurals 'we singen,' 'ye

singen,' 'they singen,'-a mode of declension which arose in the time of Chaucer, and was constantly employed by Spenser. We are told, indeed, that this form of the plural is still retained in parts of Maryland. It is not very uncommon, in the country, to hear one say, 'I'm aƒeard,' or 'I'll ax him,' or 'the price riz yesterday,' or 'I'll tell ye'; and we are apt to esteem such phrases violations of the primary rules of grammar, but they are the forms which the words once regularly and grammatically assumed. An old Dative, tham, from tha, is still in use among our lower orders; as, 'Look at them boys.' Ourn for ours, and hern for hers, which are not infrequent among us, were freely employed by Wycliffe, who wrote standard English. We are not therefore to conclude that these forms are good English now: for in writing or speaking we are bound to conform to present use and custom, just as in buying or selling we are to use the form of money that is circulating, not that which was current in the Revolution, or which has long been withdrawn from circulation.

Idioms.-Nations, like individuals, have their peculiar ideas; and, since the sign must correspond to the thing signified, these peculiar ideas become the genius of their language. The idioms' of a given tongue are the modes of expression in harmony with its genius. For example:

Arma virumque cano, Trojae qui primus ab oris Italiam, fato Arms man-and, (I)-sing (of)-Troy who first from coasts (to)-Italy (by)-fate profugus, Laviniaque venit litora.- Virgil.

(an)-exile Lavinian-and came shores.

Such an arrangement, though natural to Latin, is quite foreign to English:

I sing of arms, and the man who first from the coasts of Troy, by fate an exile, came to Italy and the Lavinian shores.

That order and diction are idiomatic which are used habitually,in conversation or familiar letters. Thus, when Dr. Johnson said of the Rehearsal, 'It has not wit enough to keep it sweet,' he was idiomatic; but when, after a moment's reflection, he expressed it, 'It has not sufficient virtue to preserve it from putrefaction,' he was unidiomatic. When he wrote, 'I bore the diminution of my riches without any outrages of sorrow or pusillanimity of dejection,' he used a style in which no one quarrels, makes love, or

1 From the Greek, meaning proper or peculiar.