fight at Leipsic in the Battle of Nations, know that they were brethren, all members of the great Aryan family. Let us see how this becomes evident.

The great families of Europe at the present time are the German and Slavonic; but if we go back to the earlier years of the Christian era we find that the nations of Europe were Keltic, Germanic, Slavonic, Latin, and Greek; and although Kelts, Latins, and Greeks have ceased to be dominant races, yet they are still powerfully represented, and the influence of their languages on modern tongues cannot be for a moment overlooked.

The traditions of these great families, the Kelt, the German, the Slavonic, the Latin, the Greek, all point backwards to a time when they came from the east, and their progress during historic times has always been towards the west, and still continues in that direction.

Led by these traditions philologers have sought for the sources of European languages in the east, and vain attempts were made to derive all from the ancient Hebrew; and not only of European tongues, but of all languages was Hebrew thought to be the mother.

Two hundred years ago the primeval language was still sought in the Hebrew; but a little more than a century since the study of Hindoo literature brought to light Sanskrit, the ancient language of the Hindoos, a sacred language long since dead, in which are preserved the religious works of the Brahmins. The more closely this language has been studied the more clearly does there come out the fact that in it are to be found words expressing ideas common to all languages, and presenting root-forms of kindred words of the Greek, Latin, Keltic, German, and Slavonic tongues; and more than this, not only can earlier forms of ancient and modern European words be detected in Sanskrit, but from Sanskrit also evidently springs the great body of modern Hindoo speech.

It is not to be supposed that Sanskrit is the original language from which all European and Indian languages sprung. Far from it. Sanskrit, itself an ancient tongue, bears internal evidence that it has sprung from one still older; and though much of European speech can be traced to

Sanskrit, many words cannot be tracked down to it, and would seem to draw their origin from an older language, of which Sanskrit is a daughter.

In the East, then, is to be sought the cradle of the European race, but not on the plains of Mesopotamia, or in the valley of the Jordan. Far away where the snow mountains of the Hindoo-Koosh shelter the plateau of Iran, perhaps in the fertile province of Bactria, must we look to find that ancient home from which Hindoo, Kelt, German, Slav, Roman, and Greek have all sprung. Thence they went forth at various times on various routes, going out from their old home when the time of their maturity came; going out as brothers of the same house go out, to seek their fortunes, and make new homes in other lands.

The

The ancient name of this primeval race seems to have been Arya, a word that probably contains the root of arare, to plough, and of the English word to ear. This name the earlier emigrants carried with them, and it is to be recognized in the names of Persian cities and Persian kings, and has even been traced to the green shores of Erin. Aryans, then, an agricultural people who had begun to cultivate the land, and to make for themselves settled homes, sent out from time to time their colonies westward through Persia, along the Caspian Sea, across and round the Euxine to the plains of Russia, along the shores of the Mediterranean, and even westward to the Atlantic and the German Ocean; through long ages did the mighty stream flow, till Europe was filled with their myriads; and then in modern times the western shores of the Atlantic and the western sea coast of America have given homes to the still advancing multitudes.

II.-LANGUAGES OF EUROPE.

But it will be asked: How are we to account for the great dissimilarities that make the languages of Europe unknown tongues to each other? A comparison of classical Latin with the Latin of the early Romans, or of a book of Milton with a poem of Chaucer or of Langland, will at once suggest the answer. There is nothing so changeful as language; from

year to year, from century to century, silent irresistible forces are at work to change the pronunciation and the forms of words; the grandson speaks with an accent and a tone that would have shocked the grandfather; and words, as they pass from mouth to mouth, from class to class, are clipt and amalgamated till their old form is lost, and perhaps only a consonant or two remains to mark the loss of syllables that were one enunciated ore rotundo. So that even if all the natives of Europe had spoken the very same language, the mere ordinary changes that come about in several centuries, combined with the isolation, through many generations, of the nations from each other, would be quite enough to separate and disguise their speech. But the nations of Europe did not arrive at the same time, nor did they bring with them the same language. Already, before the earliest family emigrated, changes had been at work, and each successive colony that went forth carried with it a language more and more altered by ordinary natural changes from the primeval speech. We are not then to suppose, nor to try to prove in European languages, that any one language is chiefly derived from another-for example, Latin from Greek, German from Sanskrit, English from Gothic; but we must regard the languages as sister tongues, daughters of some far remote original speech, which, rude and simple no doubt, served well the purposes of men rude and simple in manners, but men who had begun to develop the arts of life, and had found homes, and formed ideas of law and religion. In their wanderings from their ancestral home the various families came into contact with new scenes and different races of men. They lived in a new world, and had to enlarge their vocabulary and their means of expressing thought. Here we have new causes of change; and often new words become current to express or symbolize new ideas. And thus we find in families of nations speaking kindred languages, very different words for even the most common and universal facts and associations of daily life.

But in spite of all such differences there are to be traced through all European languages and the kindred languages of India, certain root-ideas and common words which prove

the common origin of all, and point backward to a remote original tongue.

But the two great discoveries which have continued to prove the kinship of European and Indian languages are1st, The discovery and study of Sanskrit.

2nd, The discovery and application of Grimms' Law of mute changes.

In Sanskrit we come upon many, very many, root-forms of modern words; and by Grimms' Law we are enabled to follow the changes through which these common words have passed, and enabled, too, to mark down the variations of modern languages among each other.

The Aryan or Indo-European family of languages is one then that comprises many nations, both of Asia and Europe and America. Its principal tongues may be classed as Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, all dead; Keltic, almost dead; Persian, Slavonian, Teutonic, living and growing. Of the Teutonic tongue there are three great branches, the Scandinavian, the High German, and Low Gernian. English is a Low German tongue, and claims as its sisters Frisian, Dutch, and Flemish, these being the languages spoken by races living in the northern and western Lowlands of Germany.

III. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

The English language then is a Low German dialect; it is not the first of the Aryan tongues that was spoken, nor are Englishmen the first of the Aryan people that were established in these Islands. Tribes of the Keltic race, of the same stock as the Gauls of the mainland, were older inhabitants, and were driven out or destroyed by the ancestors of the modern English; Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall are still the homes of the remnants of the Keltic race, and the language still lives in those countries. But in the fifth

century English tribes planted themselves firmly in Great Britain, and finally conquered the land, bringing with them new speech, new laws, new manners, and a new name. Since that time English has been the speech of the people of England, and of great part of Scotland, the southern districts

of which were overrun and conquered by the English race. Ireland, the modern stronghold of the Kelt, has in like manner yielded to the power and to the language of the English. For more than a thousand years the English language can be traced in all its change and growth from the days of ancient Anglian and Saxon (or Anglo-Saxon) lays to the verse of Milton and Tennyson, and the prose of Addison and Macaulay. During this long period of time the English language has passed through, or rather developed, great changes. The first records of English show us a language full of inflections, with a regular system of declensions and conjugations, a language, in short, like Greek or Latin, highly inflected and synthetical; but the inevitable change took place, somewhat accelerated by the Norman conquest, and English became an uninflexional or analytical language that is to say, that whereas originally the grammar of the language gave us a complete system of case and person-endings, built together with the greatest ease, modern English grammar has, as it were, pulled to pieces this system of inflection, and presents us instead with prepositions and auxiliary verbs. This change has taken place in other Teutonic tongues; but the temporary abeyance of the English language as the language of cultivated and literary men, after the Norman conquest, made English for a time a spoken rather than a written language, and quickened the loosening of the old strict grammatical forms.

But neither Norman-French nor any other alien tongue has in any way affected the grammar of the language. A rich vocabulary of foreign words has been adopted and naturalized. Every nation that has come to fight, or to trade, or to teach, has paid toll to the English vocabulary; but all new words have had to conform themselves to English rules. Many attempts have been made to encumber the language with pedantic words, that smell of the student's lamp, and even to Latinize the style of English books; but all have failed. There has always come a natural reaction and revulsion to simpler words, and a simpler style of composition.

Modern English, as now spoken and written by the most highly educated Englishmen, has sprung from the East