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Usages of Preposition “but," 125 Usages of Preposition

"up," "upon," 125

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after," "out of,"

126

126

INTRODUCTION.

1.-THE NATIONS OF EUROPE.

It seems natural to every nation to regard as barbarous and uncivilized every other nation that speaks a different language, and even in the same nation different dialects of the same language are as contemptuous of each other. The more a nation stands by itself, shut in by its own boundaries, without intercourse with its neighbours, the more convinced it is that wisdom dwells with it alone, and that the speech of others is a strange gibberish, as the cries of birds or the chatter of apes.

This is not surprising; for just as the eye of the scientific naturalist alone can detect and distinguish the common features which prove that the horse, the ass, the rhinoceros, and the elephant are members of one family, so the scientific linguist alone has been enabled to detect and trace the facts which prove that languages, seemingly the most dissimilar, are in truth sprung from one common stock.

The nations which swarm from one end of Europe to the other speak languages that to eye and ear seem very different; the stranger in Russia, in Germany, in England feels himself among an alien people, he understands not their speech, he is ill at ease amid their strange manners and customs. And yet all the while there is a common kindred of word and race that no length of time can destroy, no modern difference of speech disprove. The Gael, the German, the Roman, the Greek, in their long and varied intercourse of arms and arts, of conquest and defeat, little suspected that they were of common origin; nor did the thousands that, but half a century ago, met in desperate