the want of distinction between the singular dative him and the plural dative, also written him, though sometimes heom. In the following passage, Mark vi. 48-50, we find him three times, and in every case it corresponds to the modern them:

And he geseah hig on rewette swincende; him was widerweard wind: and on niht ymbe pa feordan wæccan, he com to him ofer þa sæ gangende, and wolde hig forbugan.

pa hig hine gesawon ofer þa sæ gangende, hig wéndon þæt hit unfæle gast wære, and hig clypedon:

hig ealle hine gesawon and wurdon gedrefede. And sona he spræc to him, and cwæð: Gelyfað; ic hit eom; nelle ge eow ondrædan.'

So that, as the English language emerged from its French incubus, it gradually substituted they, their, them, in the place of the elder hi, heora, him. This change was not quite established till far on in the fifteenth century. In Chaucer we have still the elder forms in free use, and he wrote them thus: hi, hir, hem. Here is a couplet with two of these forms in it :

'So hadde I spoken with hem everichon

That I was of hir felawship anon.' Prologue 31.

It may not be amiss to add that when in provincial English we meet with 'em in place of them, it must be regarded as an elided form not of them, but of hem.

These two pronouns have held a great place in our language. We can hardly omit to notice what may be called their rhetorical use. This has a rhetorical use expressive of contempt. It was by means of this pronoun that Horne Tooke expressed his contempt for the philology of Harris's Hermes

'There will be no end of such fantastical writers as this Mr. Harris, who takes fustian for philosophy.'-Diversions of Purley, part ii. c. 6.

That, on the other hand is a great symbol of admiration; in illustration of which we may cite Mr. Gladstone's enco

mium of political justice, in the peroration of his speech on the second reading of the Irish Land Bill, March 11, 1870:

'The face of justice is like the face of the god Janus. It is like the face of those lions, the work of Landseer, which keep watch and ward around the record of our country's greatness. She presents one tranquil and majestic countenance towards every point of the compass and every quarter of the globe. That rare, that noble, that imperial virtue has this above all other qualities, that she is no respecter of persons, and she will not take advantage of a favourable moment to oppress the wealthy for the sake of flattering the poor, any more than she will condescend to oppress the poor for the sake of pampering the luxuries of the rich.'

Both of these uses are to be paralleled in Greek and Latin, as the student of those languages should ascertain for himself, if he is not already familiar with the feature.

But a more peculiar interest attaches to this pronoun from the circumstance that out of it has been carved the definite article. The word the is simply an abbreviation of that on which the French pronoun le has probably exercised some influence in the way of shaping its form.

And not unfrequently we experience in the course of reading, especially in poetry, a certain force in the definite article, which we could not better convey in words than by saying it reminds us of its parentage, and calls the demonstrative to mind. It is one of those fugitive sensations that will not always come when they are called for; but perhaps the reader may catch what is meant if the following line from the Christian Year is offered in illustration :

'The man seems following still the funeral of the boy.' The same thing may however be shown in a manner more agreeable to science. We find cases in which the same text is variously rendered according as the interpreters have seen a demonstrative or a definite article in the original :Ezekiel xi. 19.

1611.

'I wil take the stonie herte out of their flesh, and will giue them an

heart of flesh.'

But there is a case, and that rather a frequent one, in which the is still a demonstrative and is not a definite article at all. It is the ablative case thy of the Saxon declension above given, and answers to the Latin eo before comparatives. When it is doubled, it answers to the Latin quo eo, just as that that in Saxon was equivalent to the Latin id quod.

'The more luxury increases, the more urgent seems the necessity for thus securing a luxurious provision.'-John Boyd-Kinnear, Woman's Work, p. 353.

The next adjectival pronoun which we will notice shall be the word one. It has already been largely spoken of in the former section, where it was seen to occupy an important place. But its substantival function is after all less important in the development of our language than its adjectival habit; because out of this has grown that member which is the most distinctive perhaps that can be fixed upon as the mark of a modern language. The definite article is found in some of the ancient languages, as in Hebrew and Greek, but none of them had produced an indefinite article. The general remark has already been made in an earlier chapter, that it is in the symbolic element we must seek the distinctive character of the modern as opposed to the ancient languages. And we may appeal to the indefinite article as the most recent and most expressive feature of this modern characteristic. In the Greek of the New Testament there are certain indications (known to scholars) of something like an indefinite article.

In its adjectival use this pronoun is generally set in antithesis to another; as,—

'Yf one Sathan cast out another.'-Matt. xii. tr. Coverdale (1535).

'Mike. I say one man's as good as anither; what do you say, Pat. To be shure and that he is, and a dale betther too!'

Pat?

Out of this has been produced the indefinite article. It has not sprung directly from the numeral one, but from that word after it has passed through the refining discipline of a symbolic usage.

The old spelling of the numeral was àn; and this ancient form is preserved in the article an or a. This gives us occasion to remark that old forms are often preserved in the more elevated functions, while the original and inferior function has admitted changes.

Having thus indicated the sources of our two articles, let us observe that they still carry about them the traces of their extraction. The magnifying quality of the demonstrative that has been noticed above. Its descendant the definite article retains something of this ancestral quality. We all know how the ceremonious The adds grandeur to a name, and how all titles of office and honour are jealously retentive of this prefix.

On the other hand, the indefinite article, which is descended from the littlest of the numerals, exercises a diminishing effect, as in the following:

This little life-boat of an earth, with its noisy crew of a mankind, and all their troubled history, will one day have vanished.'-Thomas Carlyle, Essays; Death of Goethe.

These minute vocables are the real winged words' of human speech; or, to speak with more exactness, they are the wings of other words, by means of which smoothness and agility is imparted to their motion. It is in the articles that the symbolic element of language finds its most advanced development; and it is not by means of these alone, but by means of that whole system of words of which these are the foremost and most perfect type, that the modern languages when compared with the ancient are found to excel in alacrity and sprightliness.

III. ADVERBIAL PRONOUNS.

This chapter of pronouns keeps up on the whole a parallel course to the chapter on nouns. Like that, it is divided into three main sections, Substantives, Adjectives, Adverbs. Moreover, as in that chapter the third section assumed a trifid form, so also here do we find ourselves compelled by the nature of the subject to divide this final section into three paragraphs. In this symbolic as well as in that presentive region, the adverbs assume the three forms of Flat, Flexional, and Phrasal.

1. Of the Flat Pronoun-Adverbs.

The higher we mount in the structure of language the more delicate a matter will it be to analyse and make sharp distinctions. The presentive adverbs pass off by such fine and imperceptible shadings into a symbolic state, that the division must needs be exposed to uncertainty. To let this the more plainly appear, we will begin here with the same strain of adverbs as we left off with at the close of the nounal adverbs.

Up. This is clearly a presentive word so long as the original idea of elevation is preserved. But it passes off into a more refined use, a more purely mental service, and then we call it no longer a noun but a pronoun.

The instance of breaking-up is an interesting one. It is one of those in which the flat adverb at one time attached itself closely to the verb, indeed almost symphytically, and had with the verb been subjected to a peculiar appropriation of meaning. This expression now is apt to suggest the

Ee