In this mnemonic, the final e of tame is there merely to make an English word of it, in order to indicate that the symbols, т, a, м, in this place, are doing duty for the English group, that is, the Low Dutch group, in the comparison; while the letters sa, m, t, which form a German word, represent the High Dutch side of the comparison. The combination of fa is useful as a reminder that in High Dutch the sibilant for 3 is the substitute for an aspirated dental (such as our th) which that language does not possess.

The action of this law is most readily exhibited with the dentals, because in these we can employ modern German as the representative of High Dutch. The first group illustrates the law that where the Low Dutch has a tenuis, the High Dutch has an aspirate (or the sibilant which supplies their want of a dental aspirate), and this law is represented by the formula

The second group shews that where the Low Dutch has

an aspirate the High Dutch has a medial, and this is represented by the formula

The third formula represents the law that where the Low

Dutch has a medial the High Dutch has a tenuis:

11. But when we apply the scheme to the labials and gutturals, we can no longer take modern German as a representative of High Dutch. In the letters of these organs it has admitted so much of Low Dutch, that we are obliged to seek examples from the pure Old High Dutch of the Frankish Empire. Both in the labials and in the gutturals, our medial corresponds to High German tenuis, as represented by the mnemonic formula.

By the above lists it is made plain that the Mosogothic sides with the English or Low Dutch, as against the German or High Dutch.

12. Thus far the examples are all based on initial letters : it will be well to shew like analogies in the middle and end of words. The comparison shall be confined to English and German, as being that which will be most generally useful and convenient. continues to

The mnemonic {fa mt }

t a me

mark the path of the Lautverschiebung between High and

Low Dutch.

13. This evidence for the affinities of our language would be far less perfect than it is, but for the material which has been supplied by means of Christianity. To this cause we trace the preservation of the oldest literary records of our family of languages. In the fourth century Scripture was translated into Mosogothic: in the seventh century Anglo-Saxon began to be cultivated by means of Christianity, and during five centuries were produced those writings which have partly survived. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the spread of Christianity northwards caused the Norsk Sagas to be committed to writing. Literary culture has been transplanted from the old into the midst of the young and rising peoples of the world, and hence it has come to pass that among the nations which have sprung into existence since Christianity, a better record of their primitive language has been preserved. Hence the striking fact that we can trace the written history of our English language within this island for the space of twelve hundred years. Christianity was the cause of its early cultivation; and this has made it possible

for us to follow back the traces of our language into a far higher relative antiquity than that in which the languages of Greece and Rome first begin to emerge into historic view.

14. This has been very generally the case with the Christian nations of the world. Their literature begins with their conversion; and but for that event it would have been long delayed. The rude tribes of the distant islands have now, by means of the missionaries, the best books of the world translated into their own tongues; and this at a stage of their existence in which they could not of themselves produce a written record. How carefully the Mosogothic language was considered and adapted to the expression of Scripture, becomes manifest to the philological student, when he examines those precious relics of the fourth century which bear the name of Ulphilas. Here we often meet the very words with which we are so familiar in our English Bible, but linked together by a flexional structure that finds no parallel short of Sanskrit. This is the oldest book we can go back to, as written in a language like our own. It has therefore a national interest for us; but apart from this, it has a nobility and grandeur all its own, being one of the finest specimens of ancient language. It is by this, and this alone, that we are able to realise to how high a pitch of inflection the speech of our own race was once carried. Inflections which in German, or even in Anglo-Saxon, are but fragmentarily preserved, like relics of an expiring fashion, are there seen standing forth in all their archaic rigidity and polysyllabicity.

15. In the subjoined Lord's Prayer the English is a little distorted to make it a verbal guide to the Mosogothic words: