rule responds to the English D; as in Onp and deer; Ovyárnp and daughter; Oúpa and door. If the Greek or Latin has the medial, the English should have the thin: that is to say, a Classic ▲ or D should correspond to our English T. So it does in δάκρυ, and tear : δύο, duo, and two: déka, decem, and ten: déμw, domus, and timbran, the Saxon verb for building: dévdpov, dpûs, and tree: dingua, archaic Latin for lingua, and tongue. These, and all such illustrations, may be summarised for convenience sake in the following mnemonic formula: T. A M A M T where the Roman letters of the Latin word TAM placed over the Gothic letters of the German word Amt are intended to bracket together the initial letters of Thins, Medials, and Aspirates, so as to represent the order of transition. In the use of this scheme, we will suppose the student to be enquiring after the Greek and Latin analogues to the English word kind. This word begins with a Tenuis or thin consonant, and thus directs us to the letter T in the Gothic word Amt. Over this T we find in the Latin word an м, and by this we are taught that the Medial of K, which is G (see Table, 4), will be the corresponding initial in Greek and Latin. Thus we are directed to yev and gigno as the analogues of kin and kind. The same process will lead from knee to yov, and genu, from ken and know to γινώσκω. 6. These examples will satisfy the reader that here we have traces of a regular law, and that our language is of one and the same strain with the Greek and Latin-that is to say, it is one of the Indo-European family. A succession of small divergences which run upon stated lines of variation-lines having a determinate relation to one another, and constituting an orbit in which the transitional movement revolves :—this is a phenomenon worthy of our contemplation. It is the simplest example of a fact which in other shapes will meet us again, namely, that the beauty of philology springs out of that variety over unity which makes all nature beautiful, and all study of nature profoundly attractive. It will be easy to discover a great number of examples which lie outside the above analogy. One important cause of unconformability is the introduction of foreign words. This applies to all Gothic words beginning with P, which are foreigners and not subject to this law. There is also a certain amount of accidental disturbance. Casualties happen to words as to all mortal products: and in the course of time their forms get defaced. The German language offers many examples of this. If I want to understand the consonantal analogies which existed between English and German, I should prefer as a general rule to go to the oldest form of German, because a conventional orthography, among other causes, has in German led to a disfigurement of many of the forms. The tendency of words to get disguised, is therefore one reason why these analogies do not hold more completely than they do. In process of time new principles of word-forming are admitted, new words and new forms overgrow and supersede the old; even the old words conform more or less to the new fashions, and become changed in their appearance, so that the traces of old kindred are obliterated. 7. But if such a relation as that which is condensed in the above mnemonic is clearly established as existing between the Classical languages on the one hand, and the Gothic on the other, much more distinctly and largely may it be shewn that a like relation exists internally between the two main subdivisions of the Gothic family. These two parts are the High Dutch and the Low Dutch. The Modern or New High Dutch is what we now call 'German,' the great literary language of Central Europe, inaugurated by Luther in his translation of the Bible. Behind this great modern speech we have two receding stages of its earlier forms, the Middle High Dutch or the language of the Epic of the Nibelungen, and the Old High Dutch or the language of the Scripture paraphrasts Otfrid and Notker. The Alt-Hoch-Deutsch goes back to the tenth century; the Mittel-Hoch-Deutsch goes back to the thirteenth; and the Neu-Hoch-Deutsch dates from the Reformation of the sixteenth century. This is the High Dutch division of the Gothic languages. Round about these, in a broken curve, are found the representatives of the Low Dutch family. Their earliest literary traces go back to the fourth century, and appear in the villages of Dacia, in lands which slope to the Danube; where the country is by foreigners called Wallachia. It is from this region that we have the Mosogothic Gospels and other relics of the planting of Christianity. But the greatest body of the Low Dutch is to the north and west of Germany. Along the shores of the Baltic, and far inland, where High Dutch is established in the educated ranks, the mass of the folk speak Low Dutch, which locally passes by the name of Platt-Deutsch. The kingdom of the Netherlands, where it is a truly national speech, the speech of all ranks of the community-the kingdom of Belgium, where, under the name of Flemish, it is striving for recognition, and has gained a place in literature through the pen of Hendrik Consciencethe old district of the Hanseatic cities, the Lower Elbe, Hamburgh, Lübeck, Bremen,-all this is Nieder-Deutsch, Low Dutch. 8. To this family belongs the English language in respect of that which is the oldest and most material part of it. It has received so many additions from other sources, and has worked them up with so much individuality of effect, as to have in fact produced a new language, and a language which, from external circumstances, seems likely to become the parent of a new strain of languages. But all the outgrowth and exuberance of the English language clusters round a Low Dutch centre. It would be a departure from the general way of philologers to include under the term of Low Dutch the languages of Scandinavia. The latter have very strong individualising features of their own, such as the post-positive article, and a form for the passive verb. The post-positive article is highly curious. In modern Danish or Swedish the indefinite article a or an is represented by en for masculine and feminine, and et for neuter. Thus en skov signifies a wood (shaw) and et træ signifies a tree. But if you want to say the wood, the tree, you suffix these syllables to the nouns, and then they have the effect of the definite article: skoven, the wood; træet, the tree; Juletræet, the Christmas tree. 9. The possession of a form for the passive is hardly less. remarkable, when we consider that the Gothic languages in general make the passive, as we do in English, by the aid of the verb to be. Active to love, passive to be loved. But the Scandinavian dialects just add an s to the active, and that makes it passive. This s is a relic of an old reflexive pronoun, so that it is most like the French habit of getting a sort of a passive by prefixing the reflexive pronoun se. Thus in French marier is to marry (active), of parents who marry their children; but if you have to express to marry in the sense of to get married or to be married, you say se marier. Examples of the Danish passive form:— There is only one other language of this great family that has preserved any traces of a passive verb, and that is the Mosogothic. Here the form was more elaborate than in the Scandinavian dialects, but it was already far gone towards dissolution at the date of the extant writings. But though such features as a passive form, and a post-positive article, have a strong characterising effect, they do not take languages out of those lines of classification which separate the High from the Low Dutch. Between the Icelandic, or, to speak more generally, the Northern (Norræna) speech on the one side, and the Mosogothic on the other, we may describe the position of the Low Dutch half of the Gothic family. 10. The cycle of letter-change which has been described above as taking place externally between the Classic tongues on the one hand and the Gothic on the other, will be found, upon a comparison of High with Low Dutch, to repeat itself also internally. The very same mnemonic which there proved a true guide, will substantially hold good also here. The consonantal variations between the High Dutch on the one hand, and the Low Dutch on the other, may be symbolised by writing the German word samt over the English word tame, thus |