lary of common life, including our colloquialisms, idiomatic phrases, and the language of conversation. Thus we see that the essential element in English is native. Between its past and present there is only the difference that exists between the ling and the tree, or between the boy and the man.

sap

Anglo-Norman History in English.-Supposing all other records to have perished, we could still trace the reciprocal relations of the Saxon and Norman occupants of England in their contributions to the language which they have jointly bequeathed us. Thus we should conclude that the Norman was the ruling race from the noticeable fact that nearly all the words of state descend to us from them,-sovereign, throne, crown, sceptre, realm, royalty, prince, chancellor, treasurer. Norman aristocracy transmits us duke, baron, peer, esquire, count, palace, castle, hall, mansion. Common articles of dress are Saxon,-shirt, shoes, hat, breeches, cloak; but other articles, subject to changes of fashion, are of Norman origin,-gown, coat, boots, mantle, cap, bonnet, etc. Room and kitchen are Saxon; chambers, parlors, galleries, pantries, and laundries are Norman. The Saxon's stool, bench, bed, and board—often probably it was no moreare less luxurious than the table, chair, and couch of his Norman lord. The boor whose sturdy arms turned the soil, opened wide his eyes at the Norman carpet and curtain. While luxury, chivalry, adornment, are Norman, the instruments used in cultivating the earth, as well as its main products, are Saxon,— plough, share, rake, scythe, harrow, sickle, spade, wheat, rye, oats, grass, hay, flax.

Thus are words, when we remove the veil which custom and familiarity have thrown over them, seen to be illustrative of national life. As the earth has its strata and deposits from which the geologist is able to arrive at a knowledge of the successive physical changes through which a region has passed, so language has its alluvium and drift from which the linguist may disinter, in fossil form, the social condition, the imaginations and feelings, of a period—a period far more remote than any here suggested.

Superiority of Saxon English.-The special reasons assignable for this are:

1. Early association.-A child's vocabulary is almost wholly Saxon. He calls a thing nice or nasty, not pleasant or disagreeable. Words acquired later in life are less familiar-less organically connected with his ideas, and hence less rapidly suggestive. 2. Brevity. The fewer the words, the more effective the idea,—as, to point to the door is more expressive than to say, 'Leave the room.' On the same principle, the fewer the syllables, the stronger the impression produced,― less time and effort are required to read the sign and perceive the thing signified. Hence the shortness of Saxon words becomes a cause of their greater force. One qualification must be made. When great power or intensity is to be suggested, an expansive and sonorous word, allowing the consciousness a longer time to dwell on the quality predicated, may be an advantage. A devout and poetic soul gazing, in stilly night, into stellar spaces,- what verb will express its emotion? See, look, think? - only the Latin contemplate. The noise going to and returning from hill to hill,-what word will describe it? Sound, boom, roar, echo, are all too tame; only reverberate tells the whole. Hence the value of the Latin element in contributing to copiousness and strength of expression. It is a pleasing study to observe how, in all the best writers, the long and short are harmoniously combined, as in these lines from Macbeth:

'Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No! this, my hand, will rather

The multitudinous seas incarnadine,

Making the green one red.'

3. Definiteness.—'Well-being arises from well-doing,' is Saxon. 'Felicity attends virtue,' is Latin. How inferior is the second, because less definite than the first. The more concrete the terms, the brighter the picture, as wagon and cart are more vivid than vehicle.

Therefore, though many words of Latin origin are equally simple and clear, those of Saxon origin are, as a whole, more so, and should be preferred. This is the current maxim of composition, most happily enforced in the following lines:

Think not that strength lies in the big, round word,
Or that the brief and plain must needs be weak.
To whom can this be true who once has heard
The cry for help, the tongue that all men speak,
When want, or fear, or woe, is in the throat.

So that each word gasped out is like a shriek
Pressed from the sore heart, or a strange, wild note,
Sung by some fay or fiend? There is a strength,
Which dies if stretched too far, or spun too fine,

Which has more height than breadth, more depth than length.
Let but this force of thought and speech be mine,

And he that will, may take the sleek, fat phrase,

Which glows, but burns not, though it beam and shine,
Light, but no heat,- a flash, but not a blaze."

Results. So does the English language combine, to an extent unequalled by any other living tongue, the classic (Latin) and the Teutonic,—the euphony, sonorousness, and harmony of the first; the strength, tenderness, and simplicity of the second; a happy medium between French and German,- more grave than the former, less harsh and cumbersome than the latter, grammatically simpler than either. From its composite character come that wealth and compass, that rich and varied music, which have made English Literature the crown and glory of the works of man. It has an abode, far and wide, in the islands of the earth; gives greeting on the shores of the Pacific, as of the Atlantic. Fixed in multitudes of standard works and endeared to the increasing millions who read and speak it, the natural growth of population, the love of conquest and colonization which has distinguished the Saxon race since they traversed the German Ocean in their frail barks, will help to extend and perpetuate its empire.

1 Dr. J. A. Alexander.

CHAPTER III.

FORMING OF THE LITERATURE.

Wherever possible, let us not be told about this man or that. Let us hear the man himself speak, let us see him act, and let us be left to form our own opinions about him.Froude.

My friend, the times which are gone are a book with seven seals; and what you call the spirit of past ages is but the spirit of this or that worthy gentleman in whose mind those ages are reflected.-Goethe.

The view of human manners, in all their variety of appearances, is both profitable and agreeable; and if the aspect in some periods seem horrid and deformed, we may thence learn to cherish with the greater anxiety that science and civility, which has so close a connection with virtue and humanity, and which as it is a sovereign antidote against superstition, is also the most effectual remedy against vice and disorder of every kind.-Hume.

Politics. From the primitive stock-Angles and Saxons, reinforced by the Danish ravagers, buried, re-elevated, and modified, by the Conquest-were to spring the nation and its history. In pursuance of Germanic custom, there was an early division of the kingdom, as we have seen, into counties, and of these into hundreds, the latter partition supposed to contain a hundred free families. Each had its tribunal; the Court of the Hundredheld by an alderman, next in authority to the king—being the lower. In course of time, the County Court became the real arbiter of important suits, the first contenting itself with punishing petty offences and keeping up a local police. Chiefly to this the English freeman looked for the maintenance of his civil rights. The hundreds were further distributed into decennaries, or tithings, known as 'ten men's tale.' In one of these, every freeman above the age of twelve was required to be enrolled. The members were a perpetual bail for each other; so that if one of the ten committed any fault, the nine were indirectly responsible. From earliest English times there had prevailed the usage of compurgation, under which the accused could be acquitted by the oath of his friends, who pledged their knowl edge, or at least their belief, of his innocence. The following passage in the laws of Alfred refers to this practice:

If any one accuse a king's thane of homicide, if he dare to purge himself, let him do it along with twelve king's thanes.' If any one accuse a thane of less rank than a king's thane, let him purge himself along with eleven of his equals, and one king's thane.'

Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence proceeded, as here, upon the maxim that the best guarantee of every man's obedience to the government was to be sought in the confidence of his neighbors. This privilege, the manifest fountain of unblushing perjury, was abolished by Henry II; though it long afterwards was preserved, by exemption, in London and in boroughs. There was left, however, the favorite mode of defence, the ordeal, or 'judgment of God.' Innocence could be proved by the power of holding hot iron in the hand, or by sinking when flung into the water, for swimming was a proof of guilt. When these were annulled in 1216, the combat remained, but no longer applicable unless an injured prosecutor came forward to demand it.

This was of Norman origin. The nobleman fought on horseback; the plebeian on foot, with his club and target. The vanquished party forfeited his claim and paid a fine. It was the function of the court to see that the formalities of the combat, the ordeal, or the compurgation, were duly regarded, and to observe whether the party succeeded or succumbed,- a function which required neither a knowledge of positive law nor the dictates of natural sagacity.

The seed of our present form of Trial by Jury may be discovered in a law of Ethelred II, binding the sheriff and twelve principal thanes to swear that they would neither acquit any criminal nor convict any innocent person. In 1176, precise enactment established the jury system, still rude and imperfect, as the usual mode of trial:

The justices, who represented the king's person, were to make inquiry by the oaths of twelve knights, or other lawful men, of each hundred, together with the four men from each township, of all murders, robberies, and thefts, and of all who had harboured such offenders, since the king's (Henry II) accession to the throne.'

The jurors were essentially witnesses distinguished from other witnesses only by customs which imposed upon them the obligation of an oath and regulated their number. For fifty years yet their duties were to present offenders for trial by ordeal or combat. Under Edward I, witnesses acquainted with the particular fact in question were added to the general jury; and later these became simply 'witnesses,' without judicial power,