the commonplace in matter and in manner, we find such words indispensable. We say indispensable; for, while the ferry-boat that takes us daily to our place of business is indispensable, the transatlantic steamer that bears us to Europe is not less so, even though we go but once.

It would seem that these two classes of words, mingling freely in the current of every English sentence, have dwelt so long and pleasantly together that we should cease to call either class foreign, alien. Often we cannot, without close scrutiny, tell which words are Latin and which are AngloSaxon. By some ear-marks, perhaps, but certainly not by their length, by their strangeness, or by his inability to handle them deftly, would one of but average culture suspect that the following nouns, adjectives, and verbs belong to the Latin:

Age, art, case, cent, cost, fact, form, ink, line, mile, pain, pair, part, pen, piece, price, rule, sound, ton, tone, and vail; apt, clear, cross, crude, firm, grand, large, mere, nice, pale, plain, poor, pure, rare, real, rich, round, safe, scarce, sure, vain, and vast; add, aid, aim, boil, close, cook, cure, fail, fix, fry, mix, move, pay, save, serve, try, turn, and use.

These and hundreds of other short Latin words, as well understood as the simplest Anglo-Saxon, are mostly without Saxon equivalents. But even those with Saxon duplicates are necessary; they give to our speech a rich synonymy that aids us in making and in expressing the finer distinctions in thought.

The Latin are often (1) the most forcible words in English. What Anglo-Saxon verb of teaching matches in vigor inculcate to drive in with the heel? What other adjective denoting health has the strength of robust — oaken? Such words, unfortunately, are pregnant with meaning mainly to the etymologist. In this they differ from what the vigorous,

self-explaining Anglo-Saxon words would have been had that element been fostered. They give (2) conciseness to expression; like canals across isthmuses they shorten the route witness mutual, reanimate, circumlocution. Oftener than the Anglo-Saxon they are (3) metaphorical, and flash upon the thought a poetic light; as, dilapidated, applied to fortune or dress; ruined, to character; luminous, to expression. They impart (4) grace and smoothness to style — are the musical, melodious, and mellifluous words of the language. They give (5) pomp and stateliness to discourse, and make possible the grand manner of Sir Thomas Browne, of Milton, and of De Quincey. A vocabulary like ours, duly compounded of the Teutonic and the Romance, has a manifoldness and an affluence of wealth that adapt it to every kind of writing, and are wonderfully stimulative of it. And so, while the literatures in other languages excel, each in some single department, ours is confessedly eminent in all.

While it is difficult to exaggerate the work and the worth of the Anglo-Saxon in English, we deprecate what has been called the "violent reaction" that has set in, in favor of it -a reaction that, carried to the extreme, would practically disinherit us of vast verbal possessions. But, without any wish or effort to champion the Latin element, we may safely say that this reaction cannot be carried to the extreme.

We are not surprised then to find the wise Alexander Bain breaking out, on the opening page of his work, On Teaching English, into, "To write continuously in anything like pure Saxon is plainly impossible. Moreover, none of our standard English authors, whether in prose or in poetry, have thought it a merit to be studiously Saxon in their vocabulary."

The words chosen should be appropriate to the topic, and

level to the comprehension of those addressed. Thus much we may properly insist upon; but it would be unwise to encourage our pupils to seek for such words in the AngloSaxon element alone.

LESSON 33.

USE OF WORDS — DIFFICULT WORDS, PROPRIETY
AND PRECISION.

The thought of a sentence may be largely or even wholly obscured by the excessive use of long and alien words.

To the Teacher. — In the Revision we have added so much to this Lesson that you will need to make two of it.

Direction. - Study these sentences till you think you understand them, and then give their meaning in simple language:

1. Diminutive and defective slave, reach my corps-coverture immediately. 'Tis my complacency that vest to have to ensconce my person from frigidity.

2. Network, anything reticulated, or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.

3. An autopsy was held, which revealed extensive cardiac disease, consisting of hypertrophy, with aneurism of the aorta just below its bifurcation.

4. An, or a, used in a general sense to denote an individual member of a class or species or genus in all other respects indeterminate, is called an indefinite article.

5. He felt the full force of that sublunary equipoise that seemed evermore to hang suspended over the attainment of long-sought and uncommon felicity.

6. The last of men was Dr. Johnson to have abetted squandering the delicacy of integrity by multiplying the labors of talents.

7. He was assaulted during his precipitated return by the rudest fierceness of wintry elemental strife, through which with bad accommodations and innumerable accidents he became a prey to the merciless pangs of the acutest spasmodic rheumatism.

8. Language, or speech, is the utterance of articulate sounds rendered significant by usage for the expression and communication of thoughts - articulate sounds being those which are formed by the opening and closing of the organs. The closing or approximation of the organs is an articulation, or jointing.

2. Use Words with Propriety and with Precision. - Propriety requires that the words and phrases employed should be used in the senses recognized by good English authority, favored by prevailing usage.

Precision means exactness, and demands that one's words should express just what he means to express no more, no less, no other. "Propriety is satisfied if we write good English precision demands such a choice of good English as shall express our meaning."

The first half of precept 2- that respecting propriety -enjoins us to use words with the meanings they have in good authors. We can find out these meanings only as we read such authors, and study the dictionaries, which reflect the usage such authors unconsciously create.

During the last ten or fifteen years many books have been written to tell the English world what words and phrases must not be used at all; or, if used, in what senses and with what functions. The writers of these books singularly agree in what they proscribe and in what, openly and by implication, they prescribe. But it does not appear that they have the warrant of usage for what they so oracularly teach they seldom or never quote it. Each writer speaks for himself, and on the authority of his individual reason. This we can affirm, for we are able to show that in very many, in most, of the important judg

ments pronounced, they are in conflict with usage - usage plainly allowing what they peremptorily forbid. To get at the verdict of usage on points thus dogmatically settled and on others that these critics have passed by, we have been consulting the best authors, British and American, now living, or, if dead, living till recently. We have carefully read fifty of these authors, and read three hundred pages of each. Just what these men by habitual use teach on these points and what they thus declare to be good. English we have noted.

It is in place here, under the head of Propriety, to speak of a few of the words and phrases which usage says we may employ, but which these critics tell us we may not, must not, use. We wish that the corrections here made might spread as widely as the errors taught have extended.

1. We may use such before an adjective and its noun even when such does not modify the noun alone not restricted to so in such cases.

we are

2. We may use each other when speaking of more than two objects we are not restricted to one another in such

cases.

The three modes of shaping a proposition, distinct as they are from each other, follow each other in natural sequence.-J. H. Newman. Concourse of the various faculties of the mind with each other. Walter Pater.

3. We may use one another when speaking of two objects only—we are not restricted to each other in such cases.

The two armies failed to find one another. — J. R. Green. How do the mind and the universe communicate with one another.Martineau.