Wabe'no, a magician; a juggler.

Wa/bun, the East-Wind.

Wa/wa, the wild goose.

Waw/beek, a rock.

Wa/bun An'nung, the Star of the East; Waw-be-wa/wa, the white goose.

the Morning Star.

Wahono/win, a cry of lamentation.

Wah-wah-tay/see, the fire-fly.

Wawonais'sa, the whippoorwill.
Wen'digoes, giants.

Yenadiz'ze, an idler and gambler.

NOTES TO HIAWATHA.

The prosody of this poem will at once attract attention. The verse is trochaic tetrameter, without rhyme. It is remarkable for its melodious and graceful flow, as well as for the happy adaptation to the general idea and design of the poem. The poem is a fine exemplification of the perfection to which English poetry has now attained in respect of all the elements of high art, richness of idea, flexibility of outward form with entire subordination to the idea, and graceful rendering of the idea in the form. As elsewhere observed, the farther advance of poetic art lies not in the perfecting of these several constituents of true artistic beauty, but in the richness in the supply of these elements and of their combinations—an advance, it is needless to say, to which no limitations can be placed.

"This In

Mr. Longfellow thus presents the origin of the materials of the poem. dian Edda, if I may so call it, is founded on a tradition prevalent among the North American Indians of a personage of miraculous birth, who was sent among them to clear their rivers, forests, and fishing-grounds, and to teach them the arts of peace. He was known among different tribes by the several names of Michabou, Chiabo, Manabozo, Tarenyawagon, and Hiawatha." We easily recognize in him the genius of civilization, and delightedly follow his story in introducing first the ruder and then the higher arts, uniting in wise harmony artistic genius with mechanical force, allying himself to the natural conditions of his high labor, and finding at last his highest attainments in a Christian culture.

"The scene of the poem is among the Ojibways on the southern shore of Lake Superior, in the region between the Pictured Rocks and the Grand Sable."

The Vale of Tawasentha, now called Norman's Kill, is in Albany County, New York

PART II.

ELEMENTS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LIT

ERATURE.

CHAPTER I.

FORMATION AND GROWTH OF LANGUAGE.

§ 1. HUMAN speech is the communication of thought by means of articulate sound.

Speech starts from thought. We speak because we have a thought to communicate. All study of language and of literature must recognize thought as the prompting occasion, the originating, vital principle of all speech.

All speech is social. We speak because we wish to communicate. The formation and growth of language proceed ever under the condition of parties communicating, speak ing, and hearing.

The medium of this communication is articulate sound. § 2. But the thought to be communicated, in which human speech originates as its vital principle, is ever com plex, embracing elements which it is important to distin. guish. In the first place, there is the object about which we think the matter of the thought. In the second place, it is the speaker's thought to be communicated, and made the hearer's thought: there is the distinction of speaker and hearer implied in the thought to be communicated; in other words, there is the distinction of personality, In the third place, there is the thinking itself about the

object which is expressed or implied in all speech. We have thus the three distinct elements of the thought to be communicated; (1) the matter-element; (2) the personal, otherwise called the pronominal element; (3) the proper thought-element.

§ 3. The matter-element of the thought in speech is any thing of which we may think. It is of two kinds; (1) that of which we think something the subject; (2) that which

we think of the subject - the attribute.

Language may begin with the thought of a subject, or the thought of an attribute. Adam, we are taught, gave names to the beasts of the field, as they were presented to him one after another, successively. He may have recognized the object first, the beast of the field, as a single, concrete thing, a whole, before distinguishing any one attribute; or he may have first recognized some one attribute, as size, color, motion, sound, and then referred this attribute to the object. Both ways of thinking are alike natural, alike common; and as words are but the expressions of our thoughts, and are determined and shaped by them, the first words may as naturally be subject-words, since our first thoughts may be subject-thoughts, as attributewords; and the latter as naturally as the former, since our first thoughts may be attribute-thoughts. The child names its parent evidently as a subject first, and then afterwards thinks of the attribute which characterizes the parent, and extends that attribute to other beings. Nothing in the nature of the case, nothing in the nature of thought or of language, forbids the belief, then, that the beginning, the starting-point in the forming of words, was in either subject or attribute; although it may be supposed that the subject would be rather taken in the infancy of language, and the attribute in the more advanced maturity of thought and speech. Herder, in his prize essay on the "Origin of Speech," supposes a sheep with its divers attributes white, soft, woolly to present itself to the sight of the

primitive man, the primitive speech-former; the sheep at length bleats, and the name is at once suggested, as the primitive speaker exclaims, "Thou art the bleater." Speech is originated, so soon as the name is thus given to the object. It is just as natural to suppose that the name should have been determined by any of the possible relationships of the object to the observer, as by one of its inherent attributes; by the sheep's being in the field, a field-thing, as by the attribute of bleating, a bleating thing, or bleater. A visitor to a Deaf and Dumb Asylum related to a class of pupils a story which was strange and incredible. As soon as it was rendered to the class by the teacher, the whole class simultaneously made the sign "false." The visitor was ever afterwards known by that sign; his name to them was "False." The name of the first object named, still further, it is perfectly supposable, may have been determined by any sound of surprise, of joy, or other feeling prompted by it, without the recognition of any attribute whatever, intrinsic or relative. But we cannot suppose speech to originate without an occasion to begin out of all conditions; and nothing but the object of which we think, can be recognized as such an occasion, or as furnishing such condition. Speech, then, begins with some object thought. It may be thought and occasionally named as a concrete whole, without reference to any particular attribute, whether of property or of relation, that is, as a subject; or with governing reference to an attribute, either intrinsic or relative, that is, as a predicate. The first words in language, and also new words that are not derived from those already in use, but are prompted directly by the objects which they denote, may be either subject-words or attribute-words.

§ 4. The pronominal elements, by which is expressed first, the distinction of person speaking and of person hearing, and then of object spoken of, as discriminated from both speaker and hearer, must have been early originated.

In fact we find to corroborate this a priori supposition, a most remarkable agreement in the earliest languages, even in those most widely differing in other respects from one another, as to the articulate sounds to denote them. They are as a class to be characterized also as more stable and persistent elements of language, than those denoting objects of thought, showing far less liability to be wholly lost and abandoned, although subject to abrasions and distortions. They are readily distinguishable from the first class named

-the object elements. Language could exist without them. Two persons, knowing nothing either one of the other's language, would not, probably, on beginning to converse with each other, express these personal distinctions at all, at first; they might after a while designate them by gestures; only after continued intercourse would articulate forms be introduced to express them. Those distinguishing the person speaking and the person hearing would come first into requisition; afterwards, those denoting the object spoken, the proper demonstratives, or those of the "third person," so called in grammar.

The pronominal elements, as we should suppose beforehand from their nature, are not traceable to words originally denoting objects of thought. They are properly to be regarded as original elements. They include the personal pronouns, so called; the demonstratives, or pronominal adjectives, as this, that, etc.; the pronominal adverbs, as here, there, etc.; and the pronominal interrogatives, as who, which, where, etc. The definite article may not improperly be also reckoned among the pronominal elements. It was primitively a demonstrative.

The following list of English Pronominal Elements is taken mostly from the "Teutonic Etymology" of Prof Gibbs :

1. First pers. sing. subject. case, I, a fragment of A.-S. ic. Cf., under Grimm's Law, § 35, Lat. eg o, and Ger. ich.