BLACKSTONE.

Its highly spiritual genius and wonderfully happy development and condition have been the result blest languages in modern Europe, the Teutonic of a surprisingly intimate union of the two noand the Romaic. It is well known in what relation these two stand to one another in the English tongue; the former supplying, in far larger proportion, the material groundwork; the latter, the spiritual conceptions. In truth, the English language, which by no mere accident has produced and upborne the greatest and most predominant poet of modern times, as distinguished from the ancient classical poetry (I can, of course, only mean Shakspeare), may, with all right, be called a world-language, and, like the English people, appears destined hereafter to prevail, with a sway more extensive even than its present, over all the portions of the globe. For in wealth, good sense, and closeness of structure no other of the languages at this day spoken deserves to be compared with it,—not even our German, which is torn, even as we are torn, and must first rid itself of many defects before it can enter boldly into the lists as a competitor with the English. JACOB GRIMM.

The various dialects of the English in the north and west render their expressions many times unintelligible to the other, and both scarce intelligible to the midland. SIR M. HALE.

The best and most agreeable way of learning the state of the English language as it existed during the latter part of the fourteenth century is to read John Wycliffe's version of the New Testament, and Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. In these works the two streams combine, though perhaps not in equal proportions; for the writings of Wycliffe, being designed for the people, contain a larger proportion of Saxon words; and those of Chaucer, composed for readers who were not unacquainted with the French metrical romances, include a number of terms used in romance and chivalry; and, as we have seen, most of these terms were Norman. It is to be regretted that more attention is not paid by English readers to Wycliffe and Chaucer. Household Words.

From the authors which arose in the time of Elizabeth, a speech might be formed adequate to all the purposes of use and elegance. If the language of theology were extracted from Hooker and the translation of the Bible; the terms of natural knowledge from Bacon; the phrases of policy, war, and navigation from Raleigh; the dialect of poetry and fiction from Spenser and Sidney; and the diction of common life from Shakspeare, few ideas would be lost to mankind for want of English words in which they might be expressed.

DR. S. JOHNSON:

Preface to A Dictionary of the English
Language.

Our language, for almost a century, has, by the concurrence of many causes, been gradually

departing from its original Teutonic character, and deviating towards a Gallic structure and phraseology. DR. S. JOHNSON.

If Addison's language had been less idiomatical, it would have lost something of its genuine Anglicism. DR. S. JOHNSON. Few languages are richer than English in approximate synonyms and conjugates. G. P. MARSH.

The ill habit which they get of wretched barbarizing against the Latin and Greek idiom, with their untutored Anglicisms. MILTON.

The Anglo-Saxon, one of the most vigorous shoots of the great Germanic or Teutonic family, forms the main stem, which supports the branches and supplies them with strength and nourishment. But it has itself been ennobled and fer

tilized in the eleventh century by a Norman graft from sunny France. Hence the English language has received contributions from the noblest ancient and modern tongues, and is, for this very reason, better calculated than any other to become more and more the language of the world. PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D.:

Address on American Nationality, June 11, 1856, Chambersburg, 1856, p. 17.

Another will say it [the English tongue] wanteth grammar. Nay, truly, it hath that praise, that it wants not grammar; for grammar it might have, but needs it not.

SIR P. SIDNEY.

A work containing a complete chronological account of English lexicography and lexicographers would be a most acceptable addition to linguistics and literary history.

S. W. SINGer.

Our mother-tongue, which truly of itself is both full enough for prose and stately enough for verse, hath long time been counted most bare and barren of both; which default when as some endeavoured to salve and cure, they patched up the holes with rags from other languages. SWIFT.

The same defect of heat which gives a fierceness to our natures may contribute to that roughness of our language which bears some analogy to the harsh fruit of colder countries. SWIFT.

The Swedes, Danes, Germans, and Dutch attain to the pronunciation of our words with ease, because our syllables resemble theirs in roughness and frequency of consonants.

SWIFT.

The fame of our writers is confined to these two islands, and it is hard if it should be limited in time as well as place by the perpetual variations of our speech. SWIFT.

Nothing would be of greater use towards the improvement of knowledge and politeness than some effectual method for correcting, enlarging, and ascertaining our language. SWIFT.

What I have most at heart is, that some method should be thought on for ascertaining and fixing our language. SWIFT.

If you will not care to settle our language and put it into a state of continuance, your memory shall not be preserved above an hundred years, further than by imperfect tradition. SWIFT.

In English, instead of adjectiving our own nouns, we have borrowed, in immense numbers, adjectived signs from other languages, without borrowing the unadjectived signs of these ideas; because our authors found they had occasion for the former, but not for the latter.

J. HORNE TOOKE.

"Paradise Lost" is a noble possession for a people to have inherited, but the English tongue is a nobler heritage. R. C. TRENCH.

As simple ideas are opposed to complex, and single ideas to compound, so propositions are distinguished: the English tongue has some advantage above the learned languages, which have no usual word to distinguish single from simple. DR. I. WATTS.

While the children of the higher classes always call their parents "papa" and "mamma," the children of the peasantry usually call them "father" and "mother." WHATELY.

ENTHUSIASM.

There is not a more melancholy object than a man who has his head turned with religious enthusiasm. A person that is crazed, though with pride or malice, is a sight very mortifying to human nature; but when the distemper arises from any indiscreet fervours of devotion, or too intense an application of the mind to its mistaken duties, it deserves our compassion in a more particular manner. We may, however, learn this lesson from it, that since devotion itself (which one would be apt to think could not be too warm) may disorder the mind, unless its heats are tempered with caution and prudence, we should be particularly careful to keep

our reason as cool as possible, and to guard ourselves in all parts of life against the influence of passion, imagination, and constitution.

ADDISON: Spectator, No. 201.

Enlist the interests of stern morality and religious enthusiasm in the cause of religious liberty, as in the time of the old Puritans, and they will be irresistible. COLERIDGE.

Enthusiasm, visionariness, seems the tendency of the German; zeal, zealotry, of the English; fanaticism, of the French. COLERIDGE.

When once enthusiasm has been turned into ridicule, everything is undone, except money and power. MADAME DE STAEL.

Poetry, which, by a kind of enthusiasm or extraordinary emotion of the soul, makes it seem to us that we behold those things which the poet paints. DRYDEN. Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm. R. W. EMERSON.

Ridicule has ever been the most powerful enemy of enthusiasm, and properly [probably?] the only antagonist that can be opposed to it with success. Persecution only serves to propagate new religions: they acquire fresh vigour beneath the executioner and the axe, and, like some vivacious insects, multiply by dissection. It is also impossible to combat enthusiasm with reason; for, though it makes a show of resistance, it soon eludes the pressure, refers you to distinctions not to be understood, and feelings which it cannot explain. A man who would endeavour to fix an enthusiast by argument might as well attempt to spread quicksilver with his fingers. GOLDSMITH:

Citizen of the World, Letter CXI. There are some who, proscribing the exercise of the affections entirely in religion, would reduce Christianity to a mere rule of life; but, as such persons betray an extreme ignorance of human nature as well as of the Scriptures, I shall content myself with remarking that the apostles, had they lived in the days of these men, would have been as little exempt from their ridicule as any other itinerants. If the supreme love of God, a solicitude to advance his honour, ardent desires after happiness, to

gether with a comparative deadness to the present state, be enthusiasm, it is that enthusiasm which animated the Saviour and breathes thoughout the Scriptures.

ROBERT HALL: Fragment, On Village Preaching. Enthusiasm may be defined that religious state of mind in which the imagination is unduly heated, and the passions outrun the understanding. ROBERT HALL.

Enthusiasm is an evil much less to be dreaded than superstition. Superstition is the disease of nations; enthusiasm, that of individuals: the cured by it. former grows inveterate by time, the latter is ROBERT HALL.

Enthusiasts soon understand each other.
WASHINGTON IRVING.

Enthusiasm, though founded neither on reason nor revelation, but rising from the conceits of a warmed or overweening brain, works more powerfully on the persuasions and actions of men than either or both together. LOCKE.

Let an enthusiast be principled that he or his teacher is inspired, and acted by an immediate communication of the Divine spirit, and you in vain bring the evidence of clear reason against his doctrine. LOCKE.

Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm; it is the real allegory of the lute of Orpheus: it moves stones, it charms brutes. Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.

LORD E. G. E. L. B. LYTTON. Enthusiasm is that temper of mind in which the imagination has got the better of the judg BISHOP WARBURTON,

ment.

ENTOMOLOGY.

In addition to the obvious and unavoidable difficulties which entomologists have to encounter, they have to bear up against the martyrdom of contempt which the vulgar-minded public inflicts upon them. They are ignominiously nicknamed bug-hunters, and are regarded as a species of lunatic at large. But astronomers and chemists have been equally despised. Galileo, Tycho Brahe, Priestley, and even Davy, have been pitied in their time, especially in the early part of their career, as foolish enthusiasts, whose proper place would be the mad-house, if they were not harmless.

Household Words, Jan. 14, 1856.

But the world of insects lies not on our terrestrial map. Perhaps it may have a closer relationship with life as it goes in the planets Venus and Mercury, which, from their nearer approach to the sun, may abound with a gigantic insect population. We are cut off from all communion with insects; we cannot look into their

eyes, nor catch the expression of their faces. Their very senses are merely conjectural to us; we know not exactly whether they have ears to hear, a palate to taste, or a voice to speak. For a noise mechanically produced is not a voice.

Household Words, Jan. 14, 1856.

And why should not insects have a world of their own, just as well as you and I? Is the Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast a bit more unreal than Almack's or the Carlton?

Don't grasshoppers feast? don't they and their family connections, the locusts, gormandize, and devour, and swallow up everything? Don't butterflies flutter, and flirt, and perform the polka and the varsovienne in the air, and display their fine clothes with gratified vanity? Did no young dragon-fly, with brilliant prospects, ever get married to the horse-leech's daughter, and repent of the alliance after it was too late? If philosophic fiction has created a Micromegas, that is to say a Mr. Littlebig, romantic natural history may surely record the sayings and doings of the Megamicroses, or the Messieurs Biglittles. Vast souls often dwell in undersized bodies.

Household Words, Jan. 14, 1856.

But how are you to fathom the mysteries of insect economy, if you do not pursue and familiarize yourself with insects? Notwithstanding which, it is quite true, as our secretary says, that society throws a wet blanket over entomology in all its branches. Take your water-net and go to a pond or stream in quest of water-beetles, and the passers-by, if they notice you at all, will invariably think you are fishing; or, if they see what you are taking, will ask you if your captures are for baits. If you say, Yes, they will think yours a profitable employment; if you say, No, you may add as much more in exculpation as you like, you will only pass for a fool. So much for the popular appreciation of natural history,-and for your encouragement.

Household Words, Jan. 14, 1856. Yes! There it goes! One of those mighty buzzers, these enormous flesh-flies-emblems of gigantic fussiness, types of terrific power of boredom-has just whirled into the apartment, and continues sharply to whir about, stirring up the smaller fly gentry, making a preponderant base to their tiresome treble, dashing furiously against walls, ceiling, window-panes; of course never finding its stupid way out through any widely-opened casement-buzz, buzz, buzz! Ah! he is silent! Is he gone? No, only entangled in the muslin curtain, where he now makes (most unmusical, most melancholy) a quivering, dithering sound, like a watch running down when the main-spring is broken. Then loose again, and da-capo, with his buzz, buzz! fuss, fuss!-then really resting for a few moments, only to get up fresh energy and make his drone the worse for the short relief of silence. I must let out my rage.

Household Words.

A man that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth virtue in others; for men's minds will either feed upon their own good or upon others' evil; and who wanteth the one will prey upon the other; and whoso is out of hope to attain another's virtue will seek to come at even hand

by depressing another's fortune.

LORD BACON: Essay IX., Of Envy.

A man that is busy and inquisitive is commonly envious; for to know much of other men's matters cannot be, because all that ado may concern his own estate; therefore it must needs be that he taketh a kind of play-pleasure in looking upon the fortunes of others; neither can he that mindeth but his own business find

much matter for envy; for envy is a gadding passion, and walketh in the streets, and doth not keep home: "Non est curiosus, quin idem sit

malevolus."

LORD BACON: Essay IX., Of Envy.

Let age, not envy, draw wrinkles on thy cheeks; be content to be envied, but envy not. Emulation may be plausible, and indignation allowable, but admit no treaty with that passion which no circumstance can make good. A displacency at the good of others because they enjoy it, though not unworthy of it, is an absurd depravity, sticking fast unto corrupted nature, and often too hard for humility and charity, the great suppressors of envy. This surely is a lion not to be strangled but by Hercules himself, or the highest stress of our minds, and an atom of that power which subdueth all things unto itself. SIR T. BROWNE:

Christian Morals, Pt. I., xiii.

Every other sin hath some pleasure annexed to it, or will admit of some excuse; but envy wants both we should strive against it; for, if indulged in, it will be to us as a foretaste of hell upon earth. ROBERT BURTON.

Envy is a weed that grows in all soils and climates, and is no less luxuriant in the country than in the court; is not confined to any rank of men or extent of fortune, but rages in the breasts of all degrees. Alexander was not prouder than Diogenes; and it may be, if we would endeavour to surprise it in its most gaudy dress and attire and in the exercise of its full empire and tyranny, we should find it in schoolmasters and scholars, or in some country lady, or the knight her husband; all which ranks of people more despise their neighbours than all the degrees of honour in which courts abound; and it rages as much in a sordid, affected dress as in all the silks and embroideries which the excess of the age and folly of youth delight to be adorned with. Since then it keeps all sorts of company, and wriggles itself into the liking of the most contrary natures and dispositions, and yet carries so much poison and venom with it that it alienates the affections from heaven, and raises rebellion against God himself, it is worth our utmost care to watch it in all its disguises and approaches, that we may discover it in its first entrance, and dislodge it before it procures a shelter or retiring-place to lodge and conceal itself.

EARL OF CLARENDON.

To see a hated person superior, and to lie under the anguish of a disadvantage, is far enough from diversion. JEREMY COLLIer.

He that has his own troubles and the happiness of his neighbours to disturb him has work enough. JEREMY COLLIER.

Envy, like a cold poison, benumbs and stupefies; and, conscious of its own impotence, folds its arms in despair. JEREMY COLLIER.

Ease must be impracticable to the envious: they lie under a double misfortune; common calamities and common blessings fall heavily upon them. JEREMY COLLier.

Is it possible to conceive that the overflowing generousness of the divine nature would create immortal beings with mean or envious principles ? JEREMY COLLIER.

The praise of the envious is far less creditable than their censure; they praise only that which they can surpass, but that which surpasses them they censure. COLTON: Lacon.

Emulation looks out for merits that she may exalt herself by a victory; envy spies out blemishes that she may lower another by a defeat. COLTON: Lacon.

Envy ought, in strict truth, to have no place whatever allowed it in the heart of man; for low that they are beneath it, and those of the the goods of this present world are so vile and future world are so vast and exalted that they are above it. COLTON: Lacon.

In some unlucky dispositions there is such an envious kind of pride that they cannot endure that any but themselves should be set forth for excellent so when they hear one justly praised, they will either seek to dismount his virtues; or, if they be like a clear night, eminent, they will stab him with a but of detraction: as if there were something yet so foul as did obnubilate even his brightest glory. Thus, when their tongue cannot justly condemn him, they will leave him in suspected ill, by silence. Surely, if we considered detraction to be bred of envy, nested only in deficient minds, we should find that the applauding of virtue would win us far more honour than the seeking slyly to disparage it. That would show we loved what we commended, while this tells the world we grudge at what we want in ourselves. FELLTHAM.

We are often infinitely mistaken, and take the falsest measures, when we envy the happiness of rich and great men; we know not the inward and makes them really much more miserable canker that eats out all their joy and delight, BISHOP J. HALL.

than ourselves.

Treat. on Human Nature.

All envy is proportionate to desire; we are uneasy at the attainments of another, according as we think our own happiness would be adholds from us; and therefore whatever depresses vanced by the addition of that which he withimmoderate wishes will, at the same time, set the heart free from the corrosion of envy, and exempt us from that vice which is, above most others, tormenting to ourselves, hateful to the world, and productive of mean artifices and sordid projects.

DR. S. JOHNSON: Rambler, No. 17. He that would live clear of envy must lay his finger on his mouth, and keep his hand out of the ink-pot. L'ESTRANGE.