TO THE TEACHER.

As this book has been prepared for pupils studying English in the elementary, as well as in the advanced, classes, we suggest to the teachers using it with elementary grades that they read with the class all the chapters up to the tenth, holding the pupil only to the more essential points; but, that, from this chapter on, lessons be regularly assigned.

We are confident that teachers will find that this study can be made exceedingly profitable.

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

CHAPTER I.

THE EARLY CONQUESTS AND LANGUAGES OF BRITAIN.

I. Classification of Languages.-It goes without saying that the languages spoken and understood by the human race are not the same. A great part of our education, indeed, consists in learning living languages other than our own, in translating what is written in them into our

own.

But languages widely differing now may once have been the same. A people overcrowding its native valley or plateau breaks up. Migrations take place. The masses, moving in different directions, thereafter hold little or no intercourse with each other. Climates, soils, food, occupations, henceforth differ; and this diversity of environment fosters in these separated peoples differences of custom, spirit, and character; and, what is specially in point, differences far-reaching, if not radical, in the words used by them. These differences become in time so marked that neither the languages nor the peoples speaking them are longer thought to be akin. And yet the relationship of these tongues may not be wholly lost; resemblances may remain sufficient for identification. Their original same

ness may be proved by the presence in them of the same words, few though they be and disguised by change-a presence not to be accounted for by borrowing or by a common conquest; and it may be proved also by traces among them of a common grammar. These traces, verbal and grammatical, betray community of origin, and furnish the basis for linguistic classification.

Grouping the known languages with respect to these and other characteristics, we have such families as the Chinese, the Polynesian, the Scythian, the Semitic, and others; and, above them all in importance, that group among which the English is to be counted, namely:

II. The Indo-European Family.-Of this group, or family, there are ten members-three Asiatic and seven European. Seven of the ten have long been recognized, (1) The Indian, or Sanskrit, used in Hindostan ; (2) the Iranian, or Ancient and Modern Persian; (3) the Hellenic-Ancient and Modern Greek; (4) the Italic, that is the Latin and its descendants; viz., the Italian, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the French, the Provençal, the Rheto-Romanic, and the Wallachian; (5) the Slavonic-preëminently the Russian; (6) the Celtic, or Keltic, made up of the Cymric and the Gaelic ; and (7) the Teutonic, subdivided into the Gothic, the Scandinavian, the High German, and the Low German. Into the Low German the English falls. To these seven, recent scholars have added (8) the Lithuanian, closely related to the Slavonic; (9) the Armenian; and (10) the Albanian.

These languages, now so unlike each other that until this century their kinship was scarcely suspected, were once the same speech, spoken by a people dwelling together long enough to build up a respectable vocabulary and a

common grammar. The home of this mother-tribe is a matter of conjecture; until recently it was supposed to have been the high table-land of Eastern Persia. Modern surmise, mostly German, places it in Europe-in Germany, in Scandinavia, in Russia just north of the Black Sea. When and in what order the migrations from the old homestead took place is equally conjectural; but that great migrations did occur, each migrating horde carrying. along with it the parent speech, is no longer doubted.

III. The Celts. Of this people a word is needed as preface to our historical sketch. The Celts occupied the Spanish Peninsula, Gaul when Cæsar subdued it, and Britain when he visited it 55 and 54 B. C. The Celts in Britain were at this time broken into many tribes, seldom uniting in a common cause. They lived in houses hollowed out of the hills, built with low stone walls, thatched with reeds and straw, and lighted only by the door. Their dress was the tunic and short trousers; their food, fruits, milk, flesh, and grain bruised and baked; their arts, such as the possession of earthen ware, and of war chariots, arrows, the sword, the spear, the battle-axe, and the small shield implies. They burned or buried their dead, practised tattooing, and were largely ruled by their priests, the druids, who monopolized the learning, arrogated to themselves all authority, paid no taxes, were exempt from all public duties, and settled all disputes, civil and criminal.

IV. The Roman Occupation of the Island.—The Celts made no stout resistance to the Romans, who under Agricola had by 84 A.D. conquered as far north as the Firth of Forth, which they joined to the river Clyde by the wall of Antoninus. They subsequently built, as additional protection against the Picts, the famous wall of Severus, or Hadrian's

wall, uniting the Solway and the Tyne. The Romans did not attempt a thorough conquest of Britain; but, with their headquarters at Eboracum, now York, held the island by a series of fortified posts, whose site is now mainly indicated by towns with names ending in chester, cester or caster -forms of the Latin castra, a camp. These posts the Romans connected by broad and straight military roads. over which their legions could rapidly march.

The Romans levied taxes on arable land, on pasture land, and on fruits, and exacted customs at the ports. They fostered agriculture, and exported grain to Rome. But the imperial city whose empire stretched so far, whose armies were largely composed of soldiers drafted from her subject peoples and led by generals of their own blood, was menaced by invading hordes, and was forced to recall her legions for her own defence. By 420 the soldiers had all left Britain, never to return, and the Celts were again free. But their freedom was of short duration. By the middle of the fifth century a more formidable invasion than the Roman had taken place, and a more thorough conquest was begun by

V. The Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes.-These peoples from Schleswig, Holstein, and Jutland, provinces about the mouths of the Elbe and north of them, were of the Low German branch of the Teutonic stock. They had blue eyes and flaxen hair, were large of frame, huge feeders, and most "potent in potting." They were fond of adventure on land and on sea, and were fierce and cruel in battle. They were owners and tillers of the soil, hated cities, knew no king, and lived each group of related families within its mark, or district, which was bounded by a belt of neutral land from other "farmer commonwealths." " Among