or Angles-which Angles we know to have been a nation belonging to the Saxon Confederacy and inhabiting Anglen, in the present duchy of Sleswick; and so we have, with reference to their language as expressive of their origin -the term Anglo-Saxon.* Now, though the general denomination of the country followed the name of the more numerous tribe, the Angles, we have a living record of the Saxons, also, in the divisions of Essex (Excessa), Middlesex and Sussex, (Sudsexe t) which, expanded, stand for East Saxons, Middle Saxons, and South Saxons. The mass of the names of places, however, are Anglo-Saxon-indicative of that strong tenacity with which, through all their reverses, our forefathers clung to their homes and hearths. Thus we have the very numerous termination in ton-an inclosure or garden; e. g. Boston, Burton, Brighton, Northampton; in ham, which is just home (Scotch hame); e. g. Hamton, i. e. Hometown, Higham, Langham, Southamton, i.e. South-home-town; in burg, borough, or bury, a city or fort; e. g. Canterbury, Peterborough, Scarborough, Shrewsbury; in ford-vadum-as Hereford, i. e. Army'sford from here an army, Oxford, which in Chaucer we find written Oxenford:

"Whilom ther was dwelling in Oxenforde,
A riche gnof, that gestes helde to borde,
And of his craft he was a carpenter."
The Millere's Tale, 28.

But, notwithstanding the immense preponderance of Saxon proper names, we are all aware that the Saxons were not the original possessors of the island; and so we find:

"Glimmering thro' the dream of things that were,"

some few old Keltic words-scanty on account of their complete overthrow by subsequent aggressors); thus the name "London" is said to be compounded of the two Keltic words llawn, populous, and dinas, a city,—the populous city; though others make the signification to be the "city of ships"either, however, might almost be considered as prophetic. We have even some débris from the old Druidical worship; witness the carns or cairns which are with much probability referred thereto. Do you wish to see the remains of

Roman domination and traces of their conquest and warlike spirit? Then glance at the quite extensive list of proper names of places, terminating in Chester or Caster, i. e. Castrum, indicating the site of a Roman fortress in the locality bearing that ending; e. g. Colnchester, the camp on the river Coln, Lancaster, the camp on the river Lune-see also Winchester, Colchester, Manchester, &c., all of which are suggestive enough.

Again, the character of the Danes,-the Northmen, is well known; we are acquainted with their proclivities towards freebooting and piratical excursions. In making their descents, then, on England they could not but land on its eastern coasts, and would, with great probability give names to the places they visited and plundered. Now the Danish word for a bay or cove is vig or viig, which by a very simple transition might become wich or wick; and this supposition receives additional confirmation from the great number of names bearing that termination. Running the eye down the map, along the coast, from North to South, we meet with Berwick, Alnevick, Dunwich, Ypswich, Harwich, Woolwich, Greenwich, Sandwich. Moreover, they have left us further traces of their existence in the ending by or bye, which in Danish means a town. Thus, glancing at Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, we find Whitby, Selby, Grimsby and Spilsby-so we have also Netherby, Appleby, Derby. Now, these localities can be proved, from other circumstances, to have been chief seats of Danish emigration.

Should we extend our research further into the component elements of the English in general, we would meet with little difficulty in the construction of a complete and correct theory of the political and social changes that have taken place in Great Britain.

And now let us jump over the Norman Conquest under William the Bastard, § when so very large an accession of Normanno-Franco-Celtic words was grafted on our ancient Saxon, and take a peep in at how our language gets on in the 14th century. In these rambles we are, of course, not to be considered as being encumbered with the inconvenient and rather vulgar envelopes of space and time. Festus Bailey, it will be remembered, makes Lucifer and his fellow-traveller

$1066.

"Beat the sun,

In the longest heat that ever was run."

But then, unfortunately, (?) we are neither Lucifer nor Festus Bailey, and besides, their coursers were "Ruin" and "Destruction," while you and I would prefer less fractious nags for our excursion; would not we? But should the reader be indisposed to so glorious a morning's airing-why, just hand us down our Chaucer-of course, we use Tyrwhitt's edition-and we need not stir out of our cosy parlor. There! Mufti, where wilt thou begin? Ab initio ?

"Whanne that April with his showres sote
The droughte of March hath perced to the rote,
And bathed Every veine in swiche licour,
Of whiche vertue engendered is the flour;
When Zephirus Eke with his sote brethe
Enspired hath in Every holt and hethe
The tendre croppes, and the younge Sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale fowles maken melodie,
That slepen alle night with open eye,
So priketh him nature in his corages,
Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages,
And palmers for to seken strange strondes,
To serve halwes couthe in Sondry londes;
And specially from Every shire's ende
Of Englelond to Canterbury the wende,
The holy blissful martyr for to seke
That hem hath holpen whan that they were
seke."

Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.

You will see that we have italicised the principal words that come from, or through the French. The proportion is not by any means, so great as we find in innumerable other passages, or such lines as the following:

"To Canterbury with devoute courage,
At night was come into that hostelrie
Wel nine-and-twenty in a compagnie."

"Gentil" is the Latin gentilis, from gens a clan-i. e., belonging to a clan, or, as the Scotch say, clannish; and this is its primitive signification. See Tacitus:

66

Eloquentia, gentile domus nostræ bonum." The gradations in meaning by which it passed from one who has relation to some race, or, as we say, of birth,* in contradistinction to him who can lay claim to none--even the ignoblest "family," to its former (old English) and then to its present import, might, had we opportunity to trace it, be curious enough. For the present, however, compare it with its very striking analogue kind (adj.) from kind (sub.) and consult Froissart, V. ii. c. 77.-"Il y avoit un Chevalier, Capitaine de la ville:point gentilhomme n'estoit-et l'avoit fait, pour sa vaillance, le Roy Edouard Chevalier."

"Escuyer" was the Archaic form, now spelled ecuyer, supposed to be from L. scutum, a shield, i. e. a shield-bearer. The transition in this word is curious, too. Once it was a term of dignity; now rather of indignity. For instance, we all know that, when our friend Smellfungus receives epistles, they invariably bear the address: To P. Q. R. Smellfungus, Esq. Bachelor is the French appellation for those unfortunate specimens of the human family who are commonly conceived and believed to be the living embodiments of all the ills that flesh is heir to. And, by the way, bachelor and imbecile are both from one root. We don't pretend to insinuate the moral.

**

"And French she spoke ful fayre and fetisly, After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, For French of Paris was to hire unknowe."

Ib.

"Fetisly" is, perhaps, allied with fête, hence gaily, neatly. Is good Madame Eglentine the "noune" entirely without representatives among us, or be there not damsels, even in our days, who are as blissfully ignorant of the "Frenche" of "Paris," as was the excellent Prioresse? Like Uriah Heep, we ask it "umbly," and only for information.

"Therefore in stede of weping and praires, Men mote give silver to the poure freres." Canterbury Tales.

"The estat, th' araie, the nombre, and eke the cause." Ib.

"Eke Plato sayeth, who so can him rede, That wordes most ben cosin to the dede."

You see they were up to the noble art of guessing, even in Chaucer's day; and remember that all this was written a century before America was dreamed of, or Christopher Columbus was born.

To say nothing of the Norman element, what do you think of the following as a piece of philosophy?

"Freres and fendes been but litel asonder The Freres' Tale, p. 64. "A knighte ther was, and that a worthy man, That fro' the time that he firste began

To riden out, he loved chivalrie,
Trouthe and honour, fredom and curtesie."
Prologue to the Knighte's Tale.

Here "knight," to which further reference will be made hereafter, is, strange to say, Saxon. "Chivalrie" is of course Norman. In the fourth line,

we

have "trouthe" and "fredom," Saxon; "honour" and "curtesie" come to us through the French. And what volumes do they speak to us of the psychical and social constitution of the two? We have in one the evidence of a sub

* Vopiscus Proc., c. xi., p. 287.

jective, in the other, of an objective existence; in the one, an only heart-life, pulsating with doings and darings; in the other, the outer and the conventional. The Saxon demands, and will be satisfied with nothing short of trouth, and fredom

"High over the regions of space and of time, The noblest of thoughts waves its pinion!"

He requires the downright and the earnest-le serieux; the Gallican is contented with l' honneur and "curtesie." Well, this has been recognized long enough. Take the opinion of the fifth "Francis familiare est ridendo century: fidem frangere."* "Si perjacet Francus quid novi faciet, qui pejurium ipsum sermonis genus putat esse non crimines." "Franci mendaces, sed hospitales." t

And what entered so largely into their composition in the fifth century, has probably left some traces even unto our own nineteenth. But, to enumerate all the French and Norman, the FrancoLatin and the Normanno-Latin elements, would be to quote every line; we can, then, but present you with the following, which are prodigiously characteristic and replete with suggestions:-Accord, advocate, agree, arreste (arrest), avance (advance), adventure, alegeance (allegiance), anoie (annoy), appetite, blancmanger, bokeler (buckler), capitaine (captain), clerk, counseil (council), crois (cross), constable, cowardise (cowardice), culprit, curfew, dance, danger, deliver, dure (endure), embrace, entaile (entail), faine (feign), force, gaillard, grace, jude (judge), jugement (judgment), law, maister (master), maugre, obeyance (obedience), outrage, page, portecolise (portcullis), revel, rime (rhyme), prelat (prelate), parlement, sauf (safe), markis (marquis), sergeant, sire, table, vitaille (victual). And there are among the thousands of other such, introduced or employed by him whom people will persist in calling

"The pure well of English, undefiled !"

So great, indeed, was his fondness for French terms, that he received the nickname of the "French Brewer," and the probability seems to incline towards making even himself of Norman descent. The following we quote as a rare spe+ Salvlan de Gub. Dei, lib. IV., p. 82.

cimen of astrological lore, as well as for the large preponderance of the Saxonthe English element-in it:

"Peraventure in thilke large book

Which thal men clipe the Heven gwritten was
With sterres, whan that he his birthe took
That he for love should han his deth alas!
For in the sterres, clearer than is glas
Is writen, God wot, who so coud it rede,
The deth of every man withouten drede,
In sterres many a winter therebeforn
Was writ the deth of Hector, Achilles,
Of Pompey, Julius, or they were born;
The strif of Thebes, and of Hercules,
Of Sampson, Turnus, and of Socrates
The deth; but mennes wittes ben so dull
That no wight can wel rede it at the full."
The Man of Lawes' Tale, p. 43.

Oh! yes, once, was there a mystery and a majesty in the earth and in the heavens!-before science had harried every province of the seen-of the phenomenal and made us believe that that was all-that we had got into the innermost. Then did there repose a soul in nature-then did there live the Jupiters and the Thors, the Naiads and the Elves; man recognized a divinity in all, and reverently bowed before its shrine-beholding in everything more than was presented to the eye of sense, and recognizing the soul's own mystic relation to the great whole. What saith our highest?

"The old men studied magic in the flowers,
And human fortunes in Astronomy,
And an omnipotence in Chemistry!"*

But now, the age of faith, like the age of chivalry, has gone

"All these have vanished,

They live no longer in the faith of reason"

and we are Sophists, and Atheists, and Apathists!

"Heven," or, as we now spell it, heaver, is, we know, Saxon. It is heofon, heofen or heofun, from heafan, to heave, that is something heaven or heaved up-over our heads-which word (head) together with heft, huff, hoof, hovel, hat, hut, haven and oven, are, according to Horne Tooke, all from the same verb. The Scotch furnish us with an interesting analogue in the word "lift," used in the same sense, and just the abstract form of the past part. of the verb to lift. Take a couplet from that splendid old ballad of "Sir Patrick Spens."

"Home," also, we receive from our Gerinan progenitors-ham, which the Scotch hame approaches nearer, or, in fact, has deviated less from, than has our form. Also the components thereof, as: homely, i. e. hamlic, homelike;-which charming expression, we are sorry to see, has been wrung from its primitive sense. Is it, that what is home-like has become homely, has become tiresome and uninteresting in our eyes? What an undervaluation! แ Man," and "wife," are both Saxon, as well as the affectionate terms father, mother, brother, sister. "Wife," by the way, has quite a little history wrapped up in it. It is the Saxon wif allied in form and signification to the Danish wyf, and German weil; words which, in their derivation, involve the notion of spinning or weaving, and seem to point to that as the legitimate field of womanly occupation. Chaucer makes the "Wif of Bathe," thus give us the summum totum of feminine energizings:

"For all swiche wit is geven us in our birth; Deceite, weping, spinning, God hath geven To woman kindly, while that she may liven !" The Wif of Baith, Prologue, 54.

From which it would appear that the character given of a certain Roman matron, is the highest possible:

"Domum mansit-lanam fecit."

So quaintly and yet so forcibly rendered, into the vernacular by Douglas:

"She kepet in the hous and birlet at the quhole !"

An interesting passage from King Alfred's Translation of Bede, presents us with the original form of three or four noticeable words: