by combining two or more words together; putting prefixes or affixes at the beginning and end. Hence that beautiful class of words that we term compound.

There is another class of compounds in which the Latin is rich, as well as the Greek, and those are the words formed simply by adding prepositions. The very word preposition is an example. Pono, the Latin word for to place, gives the perfect tense posui placed, position, and then that which is placed before, as pre-position. In this mode of forming words, we see how an immense mass of new terms may be formed out of a single root. You may see that illustrated in the derivations of the Latin word to send, which is mit or mitto, as permit, permission, omit, omission, commit, commission, remit, remission, pretermit; and then taking an ax we get missionary, missive, with some hundreds of others. Clearly, then, although two languages may have come from the same original place, if the genius of one class of emigrants shall be merely to change the vowels, and if the genius of another be to link and marry words together, you will get from the same basis two languages, different in ap pearance, and yet intimately related. Now and then we find that the words are not much changed in either language, and then we can more clearly trace their affinities. For example, we find in the Hebrew language the word arag to weave. The Greek word for spider is the very same, arachne or the weaver. When we place these two words side by side, there is no doubt of their affinity.

It is curious in tracing the origin of language, to see how very much of the difference has originated in what we are prone to call ignorance and vulgar ism. We must look to the history of the illiterate mind for many of the most curious phenomena of our language. Those things that are now polite were many of them rude in old times, and those things we now call vulgar were then polite. It was equally

correct at one time to say waps or wasp, ask or ax. You must now go to the London thieves, who are the conservators of slang, to find much of our gennine Anglo-Saxon intact. There you find this old law of transposition retained in such words or such pronunciations as word for world, mountain syphl for mountain sylph, garrely for gallery, and so on. Many words which we use, and which are quite polite, originated in this way. We speak both of a granary and of a garner. The garnet is literally a little grain, and grainet is the proper word, but accident transposed the letters, and thus we have an apparently different word. It would seem to be another of those curious accidents inevitable to the organs of speech, that if the eye or the ear fail to catch the proper position of the letters, or the sounds in a word, it turns them over and reads them backwards. In endeavouring to retrace its steps it topples over and inverts the position of the letters.

There is a great proneness also to slide off into certain sounds that have no business there. We hear the vulgar speak of a man being drownded, putting

in a d. This propensity has originated the d at the

end of the word sound. Our word sound is the
Latin word son-us, in French simply son. Spencer
spells it soune.
The love of saying drownded has
fer to run off into the d. What would you think if
given us this pronounciation; the lips seem to pre-
I were to tell you that messenger is a very vulgar

word indeed. It has been made polite by long
age. Messenger is a word of the same class as
singer, which you know is the way the vulgar pro-
The word messenger is by right

nounce sausage.

messager, or a message bearer. Again, the very march of time causes changes. There is a great tendency as language moves onWard, especially with its literature, to abbreviate, condense, and consolidate. Superfluous letters and left out. Hence the long Greek word

Sounds

are

eleēmosunē has gradually shortened itself into alms. On the other hand there have been additions in some few cases, but it is omission that we find most frequent. Examples of omission are very strikingly shown in the French language. The genius of the French people has led them to emasculate the Roman element to an enormous extent, leaving out, as they do in speech, and often in writing, a great number of the consonants, and often substituting a vowel for a consonant. The French have a great dislike for the letters at the beginning of a word. All those fine substantial words that came from the Latin, beginning with st, they seem so to have disliked, that in almost every case they have dropped the s and substituted an e. Hence the word schola, Latin for school, they have made école. The word star, which in our English language stands out with such solidity, they have changed into the word étoil. The word spine, a thorn, they have altered into épine. This has been carried on to such an im mense extent, that French, as pronounced, bears a not very distant resemblance to some of the Pacific languages. These examples will suffice to give a general idea of how languages, although coming from one seat originally, have yet assumed such very different ap pearances as they have moved more and more remotely one from another. Languages are like the old Roman roads, spreading from the forum and branching in all directions. If language were to begin to-day over again, if the comet were to sweep from the earth all but a single pair of human beings, in the course of another five thousand years these features would in all probability re-express them selves, because language is one of the natural products of the human mind, and one of those things that is most subject to that great love and capacity for change which is also one of the most beautiful and pleasing powers of the human mind.

A TOUR IN THE UNITED STATES.

BY

HENRY ASHWORTH, ESQ.

(Delivered before the Members of the Bolton Mechanics' Institution.]

THE first of a course of lectures was given in the commodious Reading Room of the Mechanics Institution, Oxford-street, on Wednesday evening, March 31, 1858, by Henry Ashworth, Esq., on his recent tour in America. The committee

of the institution some time since requested Mr. Ashworth to favour them with his observations and remarks on the new scenes he had visited, and he kindly responded to their desire; and the President, In commencing the proceedings, said-It would be a gross presumption on his part to detain them from the more immediate business of the evening, by pretending to introduce to them the well-known and long-tried friend of industrial education, who had 80 kindly consented to address them. But he might ask permission, for one moment, to urge upon the young members of the Mechanics' Institution, the importance of giving careful attention to the information they were about to receive. It was a great privilege to be able to borrow the eyes and ears of well-qualified observer-next indeed to using their ; nay, more-for it so happened that comparatively few were able to make profitable use of what they did see and hear, when they had opportunity to

41

travel; and, therefore, the observations of an acute mind and cultivated intellect, were of the highest importance. They had that evening a rare opportunity of hearing from the lips of a gentleman eminently qualified to observe with precision, and to report with fidelity, something about our friends and blood-relations on the other side of the Atlanticsomething, too, at least he hoped so, touching the production of the material from which is spun those threads upon which, under Providence, the pros perity and comfort of so many thousands around as depend. Let them bear in mind that the informa tion about to be given was of the most direct kind; only one pair of eyes, ears, and lips intervened between them and the absolute objects and occarrences; and those eyes, ears, and lips were to be relied upon with the most implicit trust. Give, then, he begged them, their earnest attention to Mr. Ashworth's observations, cherish them in their memories, and think of them at leisure, carefully remembering even such as might not at the moment appear to be important: it often happened that those were afterwards of the greatest value.

Mr. Ashworth was received with applause. He proceeded to say:-I am appearing before you this evening under a feeling which is not unmixed with a degree of dread, lest in my hands the subject with which I am about to deal, should fail of success in securing that amount of interest which it is entitled to command.

When I survey in this room so large an audience, I feel cheered, in the assurance that the parties who have thus been brought together, testify by their presence that the thirst for knowledge, which has ever characterised the people of Bolton, is con stantly deriving an increase of vigour. Let us not forget how fertile of advantages have been the Free Library, and other kindred institutions, not only in supplying the wants of knowledge, but by increas