To the unlettered and uninstructed mind, this vast array of words is but a chaos. It is like the material of the lofty mountain; stones, rocks, minerals, earth, water, trees, thrown together, without apparent form or object. But the geologist or mineralogist, like the mathematician, gives every thing a name, a place, a class. Then all these confused objects assume a beautiful order. The reason detects the utility of every thing. The mind is charmed with these new evidences of beauty and harmony in the method of creation.

Language is of later date, and being created, in a great degree, by the growth of man himself, is more imperfect. But, in reasoning upon it, we take the same mode, and are charmed with the same kind of results.

For example, we may analyze thus, independent of any special form of grammar: suppose we would classify the words of language as a universal element, we might arrive at the following results, as an illustration of this species of reasoning.

1. How many universal classes of words are there? This leads us to consider how many objects of words there are, or what is their classification. First, we have the state of being, whatever that is. The first idea of the human mind, if it think at all, is existence. The word which expresses that idea is essential to all language. But as the state of being may be in dif ferent ways, the words which express the state of being may be very numerous, and thus we have the

first class of words in those which express the state of being, whatever that is.

2. Every object, whether material or merely intellectual, must be designated, or else that object must float loosely in the mind, without any means of identifying it. Hence, the next class of words are those which designate objects, or words of designation.

3. All objects have different qualities, not merely attached to their substance, but also as to time and degree. The next class, therefore, of words, are those which qualify other words, or words of qualification.

4. These classes of words, in order to constitute sentences, or express more than a simple idea, must be connected by other words, which serve to express the kind of connection they have. The next and last class of words, therefore, is words of connectionconnectives.

Thus, however complicated or however simple a language may be, we conclude, by reasoning from the nature of mind, that language must contain four entirely distinct classes of words. 1. Those which express a state of being; 2. Those which designate objects; 3. Those which express a qualification; and, 4. Those which connect other words.

Now, however various (from the rudest to the most perfect) are the grammars of different languages, yet grammarians are everywhere obliged to adopt this general classification, just as the geologist is obliged to adopt general classes of stratification for the elementary earths. Then, too, a circle or a square will be

the same things to a mathematician wherever he finds them, or in whatever language they may be called.

The state of being is the same thing in language, whatever may be the particular word which expresses it. In English we say, "I am," and in Latin, Sum ; but the idea expressed is the same. Thus we arrive at the idea of universal grammar, or the philosophy of language. Then we come to the great truth, that it is the soul itself—the mind within-which gives form to language; and although it applies that language to the rock and the tree, yet the language expresses the idea of the mind, and is classified by the mind itself. As the mind grows and enlarges, its language becomes more abstract, more refined, more metaphysical, expressive of that higher philosophy and those nobler objects to which it has arrived in its continued expansion. As in the beginning, so

now the soul holds dominion over matter, and makes its language the expression of its thoughts.

Pursuing this train of reasoning on the classification of language, we find that the word which expresses the state of being may express either a state of action or a state of passiveness. Thus we have two forms of the same word, and two orders of the same class. Again: the condition of being, whether active or passive, may be either a limited or an unlimited existence, a positive or a conditional state, &c. Thus we have different modes of existence expressed by forms of the same word. Then, in looking a little further, we find that a word of the same

sons.

class, the same order, and the same mode, may be in different periods of time, and used by different perThese, again, afford many new varieties of the same word. In highly finished languages, such as the Latin and Greek, these varieties are expressed by different terminations of the same root. In the Latin verb amo (love) there are one hundred and eighty varieties or terminations of the same original root! Thus we find by this analysis, that language is continually expanding to meet the exigencies of thought and the progress of the human mind.

The reasoning upon language thus becomes an analytical examination of the composition of thought through the composition of words, by which it is expressed. It differs from the analysis of quantities by being the analysis of ideas abstracted from quantity. The utility of the study of the science of language consists largely in furnishing the student with a new method of reasoning, and calling other faculties into exercise. It is for this cause that the study of language has ever been considered, and is really one of the most solid foundations of a sound and thorough education.

THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE IS AN ILLUSTRATION OF

HISTORY.

The language of any one civilized nation, critically studied, will illustrate in a very striking manner the intellectual history of that nation. On language, as much as on any element of human society, is marked

mutability: this is a necessity of its existence. From what I have said, it seems obvious that language grows with the growth of a nation, and receives an increase of words with an increase of ideas. But the language of a people also suffers great changes from political shocks. A foreign invader introduces new men, new laws, and new customs, which in time engraft on the language new words expressive of these new ideas.

No language is a better study in this respect than the American. It is almost identical with the English, having an addition of some words local and peculiar to America. The changes in the structure and vocabulary of this language express to a critical student all the great changes which the English and Anglo-American people have undergone. If, for example, we take specimens of our language in each one hundred years since the Christian era, we shall find that in each hundred years it has received additions, or undergone changes, which decidedly modified both its words and idiom. If we look further into the periods when the most marked changes have occurred, we shall find that they have been greater or less, just in proportion as the changes in society have been greater or less. Thus, the greatest change in the language occurred from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, when English society was emerging from the ignorance and rudeness of the middle ages to the brightness of the Elizabethan era.

But when we come to examine the vocabulary of