poesies and writings (in making whereof that nation hath evermore delighted) are yet extant in my time, whereby some difference between the ancient and present language may easily be discerned, notwithstanding that among all these there is nothing to be found which can set down any sound and full testimony of their own original, in remembrance whereof their bards and cunning men have been most slack and negligent. Next unto the British speech, the Latin tongue was brought in by the Romans, and in manner generally planted through the whole region, as the French was after by the Normans. Of this tongue I will not say much, because there are few which be not skilful in the same. Howbeit, as the speech itself is easy and delectable, so hath it perverted the names of the ancient rivers, regions, and cities of Britain, in such wise, that in these our days their old British denominations are quite grown out of memory, and yet those of the new Latin left at most uncertain. This remaineth, also, unto my time, borrowed from the Romans, that all our deeds, evidences, charters, and writings of record are set down in the Latin tongue, though now very barbarous, and thereunto the copies and court-rolls, and processes of courts and leets registered in the same.

The third language apparently known is the Scythian, or High Dutch, induced at the first by the Saxons (which the Britons call Saysonace, as they do the speakers Sayson), a hard and rough kind of speech, God wot, when our nation was brought first into acquaintance withal, but now changed with us into a far more fine and easy kind of utterance, and so polished and helped with new and milder words, that it is to be avouched how there is no one speech under the sun spoken in our time that hath or can have more variety of words, copiousness of phrases, or figures and flowers of eloquence, than hath our English tongue, although some have affirmed us rather to bark as dogs than talk like men, because the most of our words (as they do indeed) incline unto one syllable. This, also, is to be noted as a testimony remaining still of our language, derived from the Saxons, that the general name, for the most part, of every skilful artificer in his trade endeth in here with us, albeit the h be left out and er only inserted, as scrivenhere, writehere,

shiphere, etc., for scrivener, writer, and shipper, etc.; besides many other relics of that speech, never to be abolished.

After the Saxon tongue came the Norman or French language over into our country, and therein were our laws written for a long time. Our children, also, were, by an especial decree, taught first to speak the same, and thereunto enforced to learn their constructions in the French, whensoever they were sent to the grammarschool. In like sort, few bishops, abbots, or other clergymen were admitted unto any ecclesiastical function here among us, but such as came out of religious houses from beyond the seas, to the end they should not use the English tongue in their sermons to the people. In the court, also, it grew into such contempt, that most men thought it no small dishonor to speak any English there; which bravery took his hold at the last likewise in the country with every ploughman that even the very carters began to wax weary of their mother-tongue, and labored to speak French, which as then was counted no small token of gentility. And no marvel; for every French rascal, when he came once hither, was taken for a gentleman, only because he was proud, and could use his own language. And all this (I say) to exile the English and British speeches quite out of the country. But in vain: for in the time of King Edward I., to wit, toward the latter end of his reign, the French itself ceased to be spoken generally, but most of all and by law in the midst of Edward III., and then began the English to recover and grow in more estimation than before; notwithstanding that, among our artificers, the most part of their implements, tools, and words of art retain still their French denominations even to these our days, as the language itself is used likewise in sundry courts, books of record, and matters of law; whereof here is no place to make any particular rehearsal. Afterward, also, by diligent travail of Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower, in the time of Richard II., and after them of John Scogan and John Lydgate, monk of Bury, our said tongue was brought to an excellent pass, notwithstanding that it never came unto the type of perfection, until the time of Queen Elizabeth, wherein John Jewel, bishop of Sarum, John Fox, and sundry learned and excellent writers,

have fully accomplished the ornature of the same, to their great praise and immortal commendation; although not a few other do greatly seek to stain the same by fond affectation of foreign and strange words, presuming that to be the best English which is most corrupted with external terms of eloquence and sound of many syllables.

But as this excellency of the English tongue is found in one, and the south part of this island, so in Wales the greatest number (as I said) retain still their own ancient language, that of the north part of the said country being less corrupted than the other, and therefore reputed for the better in their own estimation and judgment. This, also, is proper to us Englishmen, that since ours is a middle or intermediate language, and neither too rough nor too smooth in utterance, we may with much facility learn any other language, beside Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and speak it naturally, as if we were home-born in those countries; and yet on the other side it falleth out, I wot not by what other means, that few foreign nations can rightly pronounce ours, without some and that great note of imperfection, especially the Frenchmen, who also seldom write anything that savoreth of English truly. But this of all the rest doth breed most admiration with me, that if any stranger do hit upon some likely pronunciation of our tongue, yet in age he swerveth so much from the same, that he is worse therein than ever he was, and thereto, peradventure, halteth not a little also in his own, as I have seen by experience in Reginald Wolfe, and others, whereof I have justly marvelled.

The Cornish and Devonshire men, whose country the Britons call Cerniw, have a speech in like sort of their own, and such as hath indeed more affinity with the American tongue than I can well discuss of. Yet in mine opinion they are both but a corrupted kind of British, albeit so far degenerating in these days from the old, that if either of them do meet with a Welshman, they are not able at the first to understand one another, except here and there in some odd words, without the help of interpreters. And no marvel, in mine opinion, that the British of Cornwall is thus corrupted, since the Welsh tongue that is spoken in the north and south part of Wales doth differ so much

in itself as the English used in Scotland doth from that which is spoken among us here in this side of the island, as I have said already.

The Scottish-English hath been much broader and less pleasant in utterance than ours, because that nation hath not, till of late, endeavored to bring the same to any perfect order, and yet it was such in manner as Englishmen themselves did speak for the most part beyond the Trent, whither any great amendment of our language had not, as then, extended itself. Howbeit, in our time the Scottish language endeavoreth to come near, if not altogether to match, our tongue in fineness of praise and copiousness of words, and this may in part appear by a history of the Apocrypha translated into Scottish verse by Hudson, dedicated to the king of that country, and containing six books, except my memory do fail me.

GROUNDS TO EXPECT A FUTURE STATE PROVED.

[George Berkeley, D. D., born in the county of Kilkenny, Ireland, 1684, died at London, 1753. In 1709 published An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, Dublin, 8vo. (and a Vindication of this Theory, in 1733); in 1710, The Principles of Human Knowledge, Dublin, 8vo. ; in 1713, Three Dialogues between Hylas

and Philolonous; made Dean of Derry, 1724; in 1728

emigrated to America to carry out his "scheme for converting the savage Americans to Christianity by a college to be erected in the Summer Islands, otherwise called the Isles of Bermudas" (Berkeley), and at Newport, Rhode Island, awaited for a long time in vain the

receipt of a parliamentary grant to enable him to com

plete his project; in 1732 published Alciphron, or the

Minute Philosopher, in seven Dialogues, containing an

Apology for the Christian Religion against Free-ThinkCloyne, and refused to exchange his see for that of Clogher, of double its value; in 1747 published Siris, a chain of Philosophical Reflections and Inquiries re

ers, Lond., 2 vols. 8vo. ; in 1734 was made Bishop of

specting the Virtues of Tar Water in the Plague, Lond.,

Svo., and in 1752 Farther Thoughts on Tar Water,

Lond., 8vo.; and died in the next year.]

Let the most steadfast unbeliever open, his eyes, and take a survey of the sensible world, and then say if there be not a connexion, and adjustment, and exact and constant order discoverable in all the parts of it. Whatever be the cause, the thing itself is evident to all our faculties. Look

makes them desirable to an uncorrupted | taste, a man may be said naturally to possess them when he possesseth those en-. joyments which they are fitted by nature to yield.

Hence it is usual with me to consider myself as having a natural property in every object that administers pleasure to me. When I am in the country, all the fine seats near the place of my residence, and to which I have access, I regard as mine. The same I think of the groves and fields where I walk, and muse on the folly of the civil landlord in London, who has the fantastical pleasure of draining dry rent into his coffers, but is a stranger to fresh air and rural enjoyments. By these principles I am possessed of half a dozen of the finest seats in England, which in the eye of the law belong to certain of my acquaintance, who being men of business choose to live near the court. . .

When I walk the streets I use the foregoing natural maxim (viz., That he is the true possessor of a thing who enjoys it, and not he that owns it without the enjoyment of it), to convince myself that I have a property in the gay part of all the gilt chariots that I meet, which I regard as amusements designed to delight my eyes, and the imagination of those kind people who sit in them gayly attired only to please me. I have a real, and they only an imaginary, pleasure from their exterior embellishments Upon the same principle, I have discovered that I am the natural proprietor of all the diamond necklaces, the crosses, stars, brocades, and embroidered clothes, which I see at a play or birthnight, as giving more natural delight to the spectator than to those that wear them. And I look on the beaux and ladies as so many paroquets in an aviary, or tulips in a garden, designed purely for my diversion. A gallery of pictures, a cabinet, or library, that I have free access to, I think my own. In a word, all that I desire is the use of things, let who will have the keeping of them. By which maxim I am grown one of the richest men in Great Britain; with this difference, that I am not a prey to my own cares, or the envy of others.

Every day, numberless innocent and natural gratifications occur to me, while I behold my fellow-creatures laboring in a toilsome and absurd pursuit of trifles:

one, that he may be called by a particular appellation; another, that he may wear a particular ornament, which I regard as a bit of riband that has an agreeable effect on my sight, but is so far from supplying the place of merit where it is not, that it serves only to make the want of it more conspicuous. Fair weather is the joy of my soul about noon I behold a blue sky with rapture, and receive great consolation from the rosy dashes of light which adorn the clouds of the morning and evening. When I am lost among green trees, I do not envy a great man with a great crowd at his levee. And I often lay aside thoughts of going to an opera, that I may enjoy the silent pleasure of walking by moonlight, or viewing the stars sparkle in their azure ground; which I look upon as part of my possessions, not without a secret indignation at the tastelessness of mortal men, who, in their race through life, overlook the real enjoyment of it.

But the pleasure which naturally affects a human mind with the most lively and transporting touches, I take to be the sense that we act in the eye of infinite Wisdom, Power, and Goodness, that will crown our virtuous endeavors here, with a happiness hereafter, large as our desires, and lasting as our immortal souls. This is a perpetual spring of gladness in the mind. This lessens our calamities and doubles our joys. Without this the highest state of life is insipid, and with it the lowest is a paradise.-The Guardian, No. 49, Thursday, May 7, 1713.

GEORGE BERKELEY.

BUYING BOOKS.

[Henry Ward Beecher, D. D., a son of the Rev. Dr. Lyman Beecher, was born at Litchfield, Conn., 1813, died at Brooklyn, 1885, graduated at Amherst College, 1834, was settled as a Presbyterian minister at Lawrenceburg, Indiana, 1837-39, and at Indianapolis, 1839 to 1847, when he became pastor of the Plymouth

Church, in Brooklyn, New York, an organization of

Orthodox Congregational believers, which post he occupied till his death.]

How easily one may distinguish a genuine lover of books from the worldly man! With what subdued and yet glowing enthusiasm does he gaze upon the costly front of a thousand embattled volumes! How gently he draws them down, as if

they were little children! How tenderly he handles them! He peers at the titlepage, at the text, or the notes, with the nicety of a bird examining a flower. He studies the binding: the leather, Russia, English calf, morocco; the lettering, the gilding, the edging, the hinge of the cover! He opens it, and shuts it, he holds it off, and brings it nigh. It suffuses his whole body with book-magnetism. He walks up and down, in amaze at the mysterious allotments of Providence that gives so much money to men who spend it upon their appetites, and so little to men who would spend it in benevolence, or upon their refined tastes! It is astonishing, too, how one's necessities multiply in the presence of the supply. One never knows how many things it is impossible to do without till he goes to the house-furnishing stores. One is surprised to perceive, at some bazaar, or fancy and variety store, how many conveniences he needs. He is satisfied that his life must have been utterly inconvenient aforetime. And thus, too, one is inwardly convicted at a book-store of having lived for years without books which he is now satisfied that one cannot live without!

Then, too, the subtle process by which the man convinces himself that he can afford to buy! No subtle manager or broker ever saw through a maze of financial embarrassments half so quick as a poor book-buyer sees his way clear to pay for what he must have. He promises himself marvels of retrenchment, he will eat less, or less costly viands, that he may buy more food for the mind. He will take an extra patch, and go on with his raiment another year, and buy books instead of coats. Yea, he will write books, that he may buy books. He will lecture, teach, trade, he will do any honest thing for money to buy books!

The appetite is insatiable. Feeding does not satisfy it. It rages by the fuel which is put upon it. As a hungry man eats first and pays afterward, so the bookbuyer purchases, and then works at the debt afterward. This paying is rather medicinal. It cures for a time. But a relapse takes place. The same longing, the same promises of self-denial. He promises himself to put spurs on both heels of his industry; and then, besides all this, he will somehow get along when

the time for payment comes! Ah! this SOMEHOW! That word is as big as a whole world, and is stuffed with all the vagaries and fantasies that Fancy ever bred upon Hope.

And yet, is there not some comfort in buying books to be paid for? We have heard of a sot who wished his neck as long as the worm of a still, that he might so much the longer enjoy the flavor of the draught! Thus, it is a prolonged excitement of purchase, if you feel for six months in a slight doubt whether the book is honestly your own or not. Had you paid down, that would have been the end of it. There would have been no affectionate and beseeching look of your books at you, every time you saw them, saying, as plain as a book's eyes can say, "Do not let me be taken from you.

Moreover, buying books before you can pay for them promotes caution. You do not feel at liberty to take them home. You are married. Your wife keeps an account-book. She knows to a penny what you can and what you cannot afford. She has no speculation in her eyes. Plain figures make desperate work with airy somehows." It is a matter of no small skill and experience to get your books home, and into their proper places, undiscovered. Perhaps the blundering express brings them to the door just at evening. What is it, my dear? says to you. "Oh! nothing,-a few books that I cannot do without.

66

she

That smile! A true housewife that loves her husband can smile a whole arithmetic at him in one look! Of course she insists, in the kindest way, in sympathizing with you in your literary acquisition. She cuts the string of the bundle (and of your heart), and out comes the whole story. You have bought a complete set of costly English books, full bound in calf, extra gilt. You are caught, and feel very much as if bound in calf yourself, and admirably lettered.

Now, this must not happen frequently. The books must be smuggled home. Let them be sent to some near place. Then, when your wife has a headache, or is out making a call, or has lain down, run the books across the frontier and threshold, hastily undo them, stop only for one loving glance as you put them away in the closet, or behind other books on the shelf, or on the topmost shelf. Clear away the