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Every language is polyhedral in its structure, and while for substance it is all of the same material, each side of it has a different face and different adornments from every other. He therefore who walks around about the whole castellated and turreted structure of the Latin, scanning thoroughly all its own inner beauty of height and breadth and multiform. composition, and surveying, without, each wondrous side of the varied whole, its Sanscrit side and its Greek, Celtic, Gothic and Slavonic sides, one after the other, gratifies that natural love of curiosity which is so strong an impulse to travel, research and effort in other things, and which nowhere finds a purer gratification than in the realms of science and

of letters.

As also it is one of the highest exercises of the mind, to adapt means to ends, the act of doing which we call skill in matters physical and intellectual, and wisdom in those which are moral; so it is one of the highest intellectual pleasures to trace adaptations, connections, sequences and harmonies, scientific and historical, and to find ourselves on a path of discovery in which they are perpetually coming into view, when and where we least expected them. It is specially pleasant to find analogies, mutually explaining objects before regarded as unrelated and isolated, and connecting together things widely separated and of a diverse aspect from each other. The formation of comparisons is one of the chief exercises and pleasures of the imagination. It is in this employment that the poetic faculty in our nature, the natural fountain of youth in the heart, bursts forth in all its strength of life and joy. So much indeed are the faculties of invention and comparison stimulated into action in this study, that the tendency is ever present to fly off from the centre of a real logical stability, into the ideal and the fanciful, except in one of thoroughly scholastic habits, which indeed, as a centripetal force, balancing the opposite centrif ugal tendency, serve to keep such a mind, though moving onward with delighted energy, yet true to its proper orbit of revolution.

2. Its great promotion of the higher mental discipline.

Human language is the highest of all objective realms of art, among men. The highest absolute realm of art on earth, as in heaven, is subjective; in the culture and perfection of character, in everything lovely and heroic, manly and godly, according to the pure and perfect ideal presented to us, in the abstract, in the Bible, and, in the concrete, in the beautiful and sublime life of Jesus Christ. The Greeks deemed architecture, as the word shows in its very etymology, "the principal art" of life. But the art of speech transcends, in all its uses and relations, not only that of house-building, but also every other art that can be named among all the outward employments of men. A dead language is full of all monumental remembrances of the people who spoke it. Their swords and their shields are in it; their faces hang pictured on its walls; and their very voices ring still through its recesses. And, in a living language, you may see, as in a vast panorama, the whole varied busy activity and experience of a nation's present condition. Language has not merely, for height, and breadth, and organic structure as the dome of thought, all the sublime capacities of architecture; or, for severe chiselled dignity of form, all the majesty of sculpture; or, for wondrous power of imagery, all the exquisite beauty of painting; or, for sweetness and ravishment, the magic, charms of music; it contains the mysteries and energies of all these exalted arts in one. In it also, as a garner, are gathered together all the rich harvests of human genius, from every field which human thought or effort has essayed to reap. It is the archives of all man's history, migratory, civil, political, statutory, literary, scientific, experimental and personal. Surely on an area of action so wide and so varied, there must be scope enough for every kind of mental exercise and inquiry; and prizes, of every possible variety of value, must await the grasp of him who earnestly seeks for them.

And in no way, as a matter of general experience and of general testimony, can all the higher faculties of the mind be so well trained to lofty, vigorous, sustained action, as by the study of language; its analytic, philosophic, artistic,

study. Classical discipline is, accordingly, the palæstra in which, throughout Christendom, the rising generation is everywhere prepared, and for ages has been, to wrestle manfully with the difficulties of after-life, in whatever profession or calling. From Latin and Greek fountains, the living waters have been drawn, from which the intellectual thirst of great minds, in all nations, has been slaked. Those ancient languages, so often called dead, have ever had a very living

use.

But if the mental discipline of the civilized world has been secured thus far, to such a high degree, from the very imperfect study of language, as hitherto pursued, how much more would be obtained by a deeper, broader, truer style of familiarization with its structure and spirit; so deep, and broad, and true as to seem to the mind swimming buoyantly in its depths, to be its very native element. By the study of etymology, in particular, habits of wide research, of patient comparison, of logical deduction, and of critical review are preeminently cultivated; all among the highest elements of mental energy and success. Who can speak too strongly of their necessity and value? or, of that insight into the living beauty of language which makes its words seem, whether standing quietly on the shore of our own thoughts, or coming and going on errands of truth and love, to be so many white-winged messengers, radiant themselves with the light that they bear before them?

And as the student finds, in this path of study, the sweet perpetually mingled with the useful, and, like one searching for gems in regions where they abound, obtains, at every step, a rich reward of his efforts, he feels perpetually freshened to new toil; and each new effort prepares the desire and the way for a greater. So that the spirit of study, instead of being, as at first, a matter of mere conscientious or manly resolve, rises rapidly into enthusiasm, spontaneity, and instinct. For there is all the excitement, in such a style of classical study, of pleasing travel and, more, of earnest scientific exploration and even of rare adventure. This, it may well be assumed, is the only world in which mental ef fort is a labor and, at times, a weariness; and the nearer VOL. XV. No. 58.

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that we approach the point of making real toil at the same time real joy, the nearer do we bring earth to heaven and the mortal to the immortal.

3. Its peculiar value in preparing the mind for the work of communication and communion with other minds. The chief end of knowledge and education is never personal. Their true uses are not to be found in centralization but in distribution; in participating with others, as God finds his infinite joy in doing, all one's full resources. The greatest possible benefaction to all our fellow men,- this is the true end and aim of all mental and moral culture. Language, therefore, as the divinely-constructed vehicle for communicating thought and feeling between human beings, deserves, in all its forms and details, the most complete mastery. Shut up within one's self, thought stagnates and knowledge decays. The subjective is developed by the objective; and the objective by the subjective. The creation is a great duality. Everything exists in pairs: males and females, vegetables and animals, matter and spirit, fire and water, land and ocean, the sky and sea, light and shade, birth and death, time and space, substance and shadow, the present and future, the world without and the world within, the finite and the infinite. When man most addresses himself, yea, rather, most abandons himself to all that is without him, he becomes most conscious of all that is within him; and when he enters into the pavilion of other minds, to shed the light of his love upon them, or to draw the light of their spirits into his own, he knows, he feels, with what a spark of the Divinity his nature has been lighted from on high. His whole inward being unfolds at once its native splendor, to his own deeply awakened consciousness.

The genius and the power of language are best comprehended, as its words are contemplated, not so much in their separate individual character, or in their syntactical combinations, as in their formative, derivative, and mutually correspondent aspects. The very processes in which they originally crystallized into their present forms, are almost enacted over again, in the laboratory of etymology. Etymology is, indeed, the chemistry of language. But not only is the

genius of language, universal language or word-architecture, best comprehended by the study of etymology; skill also in the use of words, so as to be able to employ them, with beautiful aptness in themselves, and with delicacy, harmony, and richness of effect in combination one with the other, is thus acquired. There is as wide a difference in the use of words by different writers, as of paints by poor artists and great; and as wide a difference, in the effect, upon the understanding and the sensibilities of their readers. And so also, in spoken words, there is as great a variety of utterance, as in the whole array of musical instruments, from the most obscure nonsense or empty bombast or wearisome platitudes, up to the deep, pure eloquence of a heart overflowing with thought and love, on the bosom of which every hearer floats, with joy, as on a sea of light and rapture.

And he who masters etymology, and to whom words take on again their original aspects of life and beauty, will become conscious, even in the use of our language, which is but a grand composite of the best parts of many other languages, of the primeval pleasure that men enjoyed who used words when they were fresh and new. They will be musical to his ears, as are the chimes of sweet bells, though heard far off upon the sea, to those who themselves founded them, and dissolved their hearts in song, with the melting metal, as its fiery streams ran into the strong mould. And since each human spirit throws its own light on all surrounding objects and does but see them as they are reflected in it to its eye, a heart that finds joy in the very utterance of its thoughts and feelings, will be sure, like one who revels in the sweet concords of music, to indulge in his favorite employment and to kindle in other hearts, while doing so, the same light that burns brightly in his own. Celestial pleasures are but labors of delight; efforts so true, so high, so joyous, that they become perpetual pastime; and he who imbues, by set purpose at first, and spontaneously afterwards, his own toils on earth with deep inward gladness, gives wings to his feet in climbing towards the holy and sublime, and charms those who behold him, into an instinctive imitation of his happy, soaring flight on high.

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