we have once become fully impressed with this fact, we shall feel less reluctance to acknowledge the same principle with regard to the grammatical system of more ancient languages. If we have learnt how the French future, j'aimerai, is a compound tense, consisting of the infinitive and the auxiliary verb, avoir, to have, we shall be more ready to admit the same explanation for the Latin future in bo, and the Greek future in sō. Modern dialects may be said to let out the secrets of language. They often surprise us by the wonderful simplicity of the means by which the whole structure of language is erected, and they frequently repeat in their new formations the exact process which had given rise to more ancient forms. There can be no doubt, for instance, about the Modern German entzwei. Entzweireissen does not mean only to tear into two parts, but it assumes the more general sense of to tear in pieces. In English, too, a servant will say that a thing came a-two, though he broke it into many pieces. Entzwei, in fact, answers exactly the same purpose as the Latin dis in dissolvo, disturbo, distraho. And what is the original meaning of this dis? Exactly the same as the German entzwei, the Low-German twei. In Low-German mîne Schau sint twei means my shoes are torn. The numeral duo, with the adverbial termination is, is liable to the following changes: - Du-is may become dvis, and dvis dbis. In dbis either the d or the b must be dropped, thus leaving either dis or bis. Bis in Latin is used in the sense of twice, dis in the sense of a-two. The same process leads from duellum, Zweikampf, duel, to dvellum, dbellum, and bellum; from Greek dyis to d Fis and dís (twice); from duigintı

to dviginti and viginti, twenty; from dyi-kosi to d Fikosi, Fi-kosi, and ei-kosi.

And what applies to the form, applies to the meaning of words. What should we say if we were told that a word which means good in Sanskrit meant bad in Greek? Yet we have only to trace the Modern German schlecht back through a few centuries before we find that the same word which now means bad was then used in the sense of good,1 and we are enabled to perceive, by a reference to intermediate writers, that this transition was by no means SO violent as it seems to be. Schlecht meant right and straight, but it also meant simple; simple came to mean foolish; foolish, useless; useless, bad. Ekelhaft is used by Leibnitz in the sense of fastidious, delicate; it now means only what causes disgust. Ingenium, which meant an inborn faculty, is degraded into the Italian ingannare, which means to cheat. Salig, which in Anglo-Saxon meant blessed, beatus, appears in English as silly; and the same ill-natured change may be observed in the Greek euéthes, guileless, mild, silly, and in the German albern, stupid, the Old High-German alawár, verissimus, alawâri, benignus.

Thus, a word which originally meant life or time in Sanskrit, has given rise to a number of words expressing eternity, the very opposite of life and time. Ever and never in English are derived from the same source from which we have age. Age is of course the French age. This age was in Old French edage,

1 "Er (Got) enwil niht tuon wan slehtes," God will do nothing but what is good. Fridank's Bescheidenheit, in M. M.'s German Classics, p. 121.

2 Not mentioned in Grimm's Dictionary.

changed into eage and age. Edage, again, represents a Latin form, ætaticum, which was had recourse to after the original ætas had dwindled away into a mere vowel, the Old French aé (Diez, s. v.). Now the Latin ætas is a contraction of ævitas, as æternus is a contraction of aviternus (cf. sempiternus). Evum, again, corresponds by its radical, though not by its derivative elements, to Greek ai Fun and the Gothic aiv-s, time, and eternity. In Sanskrit, we meet with a ayus, a neuter, which, if literally translated into Greek, would give as a Greek form aîos, and an adjective, aiés, neut. aiés. Now, although aîos does not survive in the actual language of Greece, its derivatives exist, the adverbs aiés and aier. This aiei is a regular dative (or rather locative) of aiés, which would form aiesi, aiei, like génesi and génei. In Gothic, we have from aivs, time, the adverbs aiv, ever, the Modern German je; and ni aiv, never, the Modern German nie.

There is a peculiar charm in watching the various changes of form and meaning in words passing down from the Ganges or the Tiber into the great ocean of modern speech. In the eighth century B. C. the Latin dialect was confined to a small territory. It was but one dialect out of many that were spoken all over Italy. But it grew-it became the language of Rome and of the Romans, it absorbed all the other dialects of Italy, the Umbrian, the Oscan, the Etruscan, the Celtic, and became by conquest the language of Central Italy, of Southern and Northern Italy. From thence it spread to Gaul, to Spain, to Germany, to Dacia on the Danube. It became the language of law and government in the civilized

portions of Northern Africa and Asia, and it was carried through the heralds of Christianity to the most distant parts of the globe. It supplanted in its victorious progress the ancient vernaculars of Gaul, Spain, and Portugal, and it struck deep roots in parts of Switzerland and Wallachia. When it came in contact with the more vigorous idioms of the Teutonic tribes, though it could not supplant or annihilate them, it left on their surface a thick layer of foreign words, and it thus supplied the greater portion in the dictionary of nearly all the civilized nations of the world. Words which were first used by Italian shepherds are now used by the statesmen of England, the poets of France, the philosophers of Germany, and the faint echo of their pastoral conversation may be heard in the Senate of Washington, in the cathedral of Calcutta, and in the settlements of New Zealand.

I shall trace the career of a few of those early Roman words, in order to show how words may change, and how they adapt themselves to the changing wants of each generation. I begin with the word Palace. A palace now is the abode of a royal family. But if we look at the history of the name we are soon carried back to the shepherds of the Seven Hills. There, on the Tiber, one of the seven hills was called the Collis Palatinus, and the hill was called Palatinus, from Pales, a pastoral deity, whose festival was celebrated every year on the 21st of April as the birthday of Rome. It was to commemorate the day on which Romulus, the wolf-child, was supposed to have drawn the first furrow on the foot of that hill, and thus to have laid

the foundation of the most ancient part of Rome, the Roma Quadrata. On this hill, the Collis Palatinus, stood in later times the houses of Cicero and of his neighbor and enemy Catiline. Augustus built his mansion on the same hill, and his example was followed by Tiberius and Nero. Under Nero, all private houses had to be pulled down on the Collis Palatinus, in order to make room for the emperor's residence, the Domus Aurea, as it was called, the Golden House. This house of Nero's was henceforth called the Palatium, and it became the type of all the palaces of the kings and emperors of Europe. The Latin palatium has had another very strange offspring, the French le palais, in the sense of palate. Before the establishment of phonetic rules to regulate the possible changes of letters in various languages, no one could have doubted that le palais, the palate, was the Latin palatum. However, palatum could never have become palais, but only palé. How palatium was used instead is difficult to explain. It was a word of frequent use, and with it was associated the idea of vault (palais vouti). Now vault was a very appropriate name for the palate. In Italian the palate is called il cielo della bocca; in Greek, ouranós, ouraniskos. Ennius, again, speaks of the vault of heaven as palatum cœli. There was evidently a similarity of conception between palate and vault, and vault and palace; and hence palatium was most likely in vulgar Latin used by mistake for palatus, and thus carried on into French.1

Another modern word, the English court, the French cour, the Italian corte, carries us back to

1 See Diez, Lexicon Comp. s. v.