change in their language. Undoubtedly the development of the Chinese language was by their growth in civilization, because it has a tendency "to check the progress of development in language, and to fix it at the stage which it has reached at the time when the hunter or the herdsman life has given way to that of the farmer, the artisan, and the merchant.”

2nd. Agglutinative-when the words begin to flow together, as the language of the Mexican and North American Indin, Example: "He is Godlike."

3rd. Inflectional-Latin, Greek. Example: "He is

Godly."

4th.

Analytical-English Language.

Saxon is derived from the name of a weapon

Example: seax."

THE CHANGES IN WORDS.

"LANGUAGES like everything else in the world, are constantly changing. Before the days of printing a thousand years would serve to disguise a language completely. People speaking the same language might separate as the Teutonic tribes did, and in a few hundred years their languages would be as different as the Dutch and the German are.

"A language changes by means of its words. Some words drop out of use, a great many new words come into use, and some old words change spelling or pronunciation or meaning, or all three. We go to the dictionary to find the correct words, but the dictionary makers have to revise their big books every ten years to keep track of the language. Chaucer wrote a little over five hundred years ago, and we can hardly believe that he wrote in English. Shakespeare and Bacon wrote three hundred years ago, and we want their spelling modernized be

fore we can read it well. Words drop out of use-become obsolete, we say-for various reasons. Sometimes a better word crowds out a poorer one. Hundreds of words have been lost because customs or systems or pastimes have changed. When feudalism and chivalry and knighthood died out the special words that went with them died out too. When archery and hawking gave place to the use of guns the words that went with them were dropped except in a few instances, and in these the words changed meaning. Thus 'mosquet,' the name of the hawk trained to pursue the game in the air, became 'musket,' the name of the gun which did the same work."

With the coming of new sciences and new machines, new methods and customs, a hundred thousand new words have come into the language. Even our slang changes to keep up to date. A man is no longer mistaken in his conclusions, or is " uncertain " or " erratic;" he is "off his base, or off his trolley."

The Anglo-Saxon made many new words by simply changing the vowel.

Thus we have "sing, sang, sung," and most of the forms of the so-called "strong" verbs.

Sip, sup,"

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sop," "

soup," are all from the same word, but a different meaning has attached to each. "Shrub" and "scrub" are the same word, and illustrate this method of branching.

In early English, also, vowels and consonants were easily interchanged. "Brunt" and "burnt" were the same word, also " Brid" and "bird."

Chaucer writes:

"Herkneth the blissful briddies, how they sing," where we would say birdies.

Some words have changed form several times, while the meaning has remained the same. Thus "quinsy came into the language as "squinacy," then changed to "squinsy," and finally became "quinsy."

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But the most interesting changes that words have undergone are not in the form but in the meaning. Many common words have once had a meaning very different from the one we now give them. Silly" once meant blessed. "Thou silly babe," the poet writes. "Fond" meant foolish. A "fond father" was a foolish father. Milton writes:

"Doth God exact day labor, light denied?"

"I fondly ask," meaning, "I foolishly ask." A "passenger" was one who was passing along the highway-a foot traveler. Now it means one carried by public conveyance. "A journey" meant a day's travel.

"You'd think 'twas a journey to Twickenham town." Now a journey may mean a trip across continents or around the world.

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"Rather" is the comparative form of an old word, "rathe," meaning "early: "The rathe primrose."

Now we have made it mean somewhat," " and we have lost the first meaning entirely when we say "you are

rather late."

"Knave" was the English word for "boy." Mischievous boys know how the change came about.

A "villain was one who lived in the villa or village outside the lord's castle.

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A

"" Miscreant meant an unbeliever or infidel. man was a man who followed some craft or

"crafty

trade.

66 Dunce was the name applied to the followers of Duns Scotus, one of the acutest reasoners in all the Middle Ages.

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"Carriage" is another word that has greatly changed. When the authorized version" of the Bible was made just three hundred years ago, "carriage" meant what one was carrying-his bundles or baggage-not what was carrying him. In the Book of Samuel you read how "David left his carriage in the hand of the keeper of

the carriage and ran into the army and saluted his brethren." But you must not think that David was traveling in a carriage, and got out of it to go and see his brethren. Also in Acts 21:15 we read, " And after those days we took up our carriages and went up to Jerusalem."

In Thessalonians we read, in speaking of the resurrection, "We which are alive, and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them which are asleep," where "Prevent" means "to go before," instead of to hinder or to stop, as it now means.

We cannot understand Luke 11:48, "Ye allow the deeds of your fathers" till we know that "allow" used to mean "praise."

"Presently," for us, means "pretty while," but when Shakespeare wrote, "each" meant "immediately." In the play of "Hamlet," where Polonius says, “Hamlet, the queen would speak with you, and presently," Hamlet answers, "Then I will come to my mother by-and-by." We would now say it, "The queen would speak with you, and immediately." "Then I will come to my mother at once." I suspect that there is a long history of laziness in the change.

Sometimes words keep their original meaning, but become too light for serious writing. No one now speaks of the head as the "pate," or "noddle" unless in a joking way, but these were once the proper and serious words for "head."

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Skipped out" is now a slang phrase, but in one of the early English translations of the Bible we read, "Paul and Barnabas rent their clothes and skipped out among the people." In the same translation we read, "A flock of angels," and "My beloved cometh hopping upon the mountains," and "The Lord trounced Sisera and all his host," none of which would be thought serious enough for Bible language to-day.

Some words have changed by limitation only. "Physician was one who studied any science. Now it is limited to a student of medical science.

Girl" once meant a young person of either sex, as also did "maid." We still keep something of the old meaning when we speak of a young orator making his "maiden" speech.

66 'Widow" used to mean a bereaved man or woman, either one; and when we say a "widow woman 99 we are remembering the time when a widow woman must be distinguished from a widow man.

We have sometimes crowded a whole sentence into a single word. Our word for farewell is one of these. In Shakespeare's time one said to his friends at parting, "God be wi' ye." From that time we have clipped it more and more, till now it has come to be simply "goodby." But it is surely pleasant to remember when we bid our friends good-by that we are saying to them in good old Saxon phrase," God be with you."

THE WORD STAR.

There is no older word in the English language than "star," for it is not only from the tongue of our earliest known ancestors, the Aryans, a united people many thousands of years ago, but it is an Aryan root that has been preserved to us through the ages that have no history excepting that which comes from a scientific study of the languages. None of our sister languages has preserved this root so much unchanged as has the English, though it is found in all of the family. The Dutch come nearly as close with their "ster" and the Old High German is a little further off with sterro." The Anglo-Saxon has "steorra," the Sanscrit "stri," the Icelandic "stjarna," the Latin "stella" and the Greek" astar."

The other branches of the language have their "star" words nearly as close to the root, and they all use the