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tainly many more than one-half that are only employed, if they are ever employed at all, on the rarest occasions. We should any of us be surprised to find, if we counted them, with how small a number of words we manage to express all that we have to say either with our lips or even with the pen. Our common literary English probably hardly extends to 10,000 words, our common spoken English hardly to 5000. And the proportion of native or home-grown words is undoubtedly very much higher in both the 5000 and the 10,000 than it is in the 40,000. Perhaps of the 30,000 words, or thereabouts, standing in the dictionaries, that are very rarely or never used, even in writing, between 20,000 and 25,000 may be free of French or Latin extraction. If we assume 22,500 to be So, that will leave 5000 Teutonic words in common use; and in our literary English, taken at 10,000 words, those that are non-Roman will thus amount to about one-half. Of that half 4000 words may be current in our spoken language, which will therefore be genuine English for four-fifths of its entire extent. It will consist of about 4000 Gothic and 1000 Roman words.*

The Rev. Dr. D'Orsey has shown, by coloured charts and elaborate tables, the proportion of the Teutonic and Romanic elements in the spoken language of England, and in the writings of our great authors. Thus, out of 100,000 words, at least 60,000 were Teutonic, 30,000 Romanic, and 10,000 from all other sources.

It would be almost impossible to compose a sentence of moderate length consisting solely of words of Latin derivation. But there are many which can be rendered wholly in Anglo-Saxon. It would be easy to make the Lord's Prayer entirely, as it is in present use almost entirely, Anglo-Saxon. It consists of sixty words, and six of these only have a Latin root. But for each of them, except one, we have an exact Saxon equivalent. For " 'trespasses" we may substitute "sins;" for "temptation," "trials;" for "deliver," "free;" and for "power," "might." Dr. Trench proposes for "glory," "brightness;" but this we think is not a good substitute.

The gradual changes in language are very remarkable. Dean Trench, in one of his popular manuals, observes: "How few aged persons, let them retain the fullest possession of their faculties, are conscious of any difference between the spoken language of their early youth and that of their old age; that words, and ways of using words, are obsolete now which were usual then; that many words are current now which had no existence at that time. And yet it is certain that so it must be. A man may fairly be supposed to remember clearly and well for sixty years * Dublin University Magazine.

back; and it needs less than five of these sixties to bring us to the period of Spenser, and not more than eight to set us in the time of Chaucer and Wiclif. How great a change, how vast a difference in our language, within eight memories! No one, overlooking this whole term, will deny the greatness of the change. For all this, we may be tolerably sure that, had it been possible to interrogate a series of eight persons, such as together had filled up this time, intelligent men, but men whose attention had not been especially roused on this subject, each in his turn would have denied that there had been any change at all during his lifetime. And yet, having regard to the multitude of words which have fallen into disuse during these four or five hundred years, we are sure that there must have been some lives in this chain which saw those words in use at their commencement, and out of use before their close. And so, too, of the multitude of words which have come into being within the limits of each of these lives."

WHAT IS "ARGUMENT"?

The origin and proper value of the word "Argument" has been thus explained by the Rev. Dr. Donaldson, in a paper read to the Cambridge Philosophical Society:

The author first investigated the etymology and meaning of the Latin verb arguo, and its participle argutus. He showed that arguo was a corruption of argruo = ad gruo ; that gruo (in argruo, ingruo, congruo) ought to be compared with kρouw, which means "to dash one thing against another," especially for the purpose of making a shrill, ringing noise; that arguo means "to knock something for the purpose of making it ring, or testing its soundness," hence "to test, examine, and prove any thing;" and that argutus signifies "made to ring," hence " making a distinct, shrill noise," or "tested and put to the proof." Accordingly argumentum means id quod arguit, "that which makes a substance ring, which sounds, examines, tests, and proves it."

It was then shown that these meanings were not only borne out by the classical usage of the word, but also by the technical application of " argument” as a logical term. For it is not equivalent to argumentation," or the process of

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reasoning; it does not even denote a complete syllogism; though Dr. Whately and some other writers on logic had fallen into this vague use of the word, and though it was so understood in the disputations of the Cambridge schools. The proper use of the word "argument" in logic is to denote "the middle term," i. e. " the term used for proof." In a sense similar to this the word is employed by mathematicians; and there can be no doubt that the oldest and best logicians confine the word to this, which is still its most common signification.

The author shows, by a collection of examples from the best English poets, that the established meanings of the word "argument" are reducible to three: (1) a proof, or means of proving; (2) a process of reasoning, or controversy, made up of such proofs; (3) the subject-matter of any discourse, writing, or picture. He maintains that the second of these meanings should be excluded from scientific language.

By this we are reminded of Swift's dictum, of much wider application-that "Argument, as generally managed, is the worst sort of conversation; as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading."

HANDWRITING.

The characters of writing have followed the genius of the barbarous ages: they are well or ill formed, in proportion as the sciences have flourished more or less. Antiquaries remark that the medals struck during the consulship of Fabius Pictor, 250 years before Augustus, have the letters better formed than those of the older date. Those of the time of Augustus, and the following age, show characters of perfect beauty. Those of Diocletian and Maximian are worse formed than those of the Antonines; and again, those of the Justins and Justinians degenerate into a Gothic taste. But it is not to medals only that these remarks are applicable: we see the same inferiority of written characters generally following in the train of barbarism and ignorance. During the first race of the French kings, we find no writing which is not a mixture of Roman and other characters. Under the empire of Charlemagne and of Louis le Débonnaire, the characters returned almost to the same point of

L

perfection which distinguished them in the time of Augustus, but in the following age there was a relapse to the former barbarism; so that for four or five centuries we find only the Gothic characters in manuscripts; for it is not worth while making an exception for short periods which were somewhat more polished, and when there was less inelegance in the formation of the letters.

The being able to write has been taken by our statists as the best evidence of the progress of education. Thus, twenty years ago, only 67 in every 100 men who married in England signed their names upon the register, and 51 in every 100 women, and thirteen years later the percentage was but 69.6 of the men and 56·1 of the women; but in the last seven years, a period which probably shows in its marriages the result chiefly of the education of the years 1840-45 or thereabouts, the advance has been much greater, and the Registrar-General reports that in 1860 the proportion of men writing their names had risen to 74-5, and of women to 63.8. In the whole twenty years the proportion of men who write has risen from being only two-thirds to be threefourths, and of women from being a half to be nearly twothirds, which may be expressed with tolerable accuracy by saying that where four persons had to “make their mark” then, only three do so now. This is for all England; but the rate of progress has not been the same in every part of the kingdom.

In the reign of George III., when education had become more general, the crosses of those who could not write lost the distinction and artistic character of older times, and the large bold round-hand corresponds in style with the buildings and furniture then in use. This writing, although without much beauty, has, notwithstanding, the merit of distinctness. In these railway times, with the exception of book-keepers in banks and clerks in merchants' offices, few seem to have time to trim their letters. Few artists write a good hand. Physicians' prescriptions are often as difficult to decipher as ancient hieroglyphics; and it must be confessed that writers for the press are not generally remarkable for either the distinctness or beauty of their manuscript. As regards artists, the practice of handling the brush and pencil is not favourable to graceful pen

manship; and in respect of the literary profession, it is generally difficult for the pen to keep pace with the thoughts, to say nothing of the fact, that time often presses.

*

Short-Hand is of great antiquity; for Seneca tells us that in his time reporting had been carried to such perfection, that a writer could keep pace in his report with the most rapid speaker.

ENGLISH STYLE.

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Style in writing has been well defined by Swift as proper words in proper places." However, this is rarely seen.

To the unsettled state of our language, and owing to the want of proper training in composition, may be attributed the general corruption of English Style, which has scarcely ceased since Southey, in his Colloquies, wrote the following vigorous condemnation of it:

More lasting effect was produced by translators, who, in later times, have corrupted our idiom as much as, in early ones, they enriched our vocabulary; and to this injury the Scotch have greatly contributed; for, composing in a language which is not their mother tongue, they necessarily acquired an artificial and formal style, which, not so much through the merit of a few, as owing to the perseverance of others, who for half a century seated themselves on the bench of criticism, has almost superseded the vernacular English of Addison and Swift. Our journals, indeed, have been the great corrupters of our style, and continue to be so; and not for this reason only. Men who write in newspapers, and magazines, and reviews, write for present effect; in most cases, this is as much their natural and proper aim, as it would be in public speaking; but when it is so, they consider, like public speakers, not so much what is accurate or just, either in matter or manner, as what will be acceptable to those whom they address. Writing also under the excitement of emulation and rivalry, they seek, by all the artifices and efforts of an ambitious style, to dazzle their readers; and they are wise in their generation, experience having shown that common minds are taken by glittering faults, both in prose and verse, as larks are with looking-glasses.

In this school it is that most writers are now trained; and after such training, any thing like an easy and natural movement is as little to be looked for in their compositions as in the step of a dancing-master. To the views of style, which are thus generated, there must be added the inaccuracies inevitably arising from haste, when a certain quantity of matter is to be supplied for a daily or weekly publication, which allows of no delay,-the slovenliness that confidence as well as fatigue and inattention will produce, and the barbarisms which are the effect of ignorance, or that smattering of knowledge which serves only to render ignorance presumptuous. These are the causes of corruption in our current style; and when these are considered, there would be ground for apprehending that the best writings of the last

*Communicated to The Builder.