thology (such as the poetical worship of the rose and the daisy) supplanted the stateliness of the old romance. In time he threw off these conceits, 'He stooped to truth, and moralized his song.' When about sixty, in the calm evening of a busy life, he composed his Canterbury Tales, simple and varied as nature itself, imbued with the results of extensive experience and close observation, and colored with the genial lights of a happy temperament, that had looked on the world without austerity, and passed through its changing scenes without losing the freshness and vivacity of youthful feeling and imagination." As a poet, Chaucer certainly deserves all the praise which has been so liberally bestowed on him; but there have not been wanting those who charge him with having exerted a baneful influence upon the subsequent fate of the English language. He had visited France and Italy, and one at least of his tales is taken from the Italian of Petrarch. Skinner somewhat harshly blames him for having vitiated his native speech" by whole cartloads of foreign words." Two Scottish writers, John Barbour, archdeacon of Aberdeen, and Andrew Wyntoun, prior of St. Serf's monastery in Lochleven, the former the author of The Bruce, the latter of a metrical "Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland," complete the first period of the literature of England, ending with the year 1400; but we think that mention ought to have been made of Lydgate, a monk of Bury, who was nearly contemporary with Chaucer. A single stanza from his Fall of Princes will show that he lays no claim to great poetical powers, and will at the same time form a fit conclusion to our series of quotations illustrating the progress of the English language. "I meane as thus I haue no fresh licour Nor through Clio in rhethorike no floure In my labour for to refresh me; Nor of the sisters in number thrise three, Which with Cithera on Parnaso dwell, They neuer me gaue drinke once of their wel." This, then, was the appearance which our language wore at the commencement of the fifteenth century. The works which we have described had meanwhile given an importance to the popular language which more than sufficed to counterbalance the advantage that the Norman-French possessed as the language of the court, of legal documents, and of education. In 1362, Edward the Third found himself compelled to substitute the use of English for that of French in judicial proceedings; and "in the same reign, schoolmasters, for the first time, caused their pupils to construe the classical tongues into the vernacular." In Parliament, on the other hand, the French maintained its place until the year 1483; but before that time, it was often found necessary in public documents to add the English translation of many French words. Thus we read, "Notre dit soverain seignur le Roi ad ordeigne qe null merchant, amesne maunde ne convoie ascuns de cestes wares desoutz escritez: laces, corses, ribans, frenges de soie, aundirons, gridirnes, marteus vulgarement nommez hamers, pinsons, firetonges, drepyngpannes, dises (dice), tenys balles, daggers, vodeknyves, botkyns, sheres pour taillours, cisours, rasors, shethes, agules pour sacs vulgarement nommez paknedles, &c." It must strike an observant reader of more modern English works, that there is a considerable difference between one author and another, with respect to the proportion of Germanic and Romance words which they employ. An examination of some passages taken indiscriminately from their writings proves, that for one hundred words of Germanic origin the translators of the Bible use four of French; Shakspeare and Cowley, fifteen; Spenser, Milton, Thomson, and Addison, twenty-two; Locke and Young, twenty-seven; while Robertson employs more than forty; Pope, fifty; and Hume and Gibbon nearly sixty. Swift, on the other hand, has scarcely as many as Shakspeare. It is evident that the more energetic and forcible, and the more popular writers, those, in fact, whose books are in the hands of the people, use more Germanic words than those who have written for scholars and men of science, and whose style is classical and refined. The greater part of the vocabulary which we make use of in common conversation we have received from our Saxon ancestors; for the subjects of common talk are generally material substances, which are mostly designated by Germanic words. The heavenly bodies, as sun, moon, and stars; the elements, earth, fire, and water; the divisions of time, spring, summer, fall, winter, day, night, morning, evening, noon, midnight, year, month, week; the phenomena of nature, light, heat, cold, frost, rain, snow, hail, sleet, thunder, storm, wind, lightning; the various parts of our habitable globe, sea, land, wood, stream, hill, dale; the produce of the earth, wheat, rye, barley, corn, oats, straw, hay, beer; woods and forests, and the trees of which they consist, oaks, birches, beeches, elms, ashes; the animal creation, lamb, sheep, goat, kid, ox, cow, steer, heifer, calf, swine,* dog, hound, cat, horse, mare, cock, hen, chicken, dove, bear, boar, wolf, fox, hart, stag, doe, deer, hare; these all are Germanic words, and are just the words which form the largest part of the conversation of every-day life. But further, from the same source are derived all the terms which represent the positions and motions of animated beings, to sit, stand, lie, run, walk, leap, stagger, slip, slide, stride, glide, yawn, gape, thrust, fly, swim, creep, crawl, spring. From Germany we have received all the words which express the most endearing and intimate relations, and which are therefore enshrined in the hearts of the people; father, mother, husband, wife, brother, sister, son, daughter, child, bride, home, kindred, friend, hearth, roof, fireside, love, hope, sorrow, fear, smile, laugh, sigh, blush. Germanic is the language of the merchant, the farmer, the seaman; Germanic are almost all our proverbs and popular sayings; Germanic the language of all strong emotions, of hatred and contempt, of anger and love. Of French extraction, on the other hand, are the expressions of science, of the learned professions, and of fashionable society; hence it comes, that general terms are French, while all the individuals comprised under them are Saxon; motion is French, but to go, walk, ride, drive, run, lie, stride, are Saxon; sound is French, but buzz, hum, clash, splash, hiss, are Saxon; color is French, but white, black, green, yellow, blue, red, brown, are Saxon; member and organ are French, but ear, eye, hand, foot, lip, mouth, hair, finger, are Saxon; animal is French, but man, ox, cow, sheep, calf, dog, cat, are Saxon; number is French, but every single number, except million, is of Saxon origin. All the terms of the law, all the expressions referring to ju * But when they were taken from the woods and fields, and had the honor of appearing upon the tables of the Norman nobility, they became French, as beef, veal, mutton, pork, venison. dicial proceedings, parliament, session, jury, judge, advocate, plead, defend, condemn, forfeit, and the whole vocabulary of the physician, are of Romance extraction. In fine, when we would be forcible, energetic, easily understood, we should seek for Germanic words; when we would be learned, refined, polite, we should express ourselves in those which are borrowed from the French. The English language furnishes many examples of synonymes, and it will be found to be a general rule, that the Germanic word is forcible, but vulgar, the French less expressive, but better adapted to ears polite; such, for instance, are to sweat and to perspire, to be drunk and to be intoxicated. We have thus given a brief outline of the history of the English language; it has necessarily been so brief that it could not be otherwise than defective. We will conclude, as we commenced, with expressing a hope that the publication which has called forth our remarks will exert an influence in directing the attention of the public to the literature of our forefathers, and more especially in encouraging the study of the Anglo-Saxon language, the long and strange neglect of which we cannot but regard as a disgrace to England, and in a less degree to this country. In England, as we have already remarked, great efforts are now making to recover the lost ground, and we would fain be permitted to hope, that in this, as in every thing else that is good and useful, we shall be ready to compete with her in honorable rivalry. "The literature of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers may be regarded as a creditable feature of our national history, and as something of which we might justly be proud, if we did not allow ourselves to remain in such ignorance of it." ART. III.-The Crescent and the Cross; or Romance and Realities of Eastern Travel. By ELIOT WARBURTON, Esq. New York: Wiley & Putnan. 1845. SINCE the day when the Hebrew, grown up from the small beginnings of Joseph and his brethren to be a terror to the powerful people of the Pharaohs, went out from the land of Egypt, its soil has not ceased to be the theatre of deeds as bold as those that marked the career and formed the fame of the great lawgiver of Israel, and as dark as the doom from which a homeless people were rescued by the angry waves of an avenging sea. Her river was the nucleus of the only nationality which has survived the dreary centuries that immediately followed the flood, and on its banks have shone, in never-ceasing succession, Pharaoh and Ptolemy, king and emperor, consul and satrap, caliph and pasha, Napoleon and sultan. The Pharaohs have been laid in the pyramids. or the catacombs, and the Ptolemies are with them. The names of most of the places that knew them are forgotten. The Nile in elder days had brought its rich tribute from the highlands of the south; the revenues of the granary of the world gleamed in the coffers of its queen; pearls melted in the wine-cup of the foe of Cicero. The master of half the world was at the feet of the mistress of Egypt, his victorious captive. Her beauty had done its work, and bound to her car the first of Cæsar's iron captains; it wooed the venom of the asp, and, passing from earth, won for its mistress an apotheosis in the poetry of that clime whose sons are gazing from out an isle of the Atlantic upon the country of Cleopatra, and already in their strong will are moulding it into the tributary thoroughfare to their empire in the East. The leading of the world was staked at Actium. The queen of Egypt had favored the vanquished rival; her love, burning under the same sun that now looks fiercely down on the intruding Frank, was the fatal gift that at once crowned his fame and clouded his career. At the hour when his strength was broken, her country became a fraction of that power whose capital on the seven hills of the Tiber gave laws to a realm coextensive with the known earth; and the clime that Rome bid furnish corn to her teeming millions is now in name a province of the empire founded by the successors of that Arabian prophet who traced, amid the mouldering temples of the religion of Numa, the foundations of a faith itself now gray with years. Egypt is in name a province of the Ottoman empire. And in saying that it is so but in name, that, nominally a dependency of the Porte, it is actually at this hour the foremost nation that musters its forces under the crescent, that within the lifetime of one man it has arisen from provin |