Naïve, Naïveté: Most desirable words, with the French
elisive charm, and implying a combination of the
ingenuous, candid, winning.

Nonchalance: Cool carelessness and indifference.
Outré: Etymologically the same as ultra and carrying
with it the sense of the extravagant and grotesque.
Passé: A term whose import is realized with tremen-
dous force by ladies of a certain age. En passant,
by the way.

Penchant: Inclination, proclivity.

Persiflage: Light, mocking banter.

Personnel: Originally, corps of persons employed in contradistinction to the materiel; but now coming to mean, also, the sum of characteristics constituting one's personality.

Précis: A summary or abridgment. A valuable word.

Prestige: A most useful word, supplying a positive want in our language. The original meaning was a piece of smuggling or imposture; but the word now bears with it the idea of the presumption which past successes beget of future ones.

Programme: A word of universal use in America in the sense of a printed synopsis: a desirable contribution, which the French has given us, taking it from the Greek.

4

FRENCH CONTRIBUTIONS.

285

Protegé: One under the patronage or protection of

another-Roman clients.

Rapport: Implies, in French, relation; en rapport, in relation with; and used in English to convey the idea of an affinity or sympathy of sensation. The word owes its currency to our modern mesmeric and "Spiritual" phenomena and philosophy. Redacteur: An editor, compiler etc.; redaction, the digesting or reducing to order literary or scientific

material.

Renaissance: Regeneration, new birth: mainly ap

plied to the revival of the fine arts, but susceptible of any breadth of application.

Séance: A sitting, applied mostly to sittings for scientific purposes.

Soirée: A word early adopted, and after the analogy

of which we have more recently introduced matinée.

RAMBLE TWELFTH.

ENGLISH IN AMERICA.

By a combination of circumstances the English Language became the speech of America. There was nothing fortuitous in this. For English is eminently the speech of the Modern. The English Language expresses most typically those tendencies which all show more or less. Into the make of the English, more than any other idiom, has converged the spirit of the modern, breaking up the crystalline structure of the classic mould-the splendid newness, the aspirations of freedom, individualism, democracy.

Nurtured by the influences that have made the English nation, the English Language expresses the infusions from all these-expresses aristocracy and monarchy among the rest. Meanwhile do we not feel that a change has, these eras, passed over the pri vate spirit of man? The genius of a new age broods, fiery and fecundating, over the nations. Authority

MODIFICATIONS OF ENGLISH IN AMERICA. 287

tradition, caste go hopelessly. New tests, demands, verdicts come, disconcerting the old decorums in opinions, manners, literature. Audacious aspirations arise. A lofty augury beckons on to new cerebral and spiritual shores.

A specch to correspond! These oceanic movements in the age must make flood-tide in the Language, also. For speech moves with the movements of mind, as the ocean obeys celestial influences. Always Language is incubated by the mind of the ages. Transported to the new and vaster arena of America, the English language comes under the conditions, outer and inner, that are shaping the American mind. It is qualified by all that makes American life-by the geographic and climatic conditions, by the ethnology of America, by her politics, sociology, manners, mentality.

Of course the English Language must take on new powers in America. And here we are favored by the genius of this grand and noble language, which more than all others lends itself plastic and willing to the moulding power of new formative influences. Was it supposed that the English Language was finished? But there is no finality to a Language! The English has vast vista in it-vast vista in America.

It is the sum of the uses of precedents, to a live nation, that it shall match the same with better from its own soul, and consume them before its audacious improvisations. A nation cannot live on reminiscences: it can only live on influx. The English Language, expressing the genius of the English race and its culture history, thought, is still inadequate to the utterance of America, and must take on new proportions before it can become the living garment of this new life of humanity.

The future expansions of the English Language in America are already marked in the great lines of development this idiom shows. It is for us freely to follow the divine indications. And here a spinal fact is the composite character of our language: to what new realizations is it lifted in America! The immense diversity of race, temperament, character— the copious streams of humanity constantly flowing hither-must reappear in free, rich growths of speech. From no one ethnic source is America sprung: the electric reciprocations of many stocks conspired and conspire. This opulence of race-elements is in the theory of America. Land of the Ensemble, to her the consenting currents flow, and the ethnology of the States draws the grand outline of that hospitality and reception that must mark the new politics, sociology, literature and religion.