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They are the sanctuary of the intuitions. They paint humanity, its thoughts, longings, aspirations, struggles, failures-paint them on a canvas of breath, in the colors of life.

To the illustration of the opulences of Words I design these pages: with Runic spells to evoke the pagan wanderers from their homes in the visionary eld-to read some of the strange lessons they teach, to catch of the wit and the wisdom, the puns and the poetries, the philosophies, the fancies and the follies that lurk in and flash out from them, and to seize, flaming down, as it were, from the "firmament of bards and sages," some of the deep analogies, the spiritual significance, the poetic beauty and the rich humor that sport and dwell in even our common, every-day words and phrases.

Of course we shall ramble, now chasing some gay etymologic butterfly, anon lingering 'neath the palm and plantain of genius or lonely wandering 'mid

The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,
The power, the beauty and the majesty

That have their haunts in dale or piny mountains,

Or forest, by slow stream or pebbly spring,

Or chasms and watery depths.

Medals of the mind we may call words. And as the medals of creation from the Geologic world reveal the workings of creative energy and the successive developments of the divine idea, so Words present a humanitary Geology where histories, philosophies and ethics lie embodied and embalmed. But this is a spiritual Geology, its strata built up of the rich deposits of mind. With passionate fervor man pours himself on nature. An irrepressible longing to express his secret sense of his unity with nature possesses him: and from the consciousness, all plastic and aglow, rush Words, infinitely free, rich and varied, | laden with pathos and power, with passion, poetry, humor, thought.

Of course Language is a living Original. It is not made but grows. The growth of language repeats the growth of the plant. At first it is only root: next it puts forth a stem, then leaves, and finally blossoms. "One must not," writes William Von Humboldt, "consider a language as a product dead and formed but once: it is an animate being and ever creative. Human thought elaborates itself with the progress of intelligence; and of this thought language is a manifestation. An idiom cannot therefore remain station-ary: it walks, it develops, it grows up, it fortifies itself, it becomes old and it reaches decrepitude."

Language must move with the movements of mind, as the ocean obeys siderial influences. A petrified and mechanical national mind will certainly appear in a petrified and mechanical language. But the provisions are perfect. The renovation of language is provided for, as the renovation of the races is provided for, by a subtle chemistry. The sublime democracy of speech! When a tongue has become dead and effete, the mind walks out of it. With an advance in the national mind-with the influx of a nobler spirit, comes a renovation of its language: by a passionate propulsive movement it ejects its old dead speech, and rises to larger and freer expression. Like the waters in spring, the rising spirit sweeps away the frozen surface of an effete society, literature, language and thought.

The great tidal movements in a nation's life are repeated in great tidal movements in its language. With new creations, thoughts and hopes emerge new demands on the horizon of its speech. The English language shows in its growth crises that mark real upsurgings from the spontaneous depths of human nature. In Chaucer is embalmed that rich primitive sensuous perception of English life, when the language became so opulent in expressions of sensible objects and simple feelings. The flood-tide in the national mind that came with the Sixteenth Century finds expression in the Elizabethan literature, especially in Shakespeare in whom English reached its truly Japhetic mould. And the vast billowy tendencies of modern life, too-the new political, social, scientific births -are making new demands on the English idiom. It | is for America especially to evoke new realizations from the English speech. Always waiting in a language are untold possibilities. On the lips of the people, in the free rich unconscious utterance of the popular heart are the grand eternal leadings and suggestions.

Of all the heritages which America receives the English language is beyond all comparison the mightiest. Language of the grand stocks, language of reception, of hospitality, it is above all fitted to be the speech for America. There is nothing fortuitous in language. It is for reasons the English idiom is here. In the English, more than all others, was concentrated the spirit of the modern, breaking up the old crystal/ line classic mould. It is for America grandly to use this grand inheritance. No language has, no language ever had, such immense assimilation as the English. Freely it absorbs whatever is of use to it, absorbs and assimilates it to its own fluid and flexible substance. This rich copious hospitable flow is to be encouraged.

In the growth of Words all the activities of the mind conspire. Language is the mirror of the living ✓ inward consciousness. Language is concrete metaphysics. What rays does it let in on the mind's subtle workings! There is more of what there is of essential in metaphysics-more of the structural action of the human mind, in Words, than in the concerted introspection of all the psychologists. "In language," observes Frederick Schlegel in a profoundly suggestive passage, "all the principal powers have a nearly equal part and share. The grammatical structure is furnished by the reason. From the fancy, on the other hand, is derived whatever is figurative; and how far does not this reach, extending into the primary and natural signification of words, which often no longer exists, or at least is rarely traceable? And so also that deep spiritual significance, that characteristic meaning, which in the original stem-syllable and radical words of some rich old language, invariably is regarded as a beauty, must be ascribed to the understanding, which so profoundly seizes and precisely designates whatever is peculiar, unless perhaps it is preferred to assign it to an immediate feeling which wonderfully harmonizes with or responds to it."

In our studies on Words, then, a simple logic is indicated for us in the several mental activities that work in the mechanism of speech. Through the por

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