408 LANGUAGE AND EACE. 



portion in Shakspere is 90 or 91 ; in Mrs. Browning's " Cry 

 of the Children," 92 ; in the early part of Tennyson's " In 

 Memoriam," 89 ; in Macaulay's " Essay on Lord Bacon," 75 

 in the preface to Johnson's Dictionary, 72 ; and in Glibbon's 

 "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (I, vii.), 70. 

 As to the kind or quality of the Anglo-Saxon element, we 

 find that all the grammar and grammatical inflections are 

 English : the auxiliary verbs, the prepositions, the con- 

 junctions, and, in a word, all that goes to make up the 

 framework of the language. The prefixes and affixes in 

 most frequent use are English, i.e. the prefixes and afSxes 

 for nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. The words 

 that relate to home-life, to the works of nature, to the 

 ordinary kinds of labour, and to the body and its actions, 

 are nearly all pure English. The same is the case with 

 most monosyllables ; and, in general, with all the literature 

 of country sayings and proverbs. 



"When speaking of dialects just now, I omitted to define 

 the term. For all practical purposes we may say that a 

 dialect is a " little language," and, conversely, a language 

 is a " big dialect." The difference is one of degree only. 



Civilisation tends to produce unity of dialects as well 

 as of societies and customs. On the other hand, savage 

 societies and their languages are in a constant state of 

 change ; tribal distinctions tend to multiply, and numerous 

 dialects arise. The speech of barbarous tribes is, in fact, 

 perpetually changing ; and nothing is really harder than 

 to keep a language from rapidly altering where it is not 

 protected by habits of settled life. 



We find great diversity in even very small areas. The 

 most striking example, perhaps, which occurred in recent 

 years was in Tasmania, where, with a very small native 

 population (then only fifty), there were no less than four 



