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modern languages of Teutonic origin, and is not without represent- 

 atives in the Irish, Welsh, Latin, and Greek tongues. In the 

 Moeso-Gothic, "rodyan" meant, to speak, and was in use long 

 before the old northern tribes had any books to read, in the 

 modern sense of the term. That it retained its original signification 

 long after books came into use, may be seen in such phrases as 

 "Read me this riddle"; or in Shakespeare, when speaking of a 

 noble woman, he exclaims in a fine spirit — 



"Those about her 

 From her shall read the perfect ways of honour." 



The same root was used very happily by the Anglo-Saxons in the 

 formation of personal names, some of which still exist. There is the 

 exceedingly appropriate feminine "Mildred," or Mild, i. e. gentle 

 in speech, and the masculine "Eldred," or old in counsel, and so 

 on. Then we might take another monosyllable, "spell." We 

 might show by reference to our early literature, that it had not 

 formerly that sense to which it is now almost wholly restricted, of 

 naming the different letters of which a word is composed. In 

 Anglo-Saxon literature the phrase " Ealdra Cwena Spell" is found, 

 which, literally rendered, is "Old Wives' Fables," showing that 

 the saying is nearly a thousand years old. Their spell-boc 

 was a book of Homilies or of History, and we see in the 

 compound "God-spell," softened into Gospel, that the root 

 spell signified a story, narration, a tidings. One more instance 

 still of a monosyllable, though of a different class. The word 

 "green," like most of our monosyllables, comes down to us 

 through the Anglo-Saxon, but is probably of much earlier origin 

 than the Anglo-Saxon language. Now, how many of us have used 

 the word all our lives without having ever given a passing thought 

 to the full force of its meaning? We know that it is used to 

 distinguish one color from another colour ; we use it as such, and 

 think no more about it; but our conception of its meaning is 

 enlarged when we come to recognise it as a form of the verb to 

 "grow." "Green" is that which is "growing;" and probably we 

 here gain some little insight into the origin and rise of new terms, 



