168 



THE OENTURY BOOK OF FACTS. 



the seeds of this philosophy was George Rip- 

 ley, a philanthropist of high ideals. Theo- 

 dore Parker owed his great power as a preacher 

 to his faith in the Transcendental philosophy. 

 The Absolute God, the Moral Law, and the 

 Immortal Life he held to be the three cardinal 

 attestations of the universal consciousness. 

 The first place, however, belongs to Ralph 

 Waldo Emerson, who lighted up its doctrines 

 with the rays of ethical and poetical imagina- 

 tion. With many inconsistencies to be allowed 

 for, he still remains the highest mind that the 

 world of letters has produced in America. 

 His essays are marvels of keen insight and 

 profound wisdom. Other writers identified 

 with the Transcendental movement are O. B. 

 Frothingham, O. A. Brownson, James Free- 

 man Clarke, Henry D. Thoreau, A. Bronson 

 Alcott, C. P. Cranch, and Thomas Wentworth 

 Higginson, the latter one of the most delightful 

 prose writers of this generation. The most 

 distinguished philosophical writer of the pres- 

 ent day is Josiah Royce, a professor in Harvard 

 University, with whom must be mentioned John 

 Fiske, William James, Andrew D. White, 

 Joseph Le Conte, and George T. Ladd. 



The physical sciences, from an early period, 

 have found able investigators in the United 

 States, and the fields of theology, economy, 

 and jurisprudence have furnished many hon- 

 orable names. Among scientists those most 

 prominent in chemistry and physics are Ben- 

 jamin Franklin, Morse, Hare, Silliman, 

 Henry, Edison, Remsen, and Rowland ; in 

 geology, Dana, Hitchcock, Hall, Hodge, Owen, 

 Whitney, Le Conte ; in botany, Torrey, Gray, 

 Bessey, Coulter, and Campbell ; in natural 

 history, Holbrook, Audubon, Agassiz, Henry, 

 and Jordan ; in political economy, Henry C. 

 Carey, Francis A. Walker, and Henry George ; 

 in psychology, AVilliam James and G. Stanley 

 Hall. 



French Academy, The, was created by 

 Louis XIV. in 1635." Its original pursuits were 

 eloquence and poetry. In 1648 it was ex- 

 tended to the fine arts; and in 1666, by Col- 

 bert, to the arts and sciences. 



Scandinavians anciently employed an 

 alphabet of letters formed principally of 

 straight lines, which has been called Runic, 

 from an Icelandic word runa, meaning a fur- 

 row or line. 



Volapiik.. This so-called universal lan- 

 guage was invented in 1879, by Johann Martin 

 Schleyer, a Swabian pastor and latterly a 

 teacher in Constance. Of the vocabulary, 

 about one third is of English origin, while the 

 Latin and Romance languages furnish a fourth. 

 The grammar is simplified to the utmost. 

 The most practical disciples limit their aims 



to making Volapiik a convenience for com 

 mercial correspondence, a kind of extended 

 international code. 



Sanskrit is one of the Indo-European 

 group of languages, intimately connected with 

 the Persian, Greek, Latin, Teutonic, Slavo- 

 nian, and Celtic languages. It is the classical 

 language of the Hindus, and the parent of all 

 the modern Aryan languages of India. It 

 ceased to be a spoken language about the sec- 

 ond century B.C. Sanskrit literature, which 

 extends back to at least 1500 B. C., and is 

 very voluminous, was introduced to the west- 

 ern world by Sir William Jones, who founded 

 the Asiatic Society in Calcutta in 1784. 



Languages of the World. It has 

 been estimated that there are over 3000 lan- 

 guages in the world. English is spoken by 

 above 130,000,000 of the human race: Ger- 

 man by 100,000,000 ; Russian by 70,000,000 ; 

 French by 45,000,000 ; Spanish by 40,000,- 

 000 ; Italian by 30,000,000, and Portuguese by 

 13,000,000. 



English is spoken by 4,000,000 Canadians ; 

 over 3,500,000 West Indians; 3,000,000 Aus- 

 tralians ; 1,000,000 East Indians ; 38,000,000 

 in the British Isles, and 65,000,000 in Amer- 

 ica. 



German is spoken by 2,000,000 in the 

 United States and Canada; 2,000,000 in 

 Switzerland ; 40,000 Belgians ; 46,000,000 in 

 the German Empire, and 10,000,000 in the 

 Austro- Hungarian Empire. 



French is spoken by 2,250,000 Belgians; 

 1,000,000 in the United States and Canada ; 

 1,000,000 in Algiers, India, and Africa: 

 600,000 Swiss ; 600,000 in Hayti ; 200,000 in 

 Alsace-Lorraine, and 38,000,000 in France. 



Troubadours were minstrels of southern 

 France in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth 

 centuries. They were the first to discard Latin 

 and use the native tongue in their composi- 

 tions. Their poetry was either about love and 

 gallantry, or war and chivalry. In northern 

 France they were called Trouveres and the 

 language employed was the Walloon. 



Grub Street, London, is thus described 

 in Dr. Johnson's Dictionary: "Originally 

 the name of a street near Moorfields, in Lon- 

 don, much inhabited by writers of small his- 

 tories, dictionaries, and temporary poems, 

 whence any production is called Grub Street." 

 Andrew Marvell used the name in its appro- 

 priate sense, which later was freely used by 

 Pope, Swift, and others. 



Madrigal is a short lyric poem, generally 

 on the subject of love, and characterized by 

 some epigrammatic terseness or quaintness. It 

 was written as a rule in iambic meter, and 

 contained pot less than six or more than thir- 



