ENGLAND. (LANGUAGE.) 



opposition to them. But they are the established 

 confession of the English church, and, as such, de- 

 serve a short analysis. The five first articles contain 

 a profession of faith in the Trinity ; the incarnation of 

 .lesus Christ, his descent to hell, and his resurrec- 

 tion ; the divinity of the Holy Ghost. The three 

 following relate to the canon of the Scripture. The 

 eighth article declares a belief in the Apostles', Ni- 

 cene, and Athanasian creeds. The ninth and following 

 articles contain the doctrine of original sin, of justifi- 

 cation by faith alone, of predestination, &c. The 

 nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first declare the 

 church to be the assembly of the faithful ; that it can 

 decide nothing except by the Scriptures. The 

 twenty-second rejects the doctrine of purgatory, 

 indulgences, the adoration of images, and the invoca- 

 tion of saints. The twenty-third decides that only 

 those lawfully called shall preach or administer the 

 sacraments. The twenty-fourth requires the liturgy 

 to be in English. The twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth 

 declare the sacraments effectual signs of grace 

 (though administered by evil men), by which God 

 excites and confirms our faith. They are two ; bap- 

 tism and the Lord's supper. Baptism, according to 

 the twenty-seventh article, is a sign of regeneration, 

 the seal of our adoption, by which faith is confirmed 

 and grace increased. In the Lord's supper, accord- 

 ing to article twenty eighth, the bread is the com- 

 munion of the body of Christ, the wine the commun- 

 ion of his blood, but only through faith (article 

 twenty-ninth) ; and the communion must be admin- 

 istered in both kinds (article thirty). The twenty- 

 eighth article condemns the doctrine of transubstan- 

 tiation, and the elevation and adoration of the host ; 

 the thirty-first rejects the sacrifice of the mass as blas- 

 phemous ; the thirty-second permits the marriage of 

 the clergy ; the thirty-third maintains the efficacy of 

 excommunication. The remaining articles relate to 

 the supremacy of the king, the condemnation of 

 Anabaptists, &c. 



Language. The Saxon, or Anglo-Saxon (q. v.) 

 language, as it is more frequently called, was the 

 basis of the English; and both have descended 

 from what is commonly denominated the Gothic 

 or Teutonic stock, particularly the dialect called 

 Low German (q. v.). It has, however, retained 

 many words of the ancient language spoken by the 

 Britons before the arrival of the Saxons among them. 

 Upon the introduction of Christianity into Great Bri- 

 tain, in the sixth century, which was done through 

 the church of Rome, the Latin language contributed, 

 by degrees, to the common dialect of the nation. 

 About the year 1150, according to doctor Johnson, 

 the Saxon dialect of our ancestors took a form in 

 which the beginning of our present English can 

 plainly be discovered. From that period to this, it 

 has been constantly receiving additions from various 

 languages, and may now, according to doctor Web- 

 ster, be considered as composed of, 1st, Saxon and 

 Danish words of Teutonic and Gothic origin; 2d, 

 British or Welsh, Cornish and Armoric, which may 

 be considered as of Celtic origin ; 3d, Norman ; 4th, 

 Latin ; 5th, French ; 6th, Greek ; 7th, a few words 

 directly from the Italian, Spanish, German, and other 

 languages of the continent of Europe ; 8th, a few 

 foreign words, introduced by commerce or by po- 

 litical and literary intercourse. (Introd. Eng. Diet.) 

 This origin of our language justifies the opinion of 

 doctor Blair, who, in his Lectures on Rhetoric, 

 characterizes it as a rude compound. 



The leading characteristics of the English language 

 are said, by our own writers, to be, 1. That it is 

 strong and expressive ; which qualities are enhanced 

 by a facility in compounding words ; but in this last 

 particular, it is certainly far inferior to the German. 



2. That it is very copious, few languages being more 

 so. Under this head we may remark, that it pos- 

 sesses one decisive advantage over most other modern 

 languages ; that, in addition to the language com- 

 monly used in prose, it has a very copious stock of 

 words exclusively used in poetical composition. 3. 

 That it possesses great flexibility, or capacity of 

 being adapted to all styles of composition, the grave 

 and gay, forcible and tender, sublime and ludicrous. 

 But in this respect, we do not know that it is 

 strikingly distinguished from many other modern 

 languages. 4. That it has the advantage of being 

 more simple in its form and construction than any of 

 the European languages. This simplicity consists, 

 principally, in the following particulars : its nouns 

 have only two cases, the nominative and genitive (this 

 deficiency of cases, however, prevents our using inver- 

 sions of phrases like those which the Latin language 

 allows ; the French language is even inferior to the 

 English in this respect), and have no difference of 

 declension ; its adjectives have no variation of gender 

 or number, and are only varied to express the 

 degrees of comparison ; and the conjugations of its 

 verbs are far less complex than those of the other 

 languages. 5. Among other qualities, we also hear 

 the harmony of our language mentioned. But, as a 

 general remark, we think, with a late writer, that 

 " strength and expressiveness, rather than grace and 

 melody, are the distinguishing qualities of the English 

 language." " Different nations," says lord Kaimes 

 (Elements of Criticism), "judge differently of the 

 harshness or smoothness of articulate sounds: a sound, 

 for example, harsh and disagreeable to an Italian, 

 may be abundantly smooth to a northern ear : here 

 every nation must judge for itself ; nor can there be 

 any solid ground for a preference, when there is no 

 common standard to which we can appeal." In order 

 to judge correctly on this point, we must observe 

 how it strikes the ears of foreigners, who have some 

 acquaintance with it ; yet we must, at the same time, 

 receive with much caution the observations of men 

 who have as strong a partiality as ourselves for their 

 native language. 



As a general remark, we think, that those modern 

 languages which are derived from the Latin are more 

 harmonious than those of Teutonic origin. (See 

 Consonant.) But, in order to satisfy ourselves how 

 far we are liable to be deceived in respect to the 

 supposed excellences of our native tongue, we extract 

 the following remarks from that popular and 

 sprightly, though not very profound writer, La 

 Harpe : " The English language, which would be 

 almost half-French, if its incomprehensible pronun- 

 ciation did not separate it from all the languages of 

 the world, and make applicable to it what Virgil said 

 of the geographical position of the country 



' Etpenitut toto divitoi or be Britannot ' 

 4 A race of men from all the world disjoined ' 

 the English is still more overloaded than our own 

 (French) with auxiliaries, particles, articles and pro- 

 nouns ; it has less conjugating also, and its modes 

 are excessively limited. It has no conditional tense ; 

 it cannot say, as in French, je ferais, firais, &c. ; 

 but it is necessary to prefix to the principal verb one 

 of these / would, I must, I could, I should have to. 

 It cannot be denied that these signs, incessantly re- 

 peated, and even equivocal in their signification, 

 argue a deplorable poverty, and have a resemblance 

 to barbarism. 



" But what, to every one except an Englishman, 

 most bears that character, is their striking vicious- 

 ness of pronunciation, which seems to be in conflict 

 with the principles of human articulation. Now, this 

 ought always to have a tendency to fix the nature of 



