148 IMPOETANCE OF PUEITY IN THE ENGLISH TONGUE. 







single words is of no great consequence in itself ; but I 

 mention this instance for the purpose of illustrating the 

 way in which changes may insensibly be induced in our 

 mother tongue, while the words in use remain the same. 

 Where two countries speaking the same language have 

 different literary and courtly centres, the gradual growth 

 of differences in the speech can scarcely be avoided. 

 Such causes of diversity between the older forms of 

 speech which prevailed at the same period in London and 

 Edinburgh anciently existed in the rival courts of those 

 cities ; diversities of a similar origin have given rise to 

 the now distinct dialects, almost distinct languages, of 

 Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland; and if the German 

 tongue remains still common and intelHgible over the 

 whole Fatherland, it is because a common literature still 

 binds the people of the various governments together, 

 and a common theatre and drama mould the speech of 

 Vienna, Berlin, and Hanover, in spite of the peculiarities 

 of fashion which give a special character to the pronun- 

 ciation and choice of words in each of the several courts. 

 No language, probably, ever existed which it is of so 

 much importance to mankind to preserve pure as the 

 English. It is now spread over so vast a portion of the 

 civilised globe that in it we may almost hope to see 

 realised, for the intercommunion of the people, what the 

 Latin tongue was to the learned of former centuries. It 

 is, emphatically, the language of constitutional freedom 

 and of civilised progress. If the community of speech 

 puts within the reach of the most ignorant and ill- 

 intentioned editor of the meanest periodical, in either 

 country, the foolish or ill-natured sayings of his 

 brethren of the craft in England, America, Africa, or 

 Australia, and thus enables bad men to excite evil pas- 

 sions, to create enmities, and to awaken national bitter- 

 ness, which, for the welfare of the Anglo-Saxon race and 

 the general good of mankind, it is desirable rather to 



