Katio7is lately become Literary. 3 1 9 



From all these sources, the German language, 

 within the last fifty years, has drawn improvements 

 so rich and numerous, that it is said to be one of 

 the most copious and energetic languages in Eu- 

 rope. It has gained astonishingly in convenient 

 and sonorous compounds, in elegant idioms, and 

 graceful inversions; insomuch, that the German 

 writer, instead of being cramped, in every step of 

 his progress, by a narrow, confused, and unsettled 

 jargon, as was the case at the beginning of the 

 eighteenth century, has now a language at com- 

 mand, rich, various, of most accommodating pli- 

 ancy, abundantly adequate to all his wants, and 

 capable of being modified to as great a degree of 

 perspicuity, suavity, and harmony, as almost any 

 modern tongue. 



In consequence or these improvements in the 

 German language, it has been adopted, within a 

 few years past, in most of the courts of the empire, 

 instead of the French, which was formerly the 

 court language in almost every part of Germany. 

 Nor is its currency confined to the German empire. 

 It has lately become one of the fashionable lan- 

 guages of Europe, and the acquisition of it is now 

 considered nearly as important a part of polite 

 education, as the acquisition of the French or 

 English. 



While the German language was undergoing 

 this radical and important reform, other objects of 

 a literary and scientific nature engaged the atten- 

 tion of the learned men of that country, and were 

 pursued with a degree of diligence and success 

 which does them and the age which gave them 

 birth the highest honour. A few T facts and names 

 only, out of the multitude which occur, can be 

 mentioned in this place. 



Natural or Mechanical Philosophy was culti- 

 vated by a few distinguished Germans in the se- 



