376 The Future of the English Language. [July, 



well it answers the first condition, To the strength of the 

 Teutonic dialects it adds the clearness of the Latin, and a 

 brevity that is all its own. A mixed language, it has com- 

 bined the best elements of each. It is the language of men 

 of business, to whom time is of importance, and who 

 cannot afford to waste the stuff of which life is made, by 

 roundabout phrases and ambiguous sentences. The object 

 of those who have formed the English language might have 

 been to see in how few words an idea could be conveyed. 

 There is a directness of purpose about our most ordinary 

 forms of expression. The question asked is not how can 

 this thought be clothed in the most beautiful and appro- 

 priate diction, but how can it be rapidly and unmistakably 

 expressed ? It goes to the root of the matter, allows of no 

 beating about the bush, but is exact, curt, pointed, and 

 straightforward. English is not so long-winded as either 

 French or German. De Candolle tells us that, in families 

 where they have an equal acquaintance with French and 

 with German, the former is always more used ; and where 

 English and French are spoken, the preference is given 

 to English. German families, he says, settling in English 

 or French countries quickly cease to use their own language, 

 whilst Frenchmen and Englishmen settling in German 

 countries are on the contrary very tenacious of their 

 mother-tongue. It is possible to give another interpretation 

 to these facts ; but it seems not unnatural that those 

 having choice of two roads should select the shortest and 

 directest of them. 



The English tongue has been the subject of many 

 eulogies. Those which come from foreigners may at least 

 claim sincerity and freedom from that national vanity which 

 might induce an Englishman to over-estimate its beauty 

 and importance. Jacob Grimm has said that " the English 

 language possesses a power of expression such as was 

 never, perhaps, attained by any human tongue. Its alto- 

 gether intellectual and singularly happy foundation, and 

 government, and development, has arisen from a surprising 

 alliance between the two noblest languages of antiquity — 

 the German and the Romanesque — the relations of which 

 to each other is well known to be such that the former 

 supplies the material foundation, and the latter the abstract 

 notions. Yes ; truly the English language may with good 

 reason call itself a universal language, and seems chosen, 

 like the English people, to rule in future times in a still 

 greater degree in all corners of the earth. In richness, 

 sound reason, and flexibility, no modern tongue can be 



