SEO ENGLISCE SPRiEC. 



11 



of Indo- Germanic," afterwards altered to Indo-European " to 

 include the Celtic stock. Max Miiller and M. Pictet propose to 

 call them Aryan" (from a Sanskrit root, applied to the ploughing 

 of the ground), believing that it was originally applied to them- 

 selves by the remote ancestors of the Indo-European family. The 

 Gothic stock of this family, to which the Anglo-Saxon belongs, is 

 characterized by the want of any verbal tenses, except for the 

 present and the past, and the co-existence of a weak and a strong 

 order of inflexion. 



Very little is known of the barbarians of "Western Europe before 

 the time of Julius Caesar. The natives of Gaul, though brave, 

 bowed their neck to the Roman yoke, and ultimately adopted the 

 language of their conquerors, importing into it some of their 

 vocabulary, and infusing into it still more of their spirit. To the 

 east of the Rhine dwelt a far different race, destined to play a 

 more conspicuous part in the annals of human history. In Caesar's 

 Commentaries we ever and anon catch glimpses of the fierce and 

 terrible tribes of Germany, who seem throughout his campaigns to 

 hover in the distance like a dark thunder- cloud. When the Roman 

 army found they were going to be led against these tribes, the 

 fierceness of whose glance no eye could endure, a panic spread 

 through the entire camp. While the whole of the Germania" of 

 Tacitus is valuable, the lecturer referred specially to the thirty- 

 seventh chapter as a remarkable tribute of the Roman historian to 

 their indomitable valour and martial spirit. 



The Moeso-Gothic is of gi'eat philological importance, as being 

 the earliest specimen of any Teutonic language. In it we have a 

 translation of considerable portions of the New Testament and 

 fragments of the Old, together with portions of an explanation of 

 the Gospel of St. John under the name of ''Skeireins" (Gothic 

 Skeirjan, to interpret or make clear). All these we probably owe 

 to Ulfilas, or Wulfila (Gothic Wulfs, a wolf), an Arian Bishop of 

 the Visigoths (318-388, a.d.). Moeso-Gothic is considered by 

 some to be, like Anglo-Saxon, of the Low-German type, and it is 

 easy to find expressions in it very similar to the English; e.g., I 

 am the door," ''Ik im thata daur." (H. G. Thiir.) 



In the fourth century after the Christian era, the vast fabric of 

 the Western Empire, of which Livy had said, ''Eo creverit, ut 

 jam magnitudine laboret sua," was falling to decay, and the blow, 

 like the rough soldier of Clovis, who shattered in pieces the pre- 



