THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 
7 
country. And I need not remind you how the unification of 
Germany, which has been accomplished in our day by the valour of 
generals and the policy of statesmen, was prefigured by the dreams 
of poets and anticipated by the labours of grammarians devoted to 
the study of the language and literature of the German Fatherland. 
To Latham and Morris, as well as two Germans, Matzner and Koch, 
we are indebted for English grammars, in which sound principles 
of historical criticism are applied to the investigation of our pecu- 
liarly difficult language. The Dictionaries of Latham and Skeat, 
and the great work of which Dr. Murray is the chief editor, and 
our respected fellow-townsman, Mr. Jackson, one of the sub-editors, 
and of which we have just received the first instalment, together 
with the unfinished Anglo-Saxon dictionary of Toller, have done 
and are doing much to put English Etymology on a sound and 
scientific basis. The labours of these scholars have been much 
facilitated by the publication of many Anglo-Saxon and Old English 
works, which had previously existed only in MS. or in rare and 
expensive printed editions. Thanks are due to Mr. Arber for his 
series of cheap and carefid reprints, and to the Delegates of the 
Clarendon Press, for their handy series of English Classics ; while 
the Early English Text Society has for twenty years been issuing 
to its subscribers, as fast as its very limited funds have allowed, a 
most valuable series of carefully-edited and well-printed texts. 
At a very early period a branch of the great Teutonic family 
defied the rugged soil and inclement skies of the North and took 
up their abode in Scandinavia. A terrible interest has always 
attached to this people ever since the days of Alfred and Charle- 
magne ; but their literature has been involved in mystery, as dim 
and murky as the mists that obscure their native skies. I have said 
that their learning has found a home in England — a more peaceful 
invasion than that which took place a thousand years ago. In fact, 
it seems as if Iceland were now about to do all she can to atone 
for the ravages she then committed, when her sons carried fire and 
sword through every county of this peaceful island, but especially 
vented their wrath upon the monasteries, in which all the learning 
of the age was carefully deposited, and upon the monks whom they 
regarded as renegades from the faith of Odin and of Thor. To 
Guthbrand Yigfusson, the learned editor, and the Delegates of the 
Clarendon Press, the enlightened and public-spirited publishers, we 
owe an Icelandic Dictionary and Prose Reader, an edition of the 
