THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
55 
pass the gloomy hours of the winter solstice. In the county-town 
there was yet time for the mind to dwell upon home pleasures and 
home studies ; excitement could hardly stifle reflection. Now, 
that same class from Yorkshire, and from every county in England 
and Wales, betake themselves to the grand vortex of London life. 
Are the nobility and gentry of the land generally imbued with 
that literary taste which distinguished the age when Elizabeth 
Montague, Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Barbauld, Elizabeth Carter, 
and Hannah More, tried the keen encounter of their wits with the 
brilliant scholars of a most brilliant period 1 Go back two centu- 
ries farther. Are the upper classes now generally imbued with 
that taste for reading which embellished the early and later Tudor 
times — when good Queen Bess handled Greek, and all that was 
good, and all that was intelligent, gathered round the heart and 
head of Margaret Eoper 1 when books were scarce, 
4 When princes and kings received the wondrous gift, 
And ladies read the work they could not lift ' ? 
However, when we come to scholars as a class, there are scholars 
now as thorough-paced as ever; and a more happy sign of the 
times lies here. The intense intellectual applications of the 
leading spirits of the age have wrought out a liberality of creed, 
and a magnanimity of thought, of which Tennyson's In Memoriam 
is a representative poem. Faith, Hope, and Charity may no 
longer run in a groove." 
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN THE LIGHT OF 
MODERN SCHOLARSHIP. 
ABSTRACT OF PAPER BY MR. SLATER, M.A. 
(Read November 21st, 1878.) 
The object of the lecture was to popularize some of the more im- 
portant results of philological investigation, especially so far as they 
illustrate the English language. The lecturer proceeded to discuss 
the subject as follows : 
The three chief theories respecting the Origin of Language ; its 
"how;" of words, stems, and roots. The Bow-wow and Pooh- 
