have made it by their use; it is the reflection of their minds,and of their minds' contents; its words and phrases are instinct with all the depth, the nobility, the subtilty, and the beauty that belongs to their thought; it can be made to express at least as much, and as well, as it has been made to express. A literature, then, is one grand test of the worth of a language—and it is one by which we need not fear to see tried that of our own. It is not national prejudice that makes us claim for English literature, in respect to variety and excellence, a rank second to none. We can show, in every or nearly every department, men who have made our English tongue say what no other tongue has exceeded.
This is not, however, the only test. We cannot but ask also how our language is fitted to admit and facilitate that indefinite progress and extension of thought and knowledge to which we look forward as the promise of the future. Has it all the capacity of development which could be desired for it? In their bearing upon this inquiry, two of its striking peculiarities—the two most conspicuous, in the view of the historical student of language—call for special notice: namely, its uninflective or formless character, and its composition out of two somewhat heterogeneous elements, Germanic and Romanic.
Both these peculiarities have been made the subject of repeated reference in our discussions hitherto. For its poverty in formative elements, for its tendency to monosyllabism, for its inclusion of many parts of speech in the same unvaried word, we have compared English more than once with Chinese. But we must beware of misapprehending the scope and reach of the comparison. There is a curious and suggestive analogy between the present geographical position of the English and Chinese races and the present character of their languages. Since our occupation of the whole breadth of the American continent, the speakers of these two tongues look over to one another as nearest neighbours across the intervening Pacific. But the situation of the Chinese people is the result of simple quiescence in their primeval abode; while the English, setting forth probably from the depths of the same Orient, have reached the seats
