denial nor doubt. Had there been in the Germanic languages no such adjective as full, no such derivative adjectives as fearful and truthful would have grown up in them; if they had possessed no adjective like, they would never have gained such adjectives as godly and lovely, nor such adverbs as fearfully and truly. So also with friendship, with loved, with am and is, and the rest. No inconsiderable number of the formative elements of our tongue, in every department of grammar and of word-formation, can be thus traced back to independent words, with which they were at first identical, out of which they have grown. It is true, at the same time, that a still larger number do not allow their origin to be discovered. But we have not, on that account, the right to conclude that their history is not of the same character. In grammar, as everywhere else, like effects presuppose like causes. We have seen how the formative elements are liable to become corrupted and altered, so that the signs of their origin are obscured, and may even be obliterated. The full in truthful is easy enough to recognize, but a little historical research is necessary in order to show us the like which is contained in truly. Hateful is, for aught we know, as old a compound as lovely, but linguistic usage has chanced to be more merciful to the evidence of descent in the former case than in the latter. A yet more penetrating investigation is required ere we discover our pronoun me in the word am, or our imperfect did in I loved; and, but for the happy chance that preserved to us the one or two fragmentary manuscripts in which are contained our only records of Mœso-Gothic speech, the genesis of the latter form would always have remained an unsolved problem, a subject for ingenious conjecture, but beyond the reach of demonstration. The loss of each intermediate stage, coming between any given dialect and its remotest ancestor, wipes out a portion of the evidence which would explain the origin of its forms. If English stood all alone among the other languages of the earth, but an insignificant part of its word-history could be read; its kindred dialects, contemporary and older, help us to the discovery of a much larger portion; and the preservation of authentic records of every period of its life would,
