The general idea of the work will be readily gathered from its title and from a glance at its contents. It contains many little items of information, gathered from the broad fields of literature, history, and science, which are not contained in encyclopedias and ordinary hand-books, and which are not readily found when sought. In the departments of the Physical and Natural Sciences, moreover, are contained many interesting results of modern research, of too recent date to have found a place in ordinary scientific treatises. In a word, while this volume has little or no claim to a strictly scientific character, it is believed that it will be found at once useful, interesting, and familiarly instructive.

New York, March, 1857.

CONTENTS.

PART I.-LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND BOOKS, .

III.-HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY, AND STATISTICS,

IV. THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES,

V. THE NATURAL SCIENCES, .

VI.-ARTS AND MANUFACTURES, .

LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND BOOKS.

ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

SUPPOSE the English language to be divided into a hundred parts; of these, to make a rough distribution, sixty would be Saxon, thirty would be Latin (including of course the Latin which has come to us through the French), five would be Greek; we should thus have assigned ninety-five parts, leaving the other five, perhaps too large a residue, to be divided among all the other languages from which we have adopted isolated words. The Lord's Prayer consists of exactly sixty words. You will find that only the following six claim the rights of Latin citizenship-trespasses,' 'trespass,' 'temptation,' 'deliver,' 'power,' 'glory.' Nor would it be very difficult to substitute for any one of these a Saxon word. This is but a small percentage, six words in sixty; and we often light upon a still smaller proportion. Thus take the three first verses of the 23d Psalm. Here are forty-five words, and only three of these are Latin,-'pasture,' 'comfort,' and 'convert,' and for every one of these, too, it would be easy to substitute a word of Saxon origin; little more, that is, than the proportion of seven in the hundred; while still stronger than this, in five verses out of Genesis containing one hundred and thirty words, there are only five not Saxon, less, that is, than four per cent. Still we must not conclude that the Anglo-Saxon words by any means outnumber the Latin in the degree which the analysis of these passages would seem to imply. It is not that there are so many more Anglo-Saxon words, but that the words which there are, being words of more pri

recur.

*

mary necessity, are so many more times used, so much more frequently The proportions which the dictionary, that is the language at rest, would furnish, are very different from those which the analysis of sentences or of the language in motion gives. This shows us that while the English language is thus compact in the main of these two elements, the Saxon and the Latin, we must not for all this regard these two as making, one and the other, exactly the same kind of contributions to it. On the contrary, their contributions are of very different character. The Anglo-Saxon is not so much one element of the English language, as the foundation of it, the basis. All its joints, its whole articulation, its sinews and its ligaments, the great body of articles, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, numerals, auxiliary verbs, all smaller verbs which serve to knit together and bind the larger into sentences, these, not to speak of the grammatical structure of the language, are exclusively Saxon. * * Try to compose a sentence of ten words and no more on any subject you please, employing therein only words which are of a Latin derivation. You will find it impossible, or next to impossible, to do it. And while it is thus with the Latin, whole pages might be written, I do not say in philosophy or theology, or upon any abstruser subject, but on familiar matters of common every-day life, in which every word should be of Saxon derivation, and this too without giving to the sentences the least appearance of awkwardness or stiffness. Still it must not be concluded that the Latin portion of our language is of little value, or that we could draw from the resources of our Teutonic tongue efficient substitutes for all the words which it has contributed to our glossary. It will, however, cæteris paribus, in general be advisable, when a Latin and Saxon word offer themselves to our choice, to use the Saxon rather than the other. *** Pathos in situations which are homely, or at all connected with domestic affections, naturally moves by Saxon words; lyrical emotion of every kind, which (to merit the name of lyrical) must be in the state of flux and reflux, or, generally, of agitation, also requires the Saxon element of our language, because the Saxon is the aboriginal element, the basis and not the superstructure; consequently it comprehends all the ideas which are natural to the heart of man, and to the elementary situations of life.-TRENOH, on English Past and Present.

ANALYSIS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

The English language consists of about 38,000 words. This includes, of course, not only radical words, but all derivatives except