............ Little Children and Labors they Perform... 101 Think of This, Miscellany-A Glimpse at Chaucer........ 103 Dedication-Institute-Pic-Nic Acts Relating to Public Schools of R. I..... 158 141 Westfield Normal Association-Miscellany. 159 A Hearty Laugh-Genteel Economy........ 142 Our Book Table, ...... OCTOBER-CONTINUED. Miscellany, OUR BOOK TABLE. 276 278 279 The Child and Flowers-Milton's Paradise The Mountain Cities of South America.. 295 Massachusetts State Teachers' Association, 295 Sonnet-John Wilson's Patent Right... 298 Answers to Enigma.-Historical Enigma... 341 Mental Philosophy, The R. I. Schoolmaster. 33. J. VOL. III. MARCH, 1857. TAKING it for granted that a large proportion of our readers are teachers and those interested in teaching, and that they form, as they certainly should, a very intelligent class, it is not difficult to believe that they are sometimes pleased with such literary productions as meet the approbation of other classes of the educated; and that they will appreciate some selections which we may make for this department of our paper from the literary floatings-by upon the broad, swift-gliding stream of the Times, even if such articles were not criginally written for their especial benefit. We purpose, therefore, to select, from time to time, such articles as will form instructive and pleasant reading for all classes of intelligent readers, thus affording them a greater variety of matter, and avoiding for ourselves the appearance of continually "harping upon one string." We hope sometimes to be able to furnish original articles for this department, but trust we may never do so at the sacrifice of good judgment or correct taste; for such as we may select from our best writers we prefer to those hurriedly composed by would-be writers whose highest ambition it is to rush into print, and we are persuaded that our readers will bear us out in the preference. There is talent enough among the teachers of Rhode Island to furnish us vigorous, compact papers for each month, but the difficulty, we apprehend, will be to bring it out, and the uncertainty of overcoming this difficulty is so great that we do not feel disposed to promise much upon the strength of it. At this time we can only extend to this talent a most cordial invitation to show itself in these columns, and express a fond hope that it may soon be aroused from its apparent latent state, and be seen to illumine these pages with its genial glow. We are but too well aware that teachers, when they leave the school-room in which they have been pent up all day, not only deprived of pure air but compelled to breathe that which is positively bad, their mental as well as their bodily strength exhausted, their nerves unstrung, their thinking machinery run down, feel quite as unequal to intellectual exertion as they do to aerial flights. Knowing this in a majority of cases to be true, we can blame them but little for the apparent want of energy which they may display, and can afford NO. 1. to give our magnanimity an airing by excusing whatever little faults may creep into the compositions which they may kindly send us. We find in an old volume of the KNICKERBOCKER the following well written paper, which cannot but interest our readers, and we doubt not they will agree with us that, upon such a subject, it is none the worse for being old. The English Language. "A who can hope his line should long It is proposed in the present paper, to direct the reader's attention to a brief history of the English language; to its excellencies and defects; the best means of cultivating an acquaintance with it; the dangers of corruption to which, in this age of literary hobbies and imitations, it is exposed; and its future prospects, in regard to its prevalence in extension. Lest the writer should be thought, by some, to wander from his subject, in his occasional allusions to English literature, it may be proper to remark, that the intimate connection between the themes, renders such reference unavoidable. Language forms a distinguishing characteristic of man. Brutes have inarticulate cries, which express their emotions, and the import of which they seem in a measure to understand; but they have nothing which can be dignified with the name of language. This is the vehicle of thought; it is the instrument by which mind acts upon mind; by which the people of one nation and age converse with the people of other nations and of remote ages; and it is the means by which the social nature of man arrives at its highest gratification. It is the testimony of the Scriptures, that originally the inhabitants of the world were of one speech and of one language, and that the foundation for a variety of languages was laid in the confusion of tongues, at the building of Babel. From the nature of the case, also, it might be inferred that but one language would originally exist; and so convenient would it be for human intercourse, that all the inhabitants of the earth should continue to speak the same language, that we cannot well account for the existence of so many languages, so widely differing from each other, without supposing a miraculous interference, like that which the confusion of tongues at Babel is described to have been. The departures from the original language, however, though sufficient to prevent the different tribes from understanding each other, appears not to have been so entire as to destroy all resemblance between the different dialects. Hence, learned men have been able to trace some remote resemblances between all the various languages that exist. | Celts, a people who, probably many centuries before the Christian era, wandered away from the parent tribes in Asia. They were rude and uncultivated, with the exception of the Druids, their priests, who had a humble claim to the title of philosophers. Such was the people whom Julius Cæsar found in Britain, when he raised the Roman eagle on its shores; and who, after a severe struggle, were subdued to the Roman dominion. The languages of the Welsh, of the native Irish, denominated the Erse, and of the highlands of Scotland, called the Gaelic, which differ only in dialect, are the remains of the Celtic, the original language of northern and western Europe. After the internal troubles of the Roman Empire obliged the Romans to withdraw from Britain, the inhabitants of the southern portion of the island were exposed to the inroads of the Picts and Scots from the North, whom the Roman arms, during the Roman dominion, had kept in check. In vain did the Britains call on the Romans for aid; instead of defending others, they were scarcely able to defend themselves. In their extremity, the Britons invited the Saxons to undertake their defence. The Saxons inhabited northern and Languages, like individuals, grow up from western Germany, and the adjacent territory, infancy to maturity; and like nations, they a branch of whom was denominated the Anadvance from barbarism to refinement. The gles, from whom the English derive their name. English is the youngest child in the family of They were a part of the extensive Gothic nalanguages; but, as it frequently happens to tion which spread itself over central and the youngest child, it has been nursed with northern Europe; a people that left the eastern peculiar care, and enjoyed peculiar advanta- tribes at a later period than the Celts, and who ges; and it exhibits a vigorous constitution, were considerably in advance of them in civand has acquired a manly growth. From ilization and mental improvement. The Saxpoverty it has advanced to riches, and from ons, after having driven back the Picts and barbarism to great refinement. It is an inter- Scots, conquered the Britons whom they came esting employment to trace its history, and to to defend; and so complete was the subjugamark its progress. It has originated, not from | tion, that the Saxon or Gothic entirely superone source, but from many sources. It has seded the Celtic, or ancient language of the amassed its wealth not only by carefully hus-country, and the Saxon is to be considered as banding its own resources, but by the lawful plunder of numerous other languages. The history of the English language is intimately connected with the history of the English nation. The island of Great Britain has been the scene of its infancy, the theater of its childhood, and the spot on which, in its maturity, it has flourished in peculiar glory. The earliest inhabitants of Britain, and indeed of all northern and western Europe, were the the parent of the English language. Doubtless, from an intercourse with the original inhabitants, some Celtic words were intermingled with the Saxon, but they were not so numerous as materially to alter its form. The Saxon language, from the remains of it which have come down to modern times, appears to have been capable of expressing with copiousness and energy the sentiments of a people not destitute of mental cultivation. |