Perfects. I give a specimen of one of these old Perfects, found both in Sanscrit and English.

It is easy to see that, thousands of years before Christ's birth, our forefathers must have used a Present tense, like wit or vid. Our verbs may, can, shall, will, must, dare (most of which we use, with their new Perfects, as auxiliary verbs), have been formed like wot, and are Irregulars.

Our verb to be is most irregular, since it comes from three roots, as, bhu, and vas. One of the points, in which English goes nearer than Sanscrit to the Mother Speech, is the first letter of the Third Person Plural of this verb. We still say are, the old ar-anti or as-anti; in Sanscrit this word appears only as s-anti. The Germans have no form of our am, the Sanscrit asmi.

The old word, which in Sanscrit is da-dhâ-mi, with its Perfect, da-dhau, was brought to the Northumbrian shores by our Pagan forefathers in the shape of ge-dô-m, di-de. Hence our irregular do, did, the latter of which plays a great part in building Weak Teutonic verbs.

Our verb ga, which is now go, is found in Sanscrit as gi-ga-mi, with its Perfect derived from another verb; we now say went, instead of the old eôde, which Spenser

used; this came from eo. The Lowland Scotch have a corrupt Perfect, gaed, which has been long in use.

Some of the compounds of our English verbs carry us far back. Thus, to explain the meaning of the first syllable in such words as forlorn, fordone, we must look to the Sanscrit parâ.

The Aryan settlement on the banks of the Oxus was in the end broken up. First, the Celt marched towards the setting sun, to hold the Western lands of Europe, and to root out the old Turanian owners of the ground; of these last, the Basques and Lapps alone remain in being. Hundreds of years later the English, with other tribes (they had not yet learnt to count up to a thousand), followed in the Celt's wake, leaving behind them those of their kinsmen who were afterwards to conquer India and Persia, to compile the Vedas, and to leave their handwriting on the rock of Behistun.1 Some streams flowed to the West of the great watershed, others to the East.

Many tokens show that the English must have long lived in common with the forefathers of Homer and Nævius. The ending of the Greek word paid-ion is the counterpart of that of the English maid-en; paid-isk-os of cild-isc, childish. Latin is still nearer akin to us, and sometimes hardly a letter is changed; as when we compare alias and else. Dom-unculus appears in Old English as hus-incle. The Latin fer and the Old English bære, in truth the same word, are attached to substantives,

1 The old Persian word yâre is the English year.

2 Sophocles' high-sounding wλodaμveîv would be our to foaltame, if we chose to compound a word closely akin to Greek.

which are thus changed into adjectives. Vig-il and wac-ol (wakeful) are but different forms of one word. The Latin calvus, gilvus, and malva are our callow, yellow, and mallow; and the likeness was still more striking before we corrupted the old ending u into ow. Aiei and ævum are the Gothic aiv, the English aye and ever. Latin and English alike slipped the letter n into the middle of a verb before g, as frango or frag, and gang or gag. The Latin Future tense cannot be explained by Latin words; but, on turning to English, we at once see that doma-bo is nothing but our tame-be; that is, I be to tame, or I shall tame. So likewise with ara-bo, or I ear be.' English sometimes shows itself more primitive than Latin; thus, our knot has never lost its first letter, while gnodus was shortened into nodus thousands of years ago.

But all the Teutonic tribes have traces left of their nearness of kin to the Slavonians and Lithuanians, who seem to have been the last of the Aryan stock from whom we Teutons separated. We have seen that, when living in Asia, we were unable to count up to a thousand. The Sanscrit for this numeral is sakasra, the Latin mille. The Slavonians made it tusantja, the Lithuanians tukstanti, and with this the whole Teutonic kindred closely agrees. Further, it seems strange at first sight that we have not framed those two of our numerals that follow ten in some such shape as ân-týne and twâ-tŷne, since we go on to preô-tŷne, thirteen. The

The verb ear is happily preserved in Shakespeare, and in the English Bible. It is one of the first words that ought to be revived by our best writers, who should remember their Ar-yan blood.

explanation is, that the Lithuanian lika answers to the Teutonic tihan, ten; the ka at the end of the former word changes to fa; just as the Sanscrit katvar changes to the Gothic fidvor (our four), and the Latin cado to our fall. If lifan then take the place of the common Teutonic tihan, ân-lifan and twá-lifan (eleven and twelve) are easily framed. These Eastern kinsmen of ours had also, like ourselves and unlike the rest of the Aryan stock, both a Definite and an Indefinite form of the Adjective.

But the time came when our fathers left off hunting the auroch in the forests to the East of the Vistula, bade farewell to their Lithuanian cousins (one of the most interesting of all the branches of the Aryan tree), and marched Westward, as the Celts had done long before. Up to this time, we may fairly guess, we had kept our verbs in mi. It cannot be known when the great Teutonic race was split up into High Germans, Low Germans, and Scandinavians. Hard is it to explain why each of them stuck to peculiar old forms; why the High Germans should have kept the Present Plural of their Verb (a point in which Old English fails woefully), almost as it is in Sanscrit and Latin; why the Low Germans (this term includes the Goths and English) should in general have clung closer to the old inflections than their brethren did, and have refused to corrupt the letter t into s;' why the Scandinavians should have retained to this day a Passive Voice. I can here do

1 Compare the Sanscrit swêda, English sweat, High German schweiss. English is at once seen to be far more primitive than German.

no less than give a substantive and a verb, to show how our brethren (I may now at last drop the word cousins) formed their inflections.

THE SUBSTANTIVE Wolf.

Gothic. Old High German. Old Norse.

Old English.

PRESENT TENSE OF THE VERB niman, to take; whence comes

All these Teutonic tribes must have easily understood each other, about the time of Christ's birth; since, hundreds of years after that event, they were using the above-cited inflections. They had by this time wandered far from the old Aryan framework of speech. Thus, to take one instance--the Dative Plural in um; the Sanscrit Nominative sûnus formed its Dative Plural