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thousands upon thousands of Greek and Latin words; and thousands more, too purely technical as yet to be admitted into the dictionaries, are current among certain classes of our community. The circumstances, external and internal, which give such prevalence among us to this mode of linguistic growth, are many and various. First among them, we may refer to the scantiness of our formative apparatus, and the indisposition to an extensive production of new compounds which characterizes our speech: these limitations to the capacity of internal development compel a recurrence to external wealth. Then, the combination into which our originally Germanic dialect was forced, by pressure of historical conditions, with the Romanic tongue of the conquering Normans, while it brought immediately into general use a host of terms of classical origin, opened the door for their indefinite multiplication, by creating analogies to which they could attach themselves, giving them such support in popular usage as took away the strangeness of aspect which they would else have had. Yet it is true that the words of common life, those which every English-speaking child learns first and continues to use oftenest, are overwhelmingly of Anglo-Saxon origin, are Germanic: Latin and Greek derivatives come in abundantly with culture, learning, special scientific training. And this explains in part the modern preponderance of such derivatives. The knowledge which they are introduced to represent is of a learned cast, not interesting in its details the general community of English speakers, nor accessible to them; belonging, rather, to a special class, which feels itself more closely united by bonds of community with like classes in other nations than with the mass of its own countrymen. There is a fellowship, a solidarity, among the chemists of Europe and America, for instance, which makes them name things on principles accepted among themselves, and out of languages known alike to them all, rather than out of the stores of expression, and in accordance with the usages, of their own vernaculars. It is doubtful whether any language that ever existed could have made provision healthily, from its own internal resources, for the expression of that infinite number of new particulars which