acquire the use of writing and have a literature of
their own; they pass into dialects and grow out of them, in proportion
as men are isolated or united by locality or occupation. The common
language sometimes reacts upon the dialects and imparts to them also a
literary character. The laws of language can be best discerned in the
great crises of language, especially in the transitions from ancient to
modern forms of them, whether in Europe or Asia. Such changes are the
silent notes of the world's history; they mark periods of unknown length
in which war and conquest were running riot over whole continents, times
of suffering too great to be endured by the human race, in which the
masters became subjects and the subject races masters, in which driven
by necessity or impelled by some instinct, tribes or nations left their
original homes and but slowly found a resting-place. Language would be
the greatest of all historical monuments, if it could only tell us the
history of itself.

(5) There are many ways in which we may approach this study. The
simplest of all is to observe our own use of language in conversation
or in writing, how we put words together, how we construct and connect
sentences, what are the rules of accent and rhythm in verse or prose,
the formation and composition of words, the laws of euphony and sound,
the affinities of letters, the mistakes to which we are ourselves
most liable of spelling or pronunciation. We may compare with our own
language some other, even when we have only a slight knowledge of
it, such as French or German. Even a little Latin will enable us to
appreciate the grand difference between ancient and modern European
languages. In the child learning to speak we may note the inherent
strength of language, which like 'a mountain river' is always forcing
its way out. We may witness the delight in imitation and repetition,
and some of the laws by which sounds pass into one another. We may learn
something also from the falterings of old age, the searching for words,
and the confusion of them with one another, the forgetfulness of
proper names (more commonly than of other words because they are more
isolated), aphasia, and the like. There are philological lessons also to
be gathered from nicknames, from provincialisms, from the slang of great
cities, from the argot of Paris (that language of suffering and
crime, so pathetically described by Victor Hugo), from the imperfect
articulation of th