s almost _terra incognita_.

... The man of commerce asks to be told of its products and its trade,
its skill in manufactures, the commodities it needs, and the returns it
can supply.

The scholar asks to be introduced to its literature, that he may
contemplate in historians, poets, and dramatists (for Japan has them
all), a picture of the national mind.

The Christian desires to know the varied phases of their superstition
and idolatry, and longs for the dawn of that day when a purer faith
and more enlightened worship shall bring them within the circle of
Christendom.

Amid such a diversity of pursuits as we have enumerated, a common
interest unites all in a common sympathy; and hence the divine and the
philosopher, the navigator and the naturalist, the man of business and
the man of letters, have alike joined in a desire for the thorough
exploration of a field at once so extensive and so inviting.

* * * * *

=_George P. Marsh, 1801-._= (Manual, p. 532.)

From "Lectures on the English Language."

=_196._= METHOD OF LEARNING ENGLISH.

The groundwork of English, indeed, can be, and best is, learned at the
domestic fireside--a school for which there is no adequate substitute;
but the knowledge there acquired is not, as in homogeneous languages, a
root, out of which will spontaneously grow the flowers and the fruits
which adorn and enrich the speech of man. English has been so much
affected by extraneous, alien, and discordant influences, so much
mixed with foreign ingredients, so much overloaded with adventitious
appendages, that it is to most of those who speak it, in a considerable
degree, a conventional and arbitrary symbolism. The Anglo-Saxon tongue
has a craving appetite, and is as rapacious of words, and as tolerant of
forms, as are its children, of territory and of religions. But in spite
of its power of assimilation, there is much of the speech of England
which has never become connatural to the Anglican people; and its
grammar has passively suffered the introduction of many syntactical
combinations, which are not merely irregular, but repugnant. I shall not
here inquire whether this condition of English is an evil. There are
many cases where a complex and cunningly-devised machine, dexterously
guided, can do that which the congenital hand fails to accomplish; but
the computing, of our losses and gains, the striking of our linguistic
balance, belongs elsewhere. Suffice