filius
amat,_ or _filius amat patrem,_ or in whatever order it may be,
there is no doubt who does, and who (as they say) _suffers_ the
loving.--But now take a word in English. You can still recognise
him for the same creature that was once so gay and jumpy-jumpy:
_father_ is no such far cry from _pater:_--but oh what a change
in sprightliness of habits is here! Time has worn away his head
and limbs to almost unrecognisable blunt excrescences. Bid him
move off into the oblique cases, and if he can help it, he will
not budge; you must shove him with a verb; you must goad him
with a little sharp preposition behind; and then he just _lumps_
backward or forward, and there is no change for the better in
him, as you may say. No longer will he declare his meaning of
himself; it must depend on where you choose to put him in the
sentence.--Among the mountains of Europe, the grand Alps are the
parvenus; the Pyrenees look down on them; and the Vosges on the
Pyrenees; and--pardon me!--the little old time-rounded tiny
Welsh mountains look down on them all from the heights of a much
greater antiquity. They are the smallest of all, the least jagged
and dramatic of all; time and the weather have done most to
them. The storm, like the eagle of Gwern Abwy in the story, has
lighted on their proud peaks so often, that that from which once
she could peck at the stars in the evening, rises now but a few
thousand feet from the level of the sea. Time and springs and
summers have silenced and soothed away the startling crags and
chasms, the threatening gestures of the earth at infinity, and
clothed them over with a mantle of quietness and green fern and
heather and dreams. When the Fifth Race was younger, its language
was Alpine: in Gothic, in Sanskrit, in Latin, you can see the
crags and chasms. French, Spanish and Italian are Pyrenean, much
worn down. English is the Vosges. Chinese is hardly even the
Welsh mountains. Every word is worn perfectly smooth and round.
There is no sign left at all of prefix or suffix, root or stem.
There are no parts of speech: any word without change can do
duty for any part of speech. There is no sign of case or number:
all has been reduced to an absolute simplicity, beyond which
there is no going. Words can end with no consonant but the most
rounded of all, the nasal liquids _n_ and _ng._ There is about as
much likeness to the Aryan and Semitic languages--you can trace
about as much analogy between them--a