cipate in the way of
masterly sketch all which I shall attempt to accomplish, and indeed draw
out the lines of much more, to which I shall not venture so much as to
put my hand. They are the more welcome to me, because they encourage me
to believe that if, in choosing the English language, its past and its
present, as the subject of that brief course of lectures which I am to
deliver in this place, I have chosen a subject which in many ways
transcends my powers, and lies beyond the range of my knowledge, it is
yet one in itself of deepest interest, and of fully recognized value.
Nor can I refrain from hoping that even with my imperfect handling, it
is an argument which will find an answer and an echo in the hearts of
all who hear me; which would have found this at any time; which will do
so especially at the present. For these are times which naturally rouse
into liveliest activity all our latent affections for the land of our
birth. It is one of the compensations, indeed the greatest of all, for
the wastefulness, the woe, the cruel losses of war{1}, that it causes
and indeed compels a people to know itself a people; leading each one to
esteem and prize most that which he has in common with his fellow
countrymen, and not now any longer those things which separate and
divide him from them.

{Sidenote: _Love of our own Tongue_}

And the love of our own language, what is it in fact, but the love of
our country expressing itself in one particular direction? If the great
acts of that nation to which we belong are precious to us, if we feel
ourselves made greater by their greatness, summoned to a nobler life by
the nobleness of Englishmen who have already lived and died, and have
bequeathed to us a name which must not by us be made less, what exploits
of theirs can well be nobler, what can more clearly point out their
native land and ours as having fulfilled a glorious past, as being
destined for a glorious future, than that they should have acquired for
themselves and for those who come after them a clear, a strong, an
harmonious, a noble language? For all this bears witness to
corresponding merits in those that speak it, to clearness of mental
vision, to strength, to harmony, to nobleness in them that have
gradually formed and shaped it to be the utterance of their inmost life
and being.

To know of this language, the stages which it has gone through, the
sources from which its riches have been derived, the gains which i