w it indeed is, a gratuitous
departure from the ordinary usage of society. Right or wrong, it meant
something, and had an ethical motive: being indeed a testimony upon
their parts, however misplaced, that they would not have high or great
or rich men's persons in admiration; nor give the observance to some
which they withheld from others. It was a testimony too which cost them
something; at present we can very little understand the amount of
courage which this 'thou-ing' and 'thee-ing' of all men must have
demanded on their parts, nor yet the amount of indignation and offence
which it stirred up in them who were not aware of, or would not allow
for, the scruples which obliged them to it{196}. It is, however, in its
other aspect that we must chiefly regret the dying out of the use of
'thou'--that is, as the pledge of peculiar intimacy and special
affection, as between husband and wife, parents and children, and such
other as might be knit together by bands of more than common affection.

{Sidenote: _Gender Words_}

I have preferred during this lecture to find my theme in changes which
are now going forward in English, but I cannot finish it without drawing
one illustration from its remoter periods, and bidding you to note a
force not now waning and failing from it, but extinct long ago. I
cannot well pass it by; being as it is by far the boldest step which in
this direction of simplification the English language has at any time
taken. I refer to the renouncing of the distribution of its nouns into
masculine, feminine, and neuter, as in German, or even into masculine
and feminine, as in French; and with this, and as a necessary
consequence of this, the dropping of any flexional modification in the
adjectives connected with them. Natural _sex_ of course remains, being
inherent in all language; but grammatical _gender_, with the exception
of 'he', 'she', and 'it', and perhaps one or two other fragmentary
instances, the language has altogether forgone. An example will make
clear the distinction between these. Thus it is not the word 'poetess'
which is _feminine_, but the person indicated who is _female_. So too
'daughter', 'queen', are in English not _feminine_ nouns, but nouns
designating _female_ persons. Take on the contrary 'filia' or 'regina',
'fille' or 'reine'; there you have _feminine_ nouns as well as _female_
persons. I need hardly say to you that we did not inherit this
simplicity from others, but, like the Danes