and for some purposes is still employed. Paper, made of various substances, is of all materials hitherto used, the most convenient. Paper has been made of a certain kind of reed, of cotton, of the interior bark of trees, of bamboo, of asbestos, of linen rags, and lately even of straw; that made from linen rags is generally used by Europeans. It was first known about five hundred years ago.

Numerous and important as are the benefits of the art of writing, in preserving and diffusing knowledge, the art of printing is of still greater importance: the advantages of this art, are well described in the following stanzas of Gillespie's Progress of Refinement:

"For that famed power that spreads amongst our kind

The gifts of art -- herself best gift of art,

Chas'd superstition from the trembling heart,

And from the world dispelled the eclipse of mind.
Hail, Printing! fairest messenger of truth,
Who knowledge keep'st from dark oblivion's tomb,
Who giv'st to science an immortal youth,
And bid'st the flowers of fancy ever bloom.
And as the sun his blazing chariot drives
Up through the Orient lightening to his rays,
All nature at his vital touch revives,
And every floweret gladdens in his blaze;

So Britain smiled when, sunk in Gothic night,

Thou pour'dst thy cheering blaze of intellectual light.

Yes, when Heaven's light in cloister'd shades was shrined,
And Superstition, raging o'er the world,

O'er proudest thrones her demon thunders hurl'd,
And on the altar forg'd the chains of mind,

Thou cam❜st, and bad'st a happier age unroll,

Spread'st wide abroad the cheering beams of Heaven,
And from the equator lightening to the pole,
What all concerned, by thee to all was given.
But on our isle chief shone thy brightest day,
For soon its daring sons were taught by thee
To spurn the inglorious bonds of tyrant sway,
And feel that to be men - is to be free;

Were taught by thee in freedom's cause to bleed,

To choose a patriot king,· and own a Christian creed."

This art was the result of accident, aided by curiosity. A gentleman of Haerlem, accustomed to walk in a wood near that city, sometimes amused himself by cutting letters on the bark of a beechtree. This suggested the idea that letters so cut and covered with ink, by having paper impressed on them, would impart to the paper their respective forms. The experiment was made, and found to answer. He then formed whole pages of wooden types, but as the common ink sunk and spread, a more glutinous kind of ink was invented; and as the wooden types were found not to be durable, the next object was to form metal ones. A few experiments were attended with success; and in a short time, the art was brought to a high degree of perfection. It is said to have been invented in 1444, and was introduced in England a few years afterwards ;-the first printing-press in this country was at Oxford.

61

HISTORICAL VIEW OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

IN treating of the progress of language, it was observed that the present diversity of languages is the result of such changes as necessarily attend the progress of society; that those now spoken in the south of Europe, the Italian, the Spanish, the Portuguese and the French, are all closely connected with, or derived from, the ancient Latin or Roman language. The Latin is in a great measure derived from the Greek, and the Greek can be traced to Asia. The languages of the North are in a similar manner derived from the Gothic; and the Gothic itself is of Asiatic origin.

To be thoroughly acquainted with a language, it is not sufficient merely to read and admire it, after it has reached a high state of cultivation. We must have the curiosity to look back upon its ruder years, and to mark the several steps by which it has advanced to maturity. If we wish to know of what elements it is composed, to understand the meaning of its idioms, to distinguish its genuine phrases, or to acquire that skill in it which will enable us to write it correctly, we must make ourselves acquainted with its history. To accomplish this, we must follow as our guide the chain of political events, and mark the successive changes in the speech

of the nation, occasioned by its successive revolutions.

The remotest period to which the history of our country can with certainty be traced, is the period of its invasion by Julius Cæsar. At that period the language of its inhabitants was a dialect of the Celtic, a language of very high antiquity, which though now confined to Wales, to Ireland, to the Highlands of Scotland, and to Brittany in France, was once spoken over the greater part of the west of Europe, particularly in Gaul, the modern France, from which it is generally believed that Britain was first peopled.

Upon the language and customs of the ancient Britons, the invasion of the Romans seems scarcely to have had the influence that might have been expected. The Romans who visited Britain, while it was a Roman province, came not to settle in the country, but to keep it in subjection; not to mingle with the natives, but to check a spirit of insurrection, and to maintain the terror of the Roman name. Accordingly, for as long as the Romans possessed the British isle, the British language suffered little alteration; a few perhaps of the better born and more studious of the British youth, might have acquired the Roman tongue, and have paid some attention to the Roman literature, but the Celtic remained, as it was before, the language of the people.

But the Romans having left the island, an event occurred in process of time, which changed to a con

siderable degree not only its language, but its government, its religion, its laws: that event was the arrival of the Saxons, about the middle of the fifth century. These adventurers, casting a covetous eye on the fertile plains of south Britain, quickly relinquished their original design, which was to repel the incursions of the Scots and Picts, and bent the whole force of their arms to conquer the country which they had come to defend. Having in a short time succeeded to their wishes, and driven the now unwarlike Britons into the mountainous district of Wales, with the help of some fresh bodies of adventurers from their own country, they took possession of what is now called England, which for many years they occupied without molestation, speaking their own language and observing their own laws.

The language of the Saxons was a dialect of the Gothic or Teutonic; the language which from an early period obtained among the nations bordering on the Baltic Sea. The origin of that language is now so remote, that it cannot be traced with certainty; yet there are many historical facts that have a tendency to prove, that the Goths were a people of Asia. Odin, the chieftain of a people occupying Georgia, and a great part of the country between the Euxine and the Caspian Sea, dreading subjection to a foreign power, or impelled by a spirit of enterprise, is said to have deserted with his whole tribe, the country of his fathers, and pursuing a north-westerly