were still pure Anglo-Saxon from keel to deck and from the helm or the rudder to the top of the mast, afloat and ashore, with sail or with oar. As his fathers had done before him in the land of his birth, the Saxon would not merely eat, drink and sleep, or spend his time in playing the harp and the fiddle, but by walking, riding, fishing and hunting he kept young and healthy; while his lady and her children were busy teaching or learning how to read and to write, to sing and to draw. Eyen needlework was not forgotten, as their writers say that "by this they shone most in the world." The wisdom of later ages was not known then, but they had their homespun sayings, which by all mankind are yet looked upon as true wisdom, as: God helps those that help themselves; lost time is never found again; when sorrow is asleep, wake it not! 7. Thus the two languages, now contending and then mingling with each other, continued for nearly four hundred years side by side in the British kingdom; the Norman-French, an exotic plant, deprived of its native soil and heat, flourishing for a time, but gradually withering and fading away; the language of the subject, like an indigenous tree, trimmed by the rough storm, grafted in many a branch by an unskillful hand, but still giving shade with its widespreading foliage and bearing flowers and fruit in abundance. The Normans had conquered the land and the race, but they struggled in vain against the language that conquered them in its turn, and, by its spirit, converted them into Englishmen. 8. In vain did they haughtily refuse to learn a word of that despised tongue, and asked, in the words of the minister of Henry III., indignantly, "Am I an Englishman, that I should know these (Saxon) charters and these laws?" In vain it was that William and his successors filled bishopric and abbey with the most learned and best educated men of France, and deposed Saxon dignitaries, like Wulstan, bishop of Worcester, because he was an "idiot who did not know the French tongue and could not aid in the king's council." Neither sufferings nor death itself could apparently teach these haughty Normans the necessity of their new home. It is well known how Robert of Gloucester and some of his followers, who befriended the princess Matilda in her difficulties with Stephen, were taken prisoners at the siege of Winchester, and had to pay with their lives for their ignorance of Saxon, which alone betrayed them when they fled, in excellent disguise, through the country. 9. When the bishop of Ely became a defaulter and was trying to escape in female attire to the seaside, some countrywomen approached and put him some questions. Not knowing Saxon, he could not answer a word. They then lifted his veil, and saw from his newly-shaven beard that he was a man. Some laborers came up, knocked him down and dragged him through sand and mire to a neighboring town, where he was kept a prisoner in a dark cellar until some Norman soldiers came up and saved him from further disgrace. 10. Thus we see that conquests cannot exterminate a language nor drive it from its native soil. The Normans, with all their power and strength, lords of the lands, masters of the people and with every advantage on their side, could not destroy a highly cultivated, ancient and national tongue like the Saxon. It rose against them and conquered them in its turn. .. The Normans could, as conquerors, seat their NormanFrench upon the throne and the judge's bench, at the daïs of the noble and in the refectory of the monk, but they found the door of manor and cottage jealously guarded. 11. Their numbers, moreover, were too small to allow them to spread all over the kingdom. Their soldiers were stationed. in a few garrisons and citadels to secure the towns and overawe the country, where their great skill in fortification, of which the Saxons knew nothing, was an ample compensation for their small numbers. The few Norman soldiers and their families, thus immured in castles, and too haughty to associate with the despised Saxons, anxiously preserved their connection. with France, where many still possessed estates, and held no intercourse but with their own countrymen. 12. The Norman-French was, therefore, neither carried to all parts of the great kingdom, because of the comparatively small number of invaders, nor supported by the aid of intellectual superiority. The Anglo-Saxon, on the other hand, had been carefully guarded and preserved by the people; it had never lost its hold upon their affections; persecution and the necessity of concealment had made it but all the dearer to the suffering race. It now made its way, slowly and almost imperceptibly, but with unerring and unceasing perseverance, from rank to rank, until it finally reached the very court from which it had been so ignominiously driven, and seated itself once more upon the throne of England. DE VERE. ... SELECT ETYMOLOGIES.-Ancient: F. ancien, old; L. anti'quus, old; fr. an'te, before. . . . Cascade: It. casca'ta; fr. L. cad'o, ca'sum, to fall; h., accident, cadence, case, casual, casuist, co-in-cide (to fall in together), de-cadence, de-cay, de-ciduous, in-cident, oc-casion, oc-cident (oc = ob). . Charter: L. char'ta (kar'ta); fr. Gr. chartes (xάpīns), a leaf of paper. . . . Compensate v. RECOMPENSE. . . . Constitute: v. DESTITUTE... Dais: F. da'is, a canopy over the head of a throne, a raised seat. Depose: L. depo'no, depositum, to put down: v. POSITION. . . . Dignity : L. dig'nitas; fr. dig'nus, worthy; h., con-dign, deign, dignify, dis-dain, in-dignant, indignity, etc. Enchant: L. incan'to, incanta'tum, to chant; fr. can'o, can'tum, to sing, carmen, a song; h., ac-cent, canto, chant, chanticleer, charm, des-cant (des dis), in-cantation, re-cant, etc. ... Endeavor: fr. the F. en devoir, in duty.... Exotic, foreign; Gr. ĕxō'tikõs; fr. èx'ō (e§w), outside; h., exoteric (external, public), opposed to esoteric (secret); fr. ès'ō, within. Exterminate: L. exter'mino, I drive beyond the boundaries; fr. ex and terminus, a limit; h., de-termine, in-terminable, term, terminate, etc. ... ... Forest: fr. the L. for'is, out of doors. . . . Idiom: Gr. idiō'ma; fr. ** idios, proper, peculiar; h., idiot.... Ignominy : L. ignomin'ia, discredit; fr. in-, not, and no'men: v. NAME. . . . Immure: L. mu'rus, a wall; h., intra-mural, mural, mure.... Indigenous, born in a country: fr. L. in'du -in and gig'no, I beget. ... Parliament: F. parler, to speak; h., parley, parlor (orig., a room in a nunnery where the nuns were allowed to speak to visitors through a grating). . . . Persecution: v. SUBSEQUENT. . . . Preside: L. præsi'dio, I sit before; fr. præ and sed'eo, ses'sum, to sit; h., assess (lit., to sit by; h., to aid one as judge, etc.), as-siduous (lit., sitting to; h. diligent), as-size, be-siege, in-sidious (L. insid'iæ, an ambush), ob-sess, possess (po-, a prefix denoting power), pre-pos-sess, re-side, re-sidue (fr. resideo, I sit back or remain behind), sedate, sedative, sedentary, sediment, sedulous, session, siege, subside, subsidy (lit., a sitting under; h., support), super-sede, etc. Refect: L. re, again, fă'cio, I make; h., re-fectory (a place for refreshments): v. FACT.... Subjugate : L. sub'jugo, subjuga'tum, to bring under the yoke; fr. sub and ju'gum, a yoke; h., con-jugal, con-jugate (to join, as it were, to one yoke).. Submit: v. COMMISSION: Sumptuous: L. sumptuo'sus, costly: v. ASSUME. ... XXXIV. THE PACIFIC OCEAN. Pronounce Tahiti, tä-hee'te; Hawaii, hä-wi'ee. 1. A REMARKABLE feature in the Pacific Ocean, and one that distinguishes it from every other sea, is the immense assemblage of small islands with which it is crowded, particnlarly in the portion situated between the tropics. For about three thousand miles from the coast of South America the sea is almost entirely free from islands, but thence to the great isles of India an immense belt of ocean, nearly five thousand miles in length and fifteen hundred in breadth, is so studded with them as almost to be one continuous archipelago. The term Polynesia, by which this division of the globe is now distinguished, is compounded of two Greek words signifying many islands. Very few of these gems of the ocean are more than a few miles in extent, though Tahiti, and some in the more western groups, are of rather larger dimensions; while Hawaii, the largest island in Polynesia, is about the size of Yorkshire. 2. The isles which in such vast numbers thus stud the bosom of the Pacific are of three distinct forms-the coral, the crystal and the volcanic. Of these the first formation greatly predominates, but the largest islands are of the last description; of the crystal formation but few specimens are known. Imagine a belt of land in the wide ocean not more than half a mile in breadth, but extending, in an irregular curve, to the length of ten or twenty miles or more, the height above the water not more than a yard or two at most, but clothed with a mass of the richest and most verdant vegetation. Here and there, above the general bed of luxuriant foliage, rises a grove of cocoanut trees, waving their feathery plumes high in the air and gracefully bending their tall and slender stems to the breathing of the pleasant trade-wind. The grove is bordered by a narrow beach on each side, of the most glittering whiteness, contrasting with the beautiful azure waters by which it is environed. 3. From end to end of the curved isle stretches in a straight line, forming, as it were, the cord of the bow, a narrow beach of the same snowy whiteness, almost level with the sea at the lowest tide, inclosing a semi-circular space of water between it and the island called the lagoon. Over this line of beach, which occupies the leeward side, the curve being to windward, the sea is breaking with sublime majesty; the long unbroken swell of the ocean, hitherto unbridled through a course of thousands of miles, is met by this rampart, when the huge billows, rearing themselves upward many yards above its level and bending their foaming crests, "form a graceful liquid arch, glittering in the rays of a tropical sun as if studded with brilliants. But before the eyes of the spectator can follow the splendid aqueous gallery which they appear to have reared, with loud and hollow roar they fall, in magnificent desolation, and spread the gigantic fabric in froth and spray upon the horizontal and gently broken surface." 4. Contrasting strongly with the tumult and confusion of the hoary billows without, the water within the lagoon exhibits the serene placidity of a mill-pond. Extending downward to a depth varying from a few feet to fifty fathoms, the waters possess the lively green hue common to soundings on a white or yellow ground, while the surface, unruffled by a wave, reflects with accurate distinctness the mast of the canoe that sleeps upon its bosom and the tufts of the cocoanut plumes that rise from the beach above it. 5. Such is a coral island; and if its appearance is one of singular loveliness, as all who have seen it testify, its structure, on examination, is found to be no less interesting and wonderful. The beach of white sand which opposes the whole force of the ocean is found to be the summit of a rock which rises abruptly from an unknown depth like a perpendicular wall. The whole of this rampart, as far as our senses can take cognizance of it, is composed of living coral, and the same substance forms the foundation of the curved and more elevated side which is smiling in the luxuriance and beauty of tropical vegetation. The elevation of the coral to the surface is not always abruptly perpendicular; sometimes reefs of varying |