the reception of foreign words, with their
after assimilation in feature to our own, we may trace, as was to be
expected, a certain conformity between the genius of our institutions
and that of our language. It is the very character of our institutions
to repel none, but rather to afford a shelter and a refuge to all, from
whatever quarter they come; and after a longer or shorter while all the
strangers and incomers have been incorporated into the English nation,
within one or two generations have forgotten that they were ever ought
else than members of it, have retained no other reminiscence of their
foreign extraction than some slight difference of name, and that often
disappearing or having disappeared. Exactly so has it been with the
English language. No language has shown itself less exclusive; none has
stood less upon niceties; none has thrown open its arms wider, with a
fuller confidence, a confidence justified by experience, that it could
make truly its own, assimilate and subdue to itself, whatever it
received into its bosom; and in none has this experiment in a larger
number of instances been successfully carried out.

* * * * *

{Sidenote: _French at the Restoration_}

Such are the two great enlargements from without of our vocabulary. All
other are minor and subordinate. Thus the introduction of French tastes
by Charles the Second and his courtiers returning from exile, to which I
have just adverted, though it rather modified the structure of our
sentences than the materials of our vocabulary, gave us some new words.
In one of Dryden's plays, _Marriage a la Mode_, a lady full of
affectation is introduced, who is always employing French idioms in
preference to English, French words rather than native. It is not a
little curious that of these, thus put into her mouth to render her
ridiculous, not a few are excellent English now, and have nothing
far-sought or affected about them: for so it frequently proves that what
is laughed at in the beginning, is by all admitted and allowed at the
last. For example, to speak of a person being in the 'good graces' of
another has nothing in it ridiculous now; the words 'repartee',
'embarrass', 'chagrin', 'grimace', do not sound novel and affected now
as they all must plainly have done at the time when Dryden wrote.
'Fougue' and 'fraischeur', which he himself employed--being, it is true,
no frequent offender in this way--have not been justif