ons, numerals, auxiliary verbs, all smaller words
which serve to knit together and bind the larger into sentences, these,
not to speak of the grammatical structure of the language, are
exclusively Saxon. The Latin may contribute its tale of bricks, yea, of
goodly and polished hewn stones, to the spiritual building; but the
mortar, with all that holds and binds the different parts of it
together, and constitutes them into a house, is Saxon throughout. I
remember Selden in his _Table Talk_ using another comparison; but to the
same effect: "If you look upon the language spoken in the Saxon time,
and the language spoken now, you will find the difference to be just as
if a man had a cloak which he wore plain in Queen Elizabeth's days, and
since, here has put in a piece of red, and there a piece of blue, and
here a piece of green, and there a piece of orange-tawny. We borrow
words from the French, Italian, Latin, as every pedantic man pleases".

{Sidenote: _Composite Languages_}

I believe this to be the law which holds good in respect of all
composite languages. However composite they may be, yet they are only so
in regard of their words. There may be a medley in respect of these,
some coming from one quarter, some from another; but there is never a
mixture of grammatical forms and inflections. One or other language
entirely predominates here, and everything has to conform and
subordinate itself to the laws of this ruling and ascendant language.
The Anglo-Saxon is the ruling language in our present English. Thus
while it has thought good to drop its genders, even so the French
substantives which come among us, must also leave theirs behind them; as
in like manner the French verbs must renounce their own conjugations,
and adapt themselves to ours{28}. I believe that a remarkable parallel
to this might be found in the language of Persia, since the conquest of
that country by the Arabs. The ancient Persian religion fell with the
government, but the language remained totally unaffected by the
revolution, in its grammatical structure and character. Arabic vocables,
the only exotic words in Persian, are found in numbers varying with the
object and quality, style and taste of the writers, but pages of pure
idiomatic Persian may be written without employing a single word from
the Arabic.

At the same time the secondary or superinduced language, even while it
is quite unable to force any of its forms on the language which receives