the same, that great things are in store for the one language of Europe
which thus serves as connecting link between the North and the South,
between the languages spoken by the Teutonic nations of the North and by
the Romance nations of the South; which holds on to and partakes of
both; which is as a middle term between them{35}. There are who venture
to hope that the English Church, being in like manner double-fronted,
looking on the one side toward Rome, being herself truly Catholic,
looking on the other towards the Protestant communions, being herself
also protesting and reforming, may yet in the providence of God have an
important part to play for the reconciling of a divided Christendom. And
if this ever should be so, if, notwithstanding our sins and unworthiness,
so blessed a task should be in store for her, it will not be a small
help and assistance thereunto, that the language in which her mediation
will be effected is one wherein both parties may claim their own, in
which neither will feel that it is receiving the adjudication of a
stranger, of one who must be an alien from its deeper thoughts and
habits, because an alien from its words, but a language in which both
must recognize very much of that which is deepest and most precious of
their own.

{Sidenote: _Jacob Grimm on English_}

Nor is this prerogative which I have just claimed for our English the
mere dream and fancy of patriotic vanity. The scholar who in our days is
most profoundly acquainted with the great group of the Gothic languages
in Europe, and a devoted lover, if ever there was such, of his native
German, I mean Jacob Grimm, has expressed himself very nearly to the
same effect, and given the palm over all to our English in words which
you will not grudge to hear quoted, and with which I shall bring this
lecture to a close. After ascribing to our language "a veritable power
of expression, such as perhaps never stood at the command of any other
language of men", he goes on to say, "Its highly spiritual genius, and
wonderfully happy development and condition, have been the result of a
surprisingly intimate union of the two noblest languages in modern
Europe, the Teutonic and the Romance--It is well known in what relation
these two stand to one another in the English tongue; the former
supplying in far larger proportion the material groundwork, the latter
the spiritual conceptions. In truth the English language, which by no
mere accident has pr