a theme in or, er, or ur: muris, maris, glires, corporis, pecoris, juris, generis, operis, lateris, veteris, sceleris, veneris, roboris; and in the second series, arboris, honoris, floris, odoris, coloris, laboris, &c., and these forms, reacting on the nominative, have in almost all cases changed os into or, arbor, honor, color, odor, labor, sapor, amor, robur. The nominatives in us have persisted; but has triumphed in the derivatives, and has given us a whole number of verbs, nouns, and adjectives which are found in all the Romance languages. Opera, œuvre, operare, ouvrer, and operate, operarius, ouvrier, urere, aurora, for usere and ausosa ; jurare, juratus, perjerare, generare, generosus, sceleratus, veternum, venerari, onerare, onerosus. I may mention also the French words arbre, arbricole, honneur, labeur, odeur, couleur, honorer, honorable, colorer, corroborer, incorporer, odorant, veteran, laborieux, liquoreux, savourer, savoureux, all of which are taken straight from the Latin. The Latin conjugation has been no less influenced by this permutation of the s into r, if indeed it be true that the re is everywhere the substitute for se in the infinitives. This is my opinion. It seems hardly possible to separate esse, posse, fuisse, amavisse, legisse, audiisse, from legere, audire, amare, fore, gignere, especially when we compare them with amore, genere ; the same cause alone could produce effects so similar. The passive is entirely founded (amor, amaris, amamur, legor, legeris) on the same metamorphosis of the s. The attraction of the r must have been very powerful to have lightened the suffix jans, ion, of the comparative into or; major, pejor, suavior, &c. (corresponding to the Greek μείζων, ἡδίων), which have passed through intermediate forms such as magions, magios, majosis, majus; the earlier s is still heard in majestas. No

accident of phonetics, except perhaps the rejection of the aspirates, more clearly separates Latin from its Indo-European kindred. The substitution of the liquid for the sibilant remains one of the principal characteristics of this language, and of the Romance languages derived from it. The Latin r is not only allied to the sibilant, it is also akin to the soft dental: meridies, stands for medi-dies; we find arvena for advena. The liquid seems to have as many affinities as the sibilant; both may be at once guttural and dental. In the Semitic languages the double guttural aspirate is confounded with r: Ghadamês is pronounced Rhadamés. In Greek it is easy to distinguish two pronunciations of the r, aspirated at the beginning of words (ῥέω, ῥήγνυμι, &c.), soft in the suffixes ρα or ρο, which occur so frequently in our languages, uépa, λύρα, ἄνκυρα, ἰσχυρός; its influence even adds an aspirate to the preceding consonant, épvpós, red, ἄνθρωπος for ἄνθρωπος, φρατώς, as in the Sanscrit bhratar; when two r's come together, the first is marked with a hard breathing, the second by a soft breathing. This aspirate is constantly attached to the initial r, which is always announced by a labial breathing; whence the dialectic variants βρόδον, the rose ; βρήτωρ,

the orator.

The primitive liquid was a sound which hesitated between r and 1. In the Veda the Sanscrit root lith, Greek Nexw, Latin lingo, French lécher, is still written rih; plu (λéw, pleure, fluere) appears as pru. Zend and Persian are without the letter l. In other languages there is a perfect equivalence between the two liquids; at least, in the middle of a word euphonic reasons alone determine the use of the one or the other; Greek has κεφαλαργία, λεθαργία from ἄλγος,

pain (Latin algere, algidus), to vary the sound; in the same way Latin uses indifferently the suffix aris or alis: salutaris, floralis, militaris, mortalis, normalis, jocularis. But at the beginning of a word, Sanscrit, Latin, Greek, and the Teutonic tongues have generally adopted either lorr once for all, and use it consistently. Sanscrit, for instance, has chosen lump for the meaning to break, Latin rump; Sanscrit has rik, ritch, to abandon; Greek Air, λeiπw, λoiπós; Latin liv, reliquus, relictus, linquere. "To shine" is in Sanscrit ruk, rutch, in Greek λευκ, λυκ, λευκός, white, Λύκειος, the Lycian Apollo (the shining one), in Latin luc: lucere, lucidus, Lucina, lu(c)na, lu(c)men, lusciniola, the nightingale, which sings towards the day; here French has shown a tendency to revert to the r; scandalum gives esclandre, apostolus, apôtre.

N, which we have already encountered as the nasal utterance of the vowels, is reckoned among the liquids, for its independent existence is anterior to the separation of the idioms; it is none the less nearly related to the i, which often takes its place in Greek terminations; one of the most visible traces of this affinity is the addition of n to many Greek terminations in i and e: pilovou, they love, éπoinoev, he made. Greek makes almost as much use of n as German.

As a

liquid, n is rarely confounded with l or r; yet λúupa and vúupa are clearly the same word, and donum and plenum are the equivalent Latin forms for dopov, πλῆρον, in Greek. In ullus for unulus, bellus for bonulus, the n has been assimilated to the 7. Finally, the French diacre for diaconus, the Provençal canorgue for canonicus, is a further proof of the relationship among the three liquids. N, as a purely initial consonant, persists in a great number of words, nac, to kill, necis,

necare, véкus, corpse; nam, to take, to rank, véμeiv, voμós; nava, novus; nara, nero, àvýp, man; but more frequently it is the remains of a guttural-nasal group, gn: yvnτós, gnatus; yvwτós, gnotus, notus, nomen, noscere, Eng. know.

M, at once liquid and labial, preferred in terminations by Zend, Sanscrit, and Latin, familiar also to the Teutonic languages, alternates with n in compound words, according to euphonic laws peculiar to each tongue; it replaces n before labials: emmener, embonpoint, außpoτos, immortalis. At the beginning of

words it is simply a soft labial or the remains of the group sm smar, to remember, smemor. I give a few examples: mar, to die, mors; marta and mard, man in Zend; Ariomardas, the famous mortal, Gayomareta, mortal life, the first man (Gaiomarz in Pehlevi); marg, to mark; Marcus, the distinguished; margo, mark, margin, march (border); mrdj, to knead, to soften; mulcere, mulgere, mollis (for moldis); mardjara, the Sanscrit name for the cat, that which is always licking or polishing itself; man, to measure, to think, manu, man ; lastly, ma, me, the famous ego which has played so great a part in history, in social life, and in philosophy. But here I pause; we have already studied the root ma and its derivatives.

CHAPTER VI.

PHONETICS-II. THE EXPLOSIVES.

Consonantal diphthongs-Indecision and variations in the primitive consonants-Attempt of M. Regnaud to trace back all articulate sounds to a group, sk or kch-Numerous examples-The aspirate is the link between the consonantal group and the pure consonant -The palatals in Zend, in Sanscrit, and the Romance languages— The substitution of consonants in the Teutonic languages-First stage: Gothic and Low German-Second stage: High GermanThe three periods of German-Numerous exceptions to the law of permutation-A sixteenth-century English lesson.

WE have shown by what insensible transitions the semi-vowels, the spirants, the sibilants, the liquids, and the nasals have detached themselves from the continuous sounds, and attained the position of independent consonants; we have reached articulation, but it has yet to frame the explosives, sounds which cannot be pronounced without a supporting vowel or consonant preceding or following them.

But it seems that a stage, that of consonantal diphthongs, still separates us from this last state. We have already considered a few of these in the groups kv, bv, dv, sv, sr, gn, but there are others, which are often explained as contracted syllables, and the juxtaposition of explosives which are already distinct. This is often true, and it is easy to prove and to admit that suffixing continually brings the different classes of consonants into relations with each other, and forces them into combinations which are modified according