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on a rock was called Zõr, as it is always called in the Old Testament; but this word sounded in Greek ears from Phænician mouths so as to cause them to write it Túpos, Tyrus, whence we have the name of Tyre. The same word (probably) passing with an early migration westward is found in the Dartmoor Tors. It is to this sort of play upon the gamut or scale of consonants, a play which is kept up between kindred dialects, that Grimm, when he had reduced it to a sort of law, gave the name of Lautverschiebung ; sound-shunting of consonantal equivalents; reciprocity of consonants.



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between English and the Classical languages. We find instances of words, for example, which begin with a thin consonant in Greek or Latin or both, and the same word is found in English or its cognate dialects beginning with an aspirate. Thus if the Latin or Greek word begins with p the English word begins with F. Examples: Tüp and fire: apó, mpôros, primus, compared with the Saxon words fruma, frem ; with the modern preposition from, which is of the same root and original sense with for, fore, forth, &c.: Tr@hos, pullus and foal, filly: rút, pugnus and fist: mathp, pater and father : névte and five, German fünf : nous, pes and foot : pecus and feoh : pasco and feed : piscis and fish.

If the classical word begins with an aspirate, the English word begins with a middle: for example, the Greek & or Latin F is found responsive to the English B. Thus, onyos, fagus and beech : puw, fui and be: $patpia, frater and brother : pepw, fero and bear. The Greek e by the same rule responds to the English D; as in Ovyarnp and daughter. Where the Classical word has a middle, the English should have a thin. Thus the Greek B and Latin B should answer to our English P. In proof of this we may perhaps cite Búbos and pit, properly pyt: but here we must pass into another group of consonants to find suitable illustrations, as our early language was remarkably poor in words beginning with P. Leaving then the labials or lip-consonants which have afforded us all the instances so far quoted, let us try the toothconsonants or dentals. If the Greek or Latin has the medial, the English should have the thin: that is to say, a Classic A or D should correspond to our English T. And so it does in dárpu and tear : dvo, duo and two : déka, decem and ten : déuw, domus and timbran, the Saxon verb for building : dévdpov, dpûs and tree : dingua, archaic Latin for lingua, and tongue. These, and all such illustrations,

may be summarised for convenience sake in the following mnemonic formula :

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where the Roman letters of the Latin word tam placed over the Gothic letters of the German word Amt are intended to bracket together the initial letters of Thins, Medials, and Aspirates, so as to represent the order of transition.






Round about these in a broken curve are found the representatives of the Low Dutch family. Their earliest literary traces go back to the fourth century, and appear in the villages of Dacia, in lands which slope to the Danube ; where the country is now called Wallachia. It is from this region that we have the Moso-Gothic Gospels and other relics of the planting of Christianity.

But their greatest body is to the north and west. Along the German shores of the Baltic, and far inland, where High Dutch is established in the educated ranks, the mass of the folk speak Low Dutch, which locally passes by the name of Platt-Deutsch. The kingdom of the Netherlands, where it is a truly national speech, the speech of all ranks of the community- the kingdom of Belgium, where, under the name of Flemish, it is striving for recognition, and has gained a place in literature through the pen of Hendrik Consciencethe old district of the Hanseatic cities, the Lower Elbe, Hamburgh, Lübeck, Bremen,-all this is Nieder-Deutsch, Low Dutch.


It would be a departure from the general way of philologers to include under the term of Low Dutch the languages of Scandinavia. The latter have very strong individualising features of their own, such as the post-positive article, and a form for the passive verb. The post-positive article is highly curious. In Modern Danish or Swedish the indefinite article a or an is represented by en for masculine and feminine, and et for neuter. Thus en skov signifies a wood (shaw) and et træ signifies a tree. But if you want to say the wood, the tree, you suffix the selfsame articles to the nouns, and then they have the effect of the definite article : skoven, the wood; træet, the tree.

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