The Chautauquan, Vol. 05, December 1884, No. 3

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The Chautauquan.
A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE PROMOTION OF TRUE CULTURE. ORGAN OF THE CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC CIRCLE.
Vol. V. DECEMBER, 1884. No. 3.
President , Lewis Miller, Akron, Ohio. Superintendent of Instruction , Rev. J. H. Vincent, D.D., New Haven, Conn. Counselors , Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D.; Rev. J. M. Gibson, D.D.; Bishop H. W. Warren, D.D.; Prof. W. C. Wilkinson, D.D. Office Secretary , Miss Kate F. Kimball, Plainfield, N. J. General Secretary , Albert M. Martin, Pittsburgh, Pa.
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BY RICHARD GRANT WHITE.
In the course of our two foregoing articles we followed the advance of the great Aryan or Indo-European race, to which we belong, from its original seat in Central Asia, which it began to leave more than four thousand years ago, until we found it in possession of India, Persia, and all of Europe. We considered briefly and incidentally the fact that within the last two hundred and fifty years this Asiatic race has taken absolute possession of the greater part of the continent of North America. We saw that speech was the bond and the token of the now vast and vague, but once narrow and compact, unity of this powerful race, which was brought into existence to conquer, to rule, and to humanize the world. Of the numerous languages which have sprung from the Aryan stem, English is the youngest. Compared in age with any other language of that stock, we may almost say with any existing language of any stock, it is like a new born babe in the presence of hoary eld. Only eight hundred years ago it was unknown. True, its rudiments and much of its substance then existed; but so it might be said that they existed in a certain degree four thousand years ago, as we saw in our last article. Yet again, more than four hundred years passed away before modern English was born. It was not until about the beginning of the sixteenth century that the language of Spenser, of Shakspere, of the Bible, of Bunyan, of Milton, of Goldsmith, Burke, Irving, Hawthorne, and Thackeray, came fully into existence as the recognized established speech of the English race.