At length the period arrives when the youth must be emancipated, set free from subjection, and committed to the guidance of their own conscience and reason, aud of those principles which we have laboured to inculcate on their minds: let us, then, warn them of the dangers to which they are about to be exposed; tell them of the glory and happiness to which they may attain; inspire them, if possible, with a hearty disdain for folly, vanity, and vice, whatever dazzling or enchanting forms they may assume; and then set them forward, to enrich their minds with new stores of knowledge, by visiting foreign nations, or to en◄ ter immediately on the duties of some useful employment in active life.

THE

THE

MODERN PRECEPTOR.

CHAPTER I.

ON LANGUAGE.

No inquiry can be more useful or agreeable than that into the nature, the origin, and the principles of language. By language we are enabled to communicate one to another our ideas and feelings, either in conversation or by writing. Conversation furnishes us with information, in the order and rapidity with which conceptions are formed in the mind of the speaker; and writing lays open to us the treasures of science, learning, and experience; the opinions, discoveries, and transactions of the most distant ages, and the most remote situations. It is, in fact, by language that man is chiefly distinguished from the other animals: not that these have not modes of expressing their sensations, by which they are mutually understood; but this species of language seems to be limited entirely to the expression of Passion; whereas in man, language, as the organ of reason, to which it gives its proper activity, use, and ornament, becomes a vehicle for a boundless variety of expression adapted to the various powers and faculties of the human frame. Nay, so much is this the case, that in proportion as language is enlarged, refined, and

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and polished, the nation where it prevails is justly regarded as exalted above others, in the scale of civilization and improvement of understanding.

our senses.

So close is the connection between words and ideas, that no learning whatever can be obtained without their interposition and assistance. In proportion as words are studied and examined, ideas become more clear and complete; and according to the fulness and accuracy with which our ideas are conveyed to others, the perplexities of doubt, the errors of misconception, and the cavils of dispute are avoided. For it is always to be remembered, that words are connected with, and received as the representatives of ideas, merely by custom, and not from any natural affinity between them: and that ideas, like rays of light, are liable to be tinged, by the shades of the medium through which they are conveyed to Had this circumstance been duly attended to, the many ponderous volumes of controversy, which fill the libraries of the learned, would never have existed; the disputants, on giving clear and comprehensible explanations of the terms severally employed, finding their opinions, however contradictory in appearance, to be much more concordant than had been aprehended. Hence arises the importance, and indeed, the necessity of clear and distinct conception in the mind of the speaker, and of correct appropriation of terms in his language, to convey to the hearer adequate impressions of the ideas and notions intended to be communicated. Definitions and explanations are, however, not always sufficient to give precisely the meaning of words; derivation must frequeutly be called in to give its aid: for from derivation we discover the source whence a word springs, and the various streams of signification flowing from it. Much advantage will to the same end, be drawn from, history, where the student will find allusions, idioms, figures of speech, illustrated by particular facts, opinions, and institutions. Thus, for example, without

some

some acquaintance with the Roman laws, many passages in Cicero's Orations will be unintelligible; the customs of the Greeks throw light on the language of their writers; and many descriptions, allusions, and injunctions in the Sacred Scriptures, are not to be comprehended without a knowledge of the opinions and manners of the East. Furnished, therefore, with such aids, the scholar acquires not partial, but complete information, is enabled to throw upon language all the light collected from his mass of study, and imbibes, as far as can now be done, the genuine sense and spirit of ancient writers.

The student who confines his attention entirely to his native tongue, will never be able to arrive at a perfect knowledge of it, or to ascertain with precision, its riches or its poverty, its beauties or its defects: but he, who, together with his own language, cultivates those of other countries and other times, acquires new means to increase his stock of ideas, and discovers new paths laid open, to conduct him to knowledge. Such a person draws his learning from the purests sources, converses with the natives of other countries, without the need of an interpreter, and peruses original compositions, without being reduced to have recourse to the feeble and often deceptious light of translations. He may unite the speculations of the philosopher, with the acquirements of the linguist, comparing different tongues, and forming just conclusions with respect to their beauties and defects, and their correspendence with the tem per, genius, and manners of a people. He may trace the progress of rational refinement, and discover, by a comparison of arts and improvements with their respective terms, that the history of language, considered as unfolding the effects of human genius, and the rise and advancement of its inventions, constitutes a very important part of the history of man.

ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE.

VARIOUS theories have been formed to account for the origin of language, which, however ingenious, have all failed in giving satisfaction: but the only rational method of accounting for it, is to refer speech to the operation of the Great Creator. Not that it is necessary to suppose he inspired the first parents of the human race, with any particular set of terms or primitive language, but that he made them sensible of the power they possessed of forming articulate sounds, and gave them an impulse to exert this faculty, leaving them, however, to their own choice in the application of each articulate sound to its corresponding object. Their ingenuity was left to itself, to multiply names, as new objects arose to their observation, and their language gradually advanced, in process of time, to the different degrees of accuracy, copiousness, and refinement, which it has reached among the various nations of the globe. This theory is conformable to the description given in the Sacred Writings, and agrees very remarkably with the opinions to be collected from profane history. Thus, Plato mentions, that the original language of man was of divine formation; that primitive words proceeded from the immediate communication or suggestion of the Divinity; but that derivatives owed their existence to the wants and the ingenuity of man himself. To whatever part of the world we direct our attention, we shall find additional reasons to conclude, that all the languages now spoken, as well as those which have ceased to exist, but of which memorials still remain, were, notwithstanding their apparent difference and variety, originally derived from one and the same source. When we remark certain words in the Latin tongue resembling others in the Greek, we are not surprised, considering the intimate connection which for many years subsisted be

tween