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John Lothrop Motley, the American historian, a writer who in his The Rise of the Dutch Republic produced a history as fascinating as a romance and a work that was immediately in Europe translated into three different languages, was, after graduation from Harvard, a student at Goettingen.
We are apt to take it for granted that, though there is no royal road to mathematics, the power of speaking foreign languages comes to royal personages, if not by nature, at least by inheritance and by force of circumstances.
Hence from these Oriental scholars we learn that the Hebrew was only one of several languages which enjoyed at different times a development of the highest culture and polish, although the teaching of the old Rabbis was that the Bible was the first set of historical and religious books to be written.
James Ling was second mate and Sam Crowfoot boatswain, making up the complement of our officers, besides which there was our supercargo, Edward Blyth, a young but very intelligent man, who had already made a voyage to the Eastern seas, understood Dutch as well as the Malay languages, and was thus able to act as interpreter at many of the places where we were going.
The disappearance of the f and b in so many American idioms arises out of that intimate connection between certain sounds, which is manifested in all languages of the same origin. In the same manner, with the Americans, f and b become p; and d becomes t.
Biographies of Roger Williams have been written by J.D. Knowles, 1834; by William Gammell, 1845; and by Romeo Elton, 1852. Williams's works have been republished by the Narragansett Club in 6 vols., 1866. The first volume contains the valuable Key to the Indian Languages of America, edited by Dr. Trumbull.
Bacon's contemptuous and hopeless estimate of "these modern languages," forty years after Spenser had proclaimed and justified his faith in his own language, is only one of the proofs of the short-sightedness of the wisest and the limitations of the largest-minded. Perhaps we ought not to wonder at his silence about Shakespeare.
Below this bridge, as far as the eye can reach in the direction of the Gulf of Finland, the glittering waters of the Neva are alive with various kinds of shipping merchant vessels from all parts of the world; fishing smacks from Finland and Riga; lumber vessels from Tornea; wood-boats from the interior; Russian and Prussian steamers; row-boats, skiffs, and fancy colored canoes, with crews and passengers representing many nations of the earth, are in perpetual motion; and while the sight is bewildered by the variety of moving objects, the ears are confounded by the strange medley of languages.
Insomuch that, while English, French, and German are each spoken with little variation by many millions, there are islands in the Indian archipelago, probably not inhabited by one million, but in which there are hundreds of languages, as diverse as are English, French, and German. It is easy to see how this should be.
After I should have satisfied myself, by a narrow search, that I left behind no human being in the towns through which I passed, I would write up in a conspicuous part of each, with white paint, in three languages, that "Verney, the last of the race of Englishmen, had taken up his abode in Rome." In pursuance of this scheme, I entered a painter's shop, and procured myself the paint.
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