Amid such a diversity of pursuits as we have enumerated, a common
interest unites all in a common sympathy; and hence the divine and the
philosopher, the navigator and the naturalist, the man of business and
the man of letters, have alike joined in a desire for the thorough
exploration of a field at once so extensive and so inviting.
* * * * *
=_George P. Marsh, 1801-._= (Manual, p. 532.)
From "Lectures on the English Language."
=_196._= METHOD OF LEARNING ENGLISH.
The groundwork of English, indeed, can be, and best is, learned at the
domestic fireside--a school for which there is no adequate substitute;
but the knowledge there acquired is not, as in homogeneous languages, a
root, out of which will spontaneously grow the flowers and the fruits
which adorn and enrich the speech of man. English has been so much
affected by extraneous, alien, and discordant influences, so much
mixed with foreign ingredients, so much overloaded with adventitious
appendages, that it is to most of those who speak it, in a considerable
degree, a conventional and arbitrary symbolism. The Anglo-Saxon tongue
has a craving appetite, and is as rapacious of words, and as tolerant of
forms, as are its children, of territory and of religions.
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