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Edith. Oh! three persons, three numbers, twelve tenses, five moods, four voices. Dreadful!

Elvira. Have the Sanskrit verbs got them all?

Polly. By no means. We make them up from among various languages, each of which has some fragment. Some American languages are said to have six thousand forms to one verb.

Mark. Wretches! I never knew how lucky it is they are extinct!

Gertrude. Tell me, do you count a language to have a tense only when it makes it out of the inflection of the verb? or when it forms it with auxiliaries?

so.

Polly. When it forms it with auxiliaries; for the point is whether the language possesses the power of discriminating the idea-not how it does Now we can make the whole twelve tenses with auxiliaries; but the ancient languages—yes, and the romance ones-cannot express the descriptive forms of the present. They cannot say I am speaking, or I have been speaking.

Frances. Je suis parlant. No, it would be horrid. It is enough to say je parle.

Polly. The complete present is what we call the perfect—I have done.

(A general outcry from all but George.) Why, perfect is more past than imperfect.

Polly. Stay a bit. What were Cicero's words, when he announced the death of Catiline's associates?

Mark. Vixerunt-they have lived.

Polly. Their life is just done; at the present moment it is complete. You don't translate it they lived.

Mark. No; that would do if they had lived a hundred years before.

Polly. Your English understanding perceives that; but your Romans had no power of making the distinction as we can.

Mark. It was too finikin for them.

Polly. Too delicate, I should say.
Frances. Now the four past tenses.

Polly. The two incomplete past are our own-I went, and I was going.

Frances. I see.

The imperfect tense all the world over. Now I see why it is so troublesome to know when to use the imperfect, and when the perfect, in French.

George. Yes; the imperfect tense all the world over for the incomplete. And now there comes in, for that past in which all your others fail, the Greek aorist, meaning the doing of a thing long ago, but at an indeterminate time.

Mark. I have a pluperfect—for time before the past, of which I am speaking.

George. And I a second aorist.

Edith. Oh dear! my wits reel among these twelve kinds of present, and twelve kinds of past. Is it possible there can be twelve futures? Polly. There ought to be; but as I believe they are nowhere to be found in perfection, we will leave the general construction of a verb as it may once have been, and come back to our little word is.

Gertrude. It is an exceedingly irregular verb, wherever you have it. Elvira. Spanish has two verbs to be, ser and estar; which last is not auxiliary, but means to be, in the sense of to exist.

Mark. Coming out of sto, stas, stavi, stare, I suppose.

Polly. Just so, with the same root as. I am glad you mentioned it, for Anglo-Saxon had just such a verb.

Edith. The one that makes to stand and to stay?

Polly. There was the old verb standan, answering nearly to the neuter verb stare in Latin. However, these are entire verbs; whereas, strange to say, that which grammarians call the substantive verb is always defective, and the complement of tenses is made up out of fragments of— what do you think?-eating and living.

Mark. Well, certainly esse is the infinitive of edo as well as of sum; but I thought it a contraction for edere.

Polly. More likely some precisian, who did not know what he was about, expanded it into edere. Now then, as-to eat, being the root, let us compare our present tense. Sanskrit-asmi, asi, asti, smas, sthas, santi. I left out the dual, George; it is of no use to our modern friends.

George. So will I then. Eimi, eis, the elder form, ei, esti; esmen, este, eisi, enti in the Doric.

Mark. Ha! Latin took the s and Greek the e in the first person. Sum, es, est; sumus, estis, sunt.

Florence. We follow Latin closely, as usual. Sono, sei, è; siamo, siete,

sono.

Elvira. Soy, eres, es; somas, sois, son.

Frances. Suis, es, est; sommes, êtes, sont. My spelling is more true to the Latin than the sound of my words.

Polly. Especially if you go back two hundred years, and put in the s which the circumflex represents in the second person plural.

Edith. Will you read the Saxon from your big book before I say my English?

Polly. Eam, eart, ys; and synd for all the plurals.

Edith. Ah, there is the e, like the Greek. How very curious! Now

we have got it to am, art, is; and are for all the plurals.

Polly. Gothic goes thus: im, is, ist; siyum, siyuth, sind.

Gertrude. Why, how is this? German goes-bin, bist, ist; and the plurals all sind.

Polly. Polite society preferred the other verb.

Edith. To be. Ah! and it is only modern times that has made be bad English. They be is common enough in the Bible.

Polly. Yes, there was an old Saxon tense-beo, byst, byth; and the plural ben or be. Luther often mixed Saxon words with his High German, and so your 'bin, bist,' crept in.

Gertrude. What does it come from?

Polly. From the root ba, infinitive bhu, which means to live, the same root that forms the Greek word Bios. Are is the old Norse plural; so we have the Danes to thank for that. Now let us take the perfect tense. Perhaps we had better content ourselves with the first singular of each tense.

George. I have no perfect in Greek. It is made out with gegona, from the verb gignomai-to come into being; which is deduced in Liddell and Scott from the root jna-to be born.

Mark. Well, I am better off with fui, fuisti, fuit; but I suppose that comes from something else.

Polly. Not if we go to Grimm's law. Give bits aspirate, and bh becomes f-fui.

Florence. Elvira and I are the same.

Frances. And I only-fus, fus, fut.

Edith. Will you have my compound tense?

Polly. No, thank you. expression in the language, that we are comparing now. Nor have I any perfect simple tenses in Saxon or Gothic. But it is curious that there is no form of the verb with the eating root in the perfect tense. Though passing on to the imperfect, or first true past tense, here we are-a-sam, á-sis, â-set.

It is the verb itself, not the power of

George. En, estha, en, dropping the s and making a long e.

Mark. Eram, eras, erat. S is gone there.

Florence. Era, eri, era.

Elvira. Just the same; only my second person

Frances. But how comes mine to be etais?

is eras.

Polly. Because either the Gauls or Franks made a confusion with the verb stare. They did not keep the two verbs clear of one another, like the Spaniards, but forgot the Latin imperfect eram, and made up the deficiency.

Mark. Not with stabam.

Polly. No; but from stare, treated after their usual rule for imperfects.

Mark. The senseless beings! No, go on, Poll.

Polly. Saxon is, was, ware, was; plural weron, or war.

Edith. Was, wast, was; plural were.

Polly. Gothic is nearly the same. Was, wast, was.

Gertrude. Was, warst, war. What do they come from?

Polly. I cannot be sure at this moment; but I believe they are a further modification of the ƒ alteration of be. Now, Mark, you will give us your pluperfect.

Mark. Fueram. I've got a future too.

George. So have I. Esomai, esei, estai.

Mark. Ero, eris, erit.

Florence. But here's a change. Saro, sarai. sara. My faithful Italian

has fallen away.

Elvira. So have we all. Serè, seràs, serà.

Frances. Serai, seras, sera. How is this?

Polly. Most likely some old Italian dialect, which dealt in the s part of the eating verb, prevailed over you all. We Teutons cannot raise a simple future, either ancient or modern; and I think we had better not involve ourselves in the difficulties of the other moods.

Gertrude. Well, it is very curious how many fragments this verb to be is made up of in different languages. But I should like to have a real good regular verb, that does not borrow from its neighbours.

Polly. So we will in our next sentence; but this one ought first to be worked through.

Mark. You might have said ever so much about the participles.

Florence. Yes; for Italian must have taken up a bit of that verb stare, for there been is stato.

Frances. While été must have been the same.

Elvira. And Spanish is sido-all right.

Mark. No, they made it. Sum has no past participle, because it is not a passive verb.

Frances. So the standing verb, the eating verb, and the life verb, all go to make up this one.

Gertrude. I have remembered a curious thing in 'A Lady's Letters from Sierra Leone:' she says that in the negroes' broken English they always say live for be. 'It live not on table.' And she gives a letter she had once. 'Madam, no meat live in market. Your affectionate butcher.'

Polly. Exactly. If Sierra Leone ever has a literature, live will have cast in its lot with the rest of the olla-podrida that serves for a substantive verb.

Mark. Before you go, I have to say that you grammar folk have to be grateful to one participle of the verb sum. The future in rus, I

mean.

Edith. What horrible thing is that?

Polly. Never mind its history now, Edith. It is the participle for that which will be-futurus.

Edith. Oh, then it is future.

Polly. It is so. It is our modern name for one of the three Norns who rule our verbs.

Gertrude. Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld-was, becoming, and shall-past, present, future; a decidedly incomplete present!

(To be continued.)

593

TRADITIONS OF TIROL.

X.

NORTH TIROL-THE INNTHAL.

INNSBRUCK; OUR GREETING; CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PEOPLE; INNSBRUCK'S TREATMENT OF KAISER MAX; THE ESTEREICHISHER HOF, our APARTMENT, MOUNTAIN VIEW; CHARACTER OF THE TOWN; ITS HISTORY -WILTEN; THE MINSTER; MYTH OF HAYMON THE GIANT, HIS BURIALPLACE; PARISH CHURCH; MARIENBILD UNTER DEN VIER SÄULEN; RELIC OF THE THUNDERING LEGION-FIRST RECORD OF INNSBRUCK; CHOSEN FOR SEAT OF GOVERNMENT; FOR RESIDENCE BY FRIEDL MIT DER LEEREN TASCHE-CHARACTER OF TIROLEAN RULERS-THE GOLDENE DACHLGEBÄUDE SIGISMUND THE MONIED; HIS RECEPTION OF CHRISTIAN I.; CONDITION OF TIROL IN HIS TIME; HIS CASTLES; ABDICATION-MAXIMILIAN; BUILDS THE BURG; MAGNIFICENCE OF HIS REIGN; LEGENDS OF HIM; HIS DECLINE-CHARLES QUINT; CEDES TIROL TO FERDINAND I.; HIS WISE ADMINISTRATION; QUIETS POPULAR AGITATION; CHARLES QUINT'S VISITS TO INNSBRUCK; ATTACKED BY MAURICE ELECTOR OF SAXONY; CARRIED INTO CARINTHIA IN A LITTER; DEATH OF MAURICE.

'L' una vegghiava a studio della culla,
E consolando usava l' idioma,

Che pria li padri e le madri trastulla :
L'altra traendo alla rocca la chioma
Favoleggiava con la sua famiglia

De' Troiani, e di Fiesole, e di Roma.'*

Dante. Paradiso, xv. 120-5.

I SHALL not easily forget my first greeting at Innsbruck. We had come many days' journey from the north to a rendezvous with friends who had travelled many days' journey from the south; they were to arrive a week earlier than we, and were accordingly to meet us at the station and do the hosts' part. But it happened that the station was being rebuilt, and the order of 'No admittance except on business' was strictly enforced. The post-office was closed, being 'after hours,' and though the man left in charge, with true Tirolean urbanity, suffered us to come in and turn over the letters for ourselves, we failed to find the one conveying the directions. we sought, so with no fixed advices to guide us, we wandered through the mountain capital in search of a chance meeting. We had nearly given up this attempt in its turn in despair of success, when Albina, a

* (One by the crib kept watch, studious to still the infant plaint with words which erst the parents' minds diverted: another, the flaxen maze upon the distaff twirling, recounted to her household, tales of Troy, Fiesole, and Rome.) The poet is extolling the simple pursuits and pleasures of Florentines of earlier days.

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