The Future Language of the World.

Cromwell Argus, Volume IV, Issue 166, 14 January 1873, Page 7

The Future Language of the World.

\ Lmtilon Telegraph.) The time is coining when one language shall be spoken from China to Peru, from the world's Dan to its Beersheba. And who can doubt which tongue it is that shall triumph in the end above all others ? French is the ideal dialect of literature and Science. What such men as Comte or St. BettVe could have done without French—how far they could have expressed themselves in any other tongue, it is difficult to think But, after all, art and criticism, literature and science, are but a small part of the great life of the world. Nor can we doubt that when the International of capitalists holds its meetings five thousand years hence to protest against the cruel tyranny of the working classes, its delegates will address the great assembly in English, and all will understand them. Our noble old Teutonic toiigue is the fullest and richest in the world-. No language— not even German —has a grander literature. None is fuller of spoils from all quarters of the earth, In the English Dictionary lie mixed together Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Celtic, Saxon, Danish, French, Spanish, Italian, German, —nay, even Malay and Chinese words. And who can doubt, as he slowly rolls round the little mapped sphere which does duty for a world's globe, that English is, above all others, the spoken language of the earth 'I The tongues which have no literature must die. And if we dismiss from our calculations the barbarous dialects of Africa and the East, of the dwellers round the North Pole, of the savage hordes of China and Tartary, and of the Indians of the West, how large a proportion of the civilised world speaks the tongue of Chaucer and Spenser, of Shakespeare and Milton ? Set the world against England and her Colonies and the colossal continent of North America, and it is easy to see what will be the end of the confusion of tongues—which language will longest hold its own in the obstinate struggle for the survival of the fittest. Great works, the heirlooms of past days, will be studied by scholars. Dante, Cervantes, Boccaccio, Babelais, Calderon—these, and our own Chaucer, (almost as unintelligible now to most of us as " Piers Ploughman" or Skelton,) will still be read for love of themselves, as men even now toil through the Vedas, wander with Phcedius on the banks of the Ilissus, and with Lucretius contemplate the fretful folly of men and the grand universe of things. But for the busy toilers in the world's hive, for the men who are to knit the whole world into one, and to make it of one sentiment and of one speech, the English tongue will bo the weapon of conquest. The mere force ---the dead weight of that obstinacy which, while others learn English, makes the English unwilling to acquire any speech save their own, tells in our favour. Numbers are with lis. Everything, it may be said, is on our side. Already, English will carry a man apparently farther than any other vehicle of expression. It will one day be the language of the world.