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LESSONS IN FRENCH.—LI.

PART II.
INTRODUCTION.

THIS Second Part of the Lessons in French, which we commence in the present lesson, differs from the first in containing a more systematic and complete exhibition of the principles of the language. The First Part, which was intended to serve as an introduction, supplied the learner with the means of speedily acquiring a knowledge of the most essential forms of speech, so as to be able to read, write, and converse in French on all ordinary subjects. The present part carries him on to the niceties of the language, and qualifies him for understanding and employing it in connection with any topic to which he may turn his attention, provided, of course, he has a good dictionary at hand. In a word, the First Part was practical, the Second is theoretical: in the former, the student was taught mainly by examples and exercises; in the latter, he is put in possession of the principles upon which those examples and exercises proceed, and is thus enabled safely to give them a wider application than would otherwise be possible.

At the same time, it must not be supposed that there is any lack of examples in this part. On the contrary, every rule is copiously illustrated by passages from the most distinguished French writers; and when we add that the rules thus abundantly exemplified comprise the various idiomatic usages, as well as the regular syntax of the language, it will be evident that nothing more than diligent study and careful practice is needed to make the self-educating student a good French scholar.

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The cases of nouns adopted by French grammarians are:(1.) The nominatif or sujet : answering to the nominative or subject of the English, and to the nominative of the Latin. (2.) The régime direct, or direct object of the English, accusative of the Latin.

(3.) The régime indirect, indirect object of the English, answers to the oblique cases of the Latin, the genitive, dative, and ablative.

§ 3. THE NOUN OR SUBSTANTIVE.

(1.) The noun or substantive is a word which serves to name a person or a thing; as, Jean, John; maison, house.

(2.) There are two sorts of nouns: proper and common. (3.) A proper noun is applied to a particular person or thing; as, Napoléon, Napoleon; Paris, Paris.

(4.) A common noun belongs to a whole class of objects; as, livre, book; homme, man.

(5.) Some common nouns, although singular in number, present to the mind the idea of several persons or things, forming a collection: they are for this reason denominated collective nouns; as troupe, troop; peuple, people.

(6.) Collective nouns are general or partitive: general, when they represent an entire collection; as, l'armée des Français, the army of the French: partitive, when they represent a partial collection; as, une troupe de soldats Français, a troop of French soldiers.

(7.) A common noun composed of several words-as chef-d'. œuvre, masterpiece; avant-coureur, forerunner-is called a com pound noun.

(8.) Of the two properties of nouns, gender and number, we shall commence with the first.

§ 4.-GENDER OF NOUNS.

(1.) There are in the French language only two genders: the masculine and the feminine. (2.) The masculine gender belongs to men, and animals of the male kind: as, Charles, Charles; lion, lion. (3.) The feminine gender belongs to women, and animals of the female kind: as, Sophie, Sophia; lionne, lioness,

(4.) Through imitation-often on account of derivation, often without any real motive-the masculine and feminine genders have been given, in French, to the names of inanimate objects: thus, papier, paper, is masculine, and plume, pen, is feminine. $ 5.-RULES FOR DETERMINING THE GENDER BY THE

MASCULINE NOUNS.

MEANING.

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(12.) Trees, Shrubs: as, le chêne, the oak; le frêne, the ash; le rosier, the rose-bush. (Exceptions opposite.)

(13.) The name of a language: as, German, etc. le français, French; l'allemand,

(14.) The letters of the alphabet: as, un a, a; un z, a z.

FEMININE NOUNS.

(1.) Female beings: as, femme, woman; lionne, lioness.

(2.) Objects to which female qualities are attributed: as, fée, fairy; lune, moon,

(3.) Virtues: as, la charité, charity; except courage, courage; mérite, merit, which are masc.

(4.) Vices: as, la méchanceté, wickedness; except l'orgueil, pridė,

masc.

(5.) Festivals: as, la Saint Jean, i.e., la fête de St. Jean, St. John's day; le Chandeleur, Candlemas; except Noël, Christmas, masc.

wind; tramontane, a term applied (6.) Bise, a poetical term for North on the Mediterranean to the North wind; brise, breeze; moussons, trade-winds.

(7.) The names of countries when ending in E mute: as, la France, l'Espagne, l'Amérique, etc.

Exceptions.-Bengale, Hanovre, Méxique, Péloponnèse.

(8.) Chains of mountains in the plural: as, les Alpes, the Alps; les Pyrénées, the Pyrenees; les Voges, les Cévennes, etc.

(9.) The names of rivers when ending in E mute: as, la Seine,

the Seine; la Loire, the Loire.

Exceptions.-Le Rhône, the Rhone; le Danube, le Tibre, le Cocyte,

masc.

(10.) Aubépine, hawthorn; bour daine, black alder; épine, thorn; hièble, dwarf-elder; ronce, brier; yeuse, ilex.

* The word Puy, from the Celtic puech (mountain), is applied to a number of places in France: Puy-en-Velay, Puy-notre-Dame, etc.

MASCULINE.

(15.) Compound words formed of a verb and of a noun, either masculine or feminine, or of a pronoun and a verb: as, porte-feuille, pocketbook; rendez-vous, rendezvous.

(16.) Nouns, pronouns, verbs, etc., used substantively: as, le boire et le manger, eating and drinking.

(17.) Numbers-cardinal, ordinal, and proportional-used substantively: as, le dix, the tenth; le neuvième, the ninth; le tiers, the third. (Exceptions opposite.)

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-ER

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-00 coq-d'Inde,

turkey.

Nouns ending in AR, ER, IR, or, ur.

car.

[mer, sea.

Exceptions.-Cuiller,
chair, flesh.

spoon;

Exception.-Tour, tower.

(Exceptions oppo

-IR plaisir,

pleasure.

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gold.

-UR

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bonheur, happiness; cœur,-EUR chaleur, heat; hauteur,

heart; choeur, chorus; dé

nominateur, denominator; dés-
honneur, dishonour; équateur,
equator; extérieur, exterior;
honneur, honour; intérieur,
interior; labeur, labour; mal-
heur, misfortune; multiplica-
teur, multiplier; pleurs, tears;
régulateur, regulator; venti-
lateur, ventilator.

-AS bras,

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height.
site.)

Nouns ending in AS, ES, IS, OS, US, PS, RS.

arm.

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bone.

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IN the year 1697, five years before the death of William III., a foreigner of singular personal appearance, of rough exterior, and still rougher manners, applied to the English authorities to [hand. be allowed to work as a shipwright's labourer in one of the royal Exceptions.-Fin, end; main, Exceptions.-Chanson, song; dockyards. Not only was permission granted for him to work cuisson, baking; contreas he wished at Deptford dockyard, but orders were given to façon, counterfeiting; façon, the superintendent there to let the stranger see as much as mode; moisson, harvest; possible of the shipbuilder's art, and to afford him every informoussons, trade-winds; mation he might desire. A good house (one that belonged to the Evelyn family, and in which John Evelyn, the accomplished diarist and author, wrote and studied) was taken for him and his companions at Deptford, so that he might live near his work, and in the dockyard he laboured early and late, and possessed himself to a remarkable extent with the knowledge of a skilled shipwright. This was not the only object he had in entering himself at the yard. He knew, none better, that example is worth a hundred precepts, and that he could appeal

rançon, ransom.

maison, house.
opposite.)

(Exceptions

poison; tison, firebrand.

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from those of his subjects who did not think it became them to work, to his own example, by which he had shown them both how to work and why they should work.

This shipwright and dockyard labourer was Peter the Great, Czar of Russia, who a few months before had quitted his capital, Moscow, to see and learn new things for his kingdom, of which the most important knowledge that he possessed was that it sadly needed reformation in every department. Resolved to bring his countrymen out of the barbarism in which they were immersed, and aware that this could only be done by the introduction of civilised elements from without-aware, too, of the superstitious horror the Russians had for either leaving their own country themselves or for allowing strangers to enter it he conceived the idea of making a tour of the principal capitals of Europe, where he might learn for himself what was worthy to be introduced, and where he might enlist artificers and scientific men in his service to come to Russia and teach his subjects. At the same time he sent ambassadors to the several courts of Europe, that Russia might be represented, and that he might know from authentic sources what was going on in the world of politics. Amsterdam was the first city that arrested his attention, where the great amount of shipping, of which he was exceedingly fond, drew him with peculiar force. He worked in a dockyard there for some time, living like any other labourer, and refusing to allow any distinction to be made between him and his fellows. After acquiring all the knowledge he could pick up in Amsterdam, he came over to England, and was received in the manner stated, the king (William III.), moreover, placing at his disposal a yacht, in which it was the czar's great delight to cruise about the river Thames and its estuaries. In this exercise, also, he had example as much as experience at heart, for the Russians had hitherto had the utmost dread of water in any shape, and could scarcely be induced by any object to venture themselves upon it. Once at Amsterdam, when, the wind being stiff and the water rough, his Russian attendants were anxious to withhold him from going in his sailing-boat, he is reported to have met them with the unanswerable retort that they had never heard of a Czar of Russia being drowned at sea.

Rough, even brutal in his manners-for what was he but the chief barbarian of his empire ?-the Czar Peter had talents which were superlatively great, as compared with those of any one else in his dominions. He had the wisdom to see wherein his people were wanting, and to recognise the means of supplying their wants; he had the magnanimity to disregard all the carping criticisms of those who, having been born in more civilised countries, affected to despise the wild men of the north; and he had the courage to persist in improving, in spite of themselves, a nation whose leaders hated to be reformed, and whose fears and superstitions whispered them to cling to the dead past rather than to draw life and energy from the living present. Rough manners, as indicative of a strong will, were perhaps essential to the fulfilment of Peter's purpose. A soft-speaking, gentle-handed man would never have curbed the hitherto unbridled licence of a savage soldiery, nor have overcome the pigheaded, unreasonable opposition of priests and landlords, who, like some priests and landlords in other countries, saw in the enlightenment of the nation the downfall of their own power. The Czar Alexis, grandfather of Peter the Great, was the first native prince who seems to have thought the Russians capable of being anything more than mere savages. Not until his succession to the throne had the empire sufficiently recovered from the repeated incursions of the Mongolian Tartars, of the Poleswho devastated whole districts, and kept possession of strong towns like Smolensko-and from the still more fatal wounds inflicted by civil war, to allow of attention being turned to the general amelioration of the empire. Hitherto the history of Russia consisted of accounts of savage life on a large scale, of the conflicts which one set of great chiefs waged with another, of the struggle for supremacy between the head of the state and the church, and of the gradual absorption by the czar of all actual power, which he held, nevertheless, as all despotic rulers must hold their power, by the good-will of the guards who are the ministers of their will. Alexis came to the throne in 1645, and scen proved to be the "still, strong man" who knew how to rule, not merely in the interests of his family, but in those of his people. He did something towards lessening the power of the soldiers, diminished that of the priesthood, and

by protecting merchants who came from the southward and from Sweden with their wares, encouraged commerce and to a slight extent Russian manufacture. But he had a difficult task to perform-hard, unimpressionable stuff to work upon; and in consequence of the geographical position of Russia, and the extreme ignorance which prevailed in Europe as to its character and resources, he had little or no sympathy from without. For in that day Russia was to the other nations of Europe what Abyssinia is to them now, a land little known save by bold adventurers, who, unable to get employment or living in the south, or actuated by curiosity and the love of adventure, travelled into the north, and either settled there and were no more heard of, or returned and related marvellous accounts of the people and countries which were included in the empire of the Czar of Muscovy, for so Russia was called. Occasionally there were state embassies sent from Moscow to some European court in order to make some special representation, and mes sengers from European courts occasionally made their way to Moscow to lay before the czar some complaint against his border-subjects, which the czar was commonly wholly unable to attend to. But the interchange of visits was very seldom, and there was not till the time of Peter the Great any regular representative of Russia in any capital in Europe.

Alexis did his best for his countrymen, and dying in 1676, was succeeded by his son Feodor, who entered fully into all his father's plans, and proceeded on his accession to the throne to develop the policy of improvement begun by the late czar. "He lived the joy and delight of his people, and died amidst their sighs and tears. On the day of his decease Moscow was in the same state of distress which Rome felt at the death of Titus," wrote a Russian historian of this prince, who reigned six years, and dying, bequeathed his crown to his youngest child, Peter, a lad of no more than ten years of age. Ivan, Feodor's eldest son, was half-witted, and his sister Sophia, without authority from any one, took the government upon her. self, and during seven years did nearly as much to throw Russia back into barbarism as her father and grandfather had done to bring her out of it. Peter, who knew that the crown had been left to him, was angry, even as a child, at the usurpation of which he was the victim. He chafed at the restraints to which his sister and her ministers and advisers subjected him, and he saw with indignation as he grew older that the forward steps taken by his father were being deliberately retraced. Disgust for this policy probably heightened the spirit which descended to him from his father, the spirit of dislike for the old Muscovite party, undying hatred for those soul-numbing principles which hung as tremendous dead-weights on the nation and kept it back. Then there was something more than a hint that his sister and her favourite, a profligate barbarian, contemplated keeping him out of his inheritance. The people murmured at the gross misgovernment of the princess, and loudly demanded the termination of her rule. By means of large bribes to the soldiers, she succeeded for a while in main taining her position by force; but when the means of bribery began to fail, and the conduct of the rulers became too bad even for the Russians to put up with, Peter, then in his seventeenth year, took advantage of the popular feeling to assert himself. He gained the co-operation of the soldiers, and of all the men of influence in the state, for even the heads of the old Muscovite section knew they could not have worse rulers than Sophia and her lover, and they hoped to mould the young prince, still a mere youth, into their own effete notions of government and public policy.

Peter assumed the reins of power, shut his sister up in a nunnery, and banished her lover to a distant part of the empire. Ivan Romanoff, Peter's brother, was nominally associated with him in the empire, but he had no real authority, so that vir tually from the age of seventeen Peter was lord and autocrat of the Russian dominions.

As soon as he had reduced chaos into something like order at Moscow, Peter began that deadly war against the Turkish power which has burst out at intervals ever since, the last time in the shape of the Crimean War, and which will probably not be ended till the cross shall have been again planted in Constantinople, and the Turkish power, which entered Europe in 1453, shall have been driven once more into Asia, whence it came out. Peter's enterprises against the Turks were very successful. He defeated them with troops inferior in discipline

and armament to their own, and took from them the port of Azof, so opening the Black Sea to Russian commerce, and securing an outlet for Russian enterprise to the southward. Penetrated with the belief that commercial intercourse with other nations could alone enable Russia to become civilised, he conceived the plan of making a watery highway through his empire, from the Baltic to the Caspian and Black Seas, by means of canals which should unite the rivers Dwina, Volga, and Don. To secure the communication on the north-western side, and to obtain for Russia the command on the Balticperhaps, also, with the idea of more thoroughly breaking with the Russian past-he determined to build on an island in the Neva, a few miles above the place where that river falls into the Baltic, a city which should be at once the emporium of commerce for northern Europe and the capital of the empire. For ten years these wars and these great national works occupied his attention, and then, in 1698, finding himself deficient in technical and material education, and that there was not any one in his dominions who was capable of teaching him, he resolved to set out on his European tour of inspection and selfeducation. During his absence-he was away twelve monthsthe government of Russia was administered by a council of regency, composed for the most part of men friendly to his schemes, and the whole being bound under severest threats from a will that never allowed itself to be thwarted with impunity, to carry out his orders in the spirit as well as in the letter.

In 1699 Peter returned home, with men of all trades and professions in his train, who were to help him in his public works, and to teach his people the knowledge of other countries. Generals, military officers of all grades, engineers, shipwrights, architects, gunsmiths, cutlers, medical men, artificers and mechanics of all kinds, naval officers and experienced seamen, were gathered out of those countries which had specialities in them. Great Britain and Ireland, Holland, and the Netherlands furnished the greater part, but artists were allured from France and Italy, by the tempting offers of the Czar, to undertake a residence in the cold climate of the north.

hands. "The Swedes will teach us how to conquer them," said Peter after the battle, and at once he took steps for bringing another army into the field. Charles XII. continued on a long series of victories. Poles, Saxons, and Russians melted away before him; the King of Poland was dethroned at his dictation, and a nominee of his own raised in his stead; the Emperor of Germany had to concede certain things not by any means to his taste; and all Europe trembled when the King of Sweden marched. This went on from 1702 to 1706, and then the czar, having a large army at his back, thought he might seek peace with honour. But Charles declared that he would not talk of peace till he reached Moscow, which he proposed to burn. Like another invader (Napoleon I.), he found the Russians prepared to do anything rather than see their capital in an enemy's hand. Peter devastated the country, harassed the march of the Swedes, cut off the discontented Cossacks, who were in secret alliance with Charles, and in other ways hindered his operations. Finally, at Pultowa-which fortress, in the Ukraine, Charles was besieging-the czar came up with his enemies; a bloody battle ensued, in which the most desperate valour was shown, but the Swedes were utterly routed8,000 were slain and 18,000 captured. Charles was obliged to seek refuge in Turkey, where he employed himself in trying to promote the anger of the Turks against the Russians, but he was never thenceforth the thorn he had been in the side of the czar.

Peter, freed from external troubles, again turned his attention to home affairs. St. Petersburg was finished, and the other great works were brought to a successful termination; vast strides were rapidly made in the improvement of all public institutions; and the czar had the happiness before his death to find by many infallible signs that he was really looked upon as the father of his country.

The Russia which he left in 1725 was so radically altered in character to the Russia to which he had succeeded, that it could flourish and be prosperous under the hand of a woman, Peter's widow, who succeeded him as Catherine I. The height to which Catherine II., Alexander, Nicholas, and the present emperor have raised it is matter rather of general history than for an historic sketch.

Emboldened by his contact with civilisation, and disgusted from the same cause with much that he saw when he got home, Peter summarily abolished immediately after his return some of the most cherished and most barbarous institutions of the empire. He hanged some objectors who had been troublesome READINGS IN GREEK.-I. during his absence, and he refused to listen to the complaints THE student having now learnt the formation of the words, and of those, the priests included, who stood forward as the advo- the construction of simple sentences, as set forth in the Greek cates of the old order. His will was supreme, and, being as Lessons, will find it desirable to become acquainted as early as strong and unyielding as that of the most obstinate man in possible with the works of the principal authors who wrote in his empire, carried all opposition before it; and the people, that language. With this object, we propose to give a series of venerating him as the czar, and ignorant of what new coercive selections from the Greek classics, with a short account of the power he might have brought with his other novelties from works from which they are extracted, accompanied by brief the south, gave in to him, and suffered him to tame them, even explanatory notes. It is not our intention to give much assistto shaving their beards-this reform almost cost a revolution-ance in the mere translation of the extracts, as the student should without resistance. General Gordon set to work upon the learn as soon as possible to rely upon his own powers of interarmy, and succeeded, by dint of unremitting attention and the pretation, aided by his Greek Lexicon and the Greek Lessons. exercise of the utmost severity, in putting it into shape, though By this means he will not only be able to obtain a fair idea of it required many a defeat from the hands of Swedes before the style and manner of the chief writers of Greece, but also it could be made at all confident in the presence of European to have a model on which to form his own Greek composition. enemies. For this purpose we should advise him first to translate each passage accurately, then render it into idiomatic English, and some days later endeavour to turn this free translation into Greek, which he can compare with the original and correct by it. There can be no doubt that there is no method by which he will so speedily acquire a sound knowledge of the language. At the same time, in order to assist the student in forming his style of translation, we shall in each successive set of readings give a translation of at least one of the extracts in the previous set, sometimes from original sources, sometimes from translations of acknowledged merit. Among the extracts given will be some from the New Testament, the grammati cal difficulties in which we shall take especial care to explain. Certainly the most valuable practical result to be obtained from a study of the Greek language is the power we ac quire of being able to read the New Testament in the language in which it was originally written, and very many men have carefully studied the language solely with this object. Owing to the alterations which have taken place in our language since the Bible was translated, our translation does not in every case convey to the mind an accurate idea of the force

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Scarcely was the army removed one degree from the class rabble," ere occasion called for a display of its powers. In 1697 Charles XII. of Sweden came to his father's throne, and commenced that series of wars which astounded and convulsed Europe. Peter entered into alliances with the King of Denmark and the Elector Frederick Augustus of Saxony, who had been chosen King of Poland, and in 1700 the war began by the Danes invading the territory of the Duke of HolsteinGottorp, the brother-in-law of the King of Sweden. Charles XII. appeared suddenly before Copenhagen, which he blockaded by sea and besieged by land, and he so pressed the Danes that their king was compelled to make peace on humiliating terms, and to leave his allies to their fate. From Copenhagen Charles went straight and swiftly to Narva, which was besieged by the Russians with 80,000 men. The Swedes numbered only 10,000, but Charles did not hesitate to attack the entrenched camp of the besiegers, which, after being breached by the Swedish artillery, was carried by storm at the point of the bayonet. Eighteen thousand Russians were killed and 30,000 were taken prisoners, and all the baggage and artillery fell into the victors'

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