(1) A change has taken place in the collocation of words in forming a sentence. The governed pronoun stands in a place where it is now inadmissible: the present habit of the language requires that the pronoun ‘me’ should come in after its governing verb. If we make this change, we shall see that the sentence will become a trifle more like English, thus: ‘Alfred hight work me.’ (2) Another movement is that which in process of time takes place in the usage of words. There is a fashion in the choice of words for the clothing of our ideas, and that fashion changes sometimes capriciously and fitfully, but for the most part so slowly and gradually that it takes an era of time to make the change conspicuous. Words are liable to this kind of alteration in various degrees, and this inequality of change is observable even in a sentence of four words. The verb HEHT, _hight_, has undergone so great a change of sense that to the general reader it is apt to be unintelligible[5]. But while this verb has altered greatly, the verb ‘work’ has altered little. Still, it has altered, and it is no longer the right word for its place. The remaining two words have in usage undergone no change at all. The pronoun MEC has suffered alteration in form by dropping a consonant, but it is absolutely unchanged in its application. Indeed, it may be stated as a general law, that pronouns as a class are among the slowest of words to admit semantic change. Nevertheless there is a group of words which are still more unchangeable in signification, and these are the Proper Nouns. External changes of form they do admit, but not the internal change of sense. The name ÆLFRED is the form prevalent on the coinage of his reign, but there are variations, thus: ÆLFRED, ÆLBRED, ELFRED, ELFERED; and there is the form ALFRED, which has become established in modern English in consequence of the fact that our earliest popular histories of the king were derived from Latin books, in which language his name was commonly spelt ALFREDUS. But whatever changes may pass over the visible representation of the word, there is no alteration possible in the relation between this word and the memory of that royal person whose proper name it was. If now we remove the words that have suffered a semantic change, and substitute those which at the present time seem most natural, the sentence will take this form: ‘Alfred ordered make me;’ and thus it approaches another step towards the present manner of our speech.