[40] An interesting discussion of this verb appeared in the /New York Sun/, Nov. 27, 1914. [41] /Cf./ J. H. Combs: Old, Early and Elizabethan English in the Southern Mountains, /Dialect Notes/, vol. iv, pt. iv, pp. 283-97. [42] Henry Sweet: A History of English Sounds; London, 1876; Oxford, 1888. [43] P. 124. [44] /Cf./ /Art./ Changes in the Language Since Shakespeare's Time, by W. Murison, in The Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. xiv, p. 485. [45] English Spelling and Spelling Reform; New York, 1909. [46] C. H. Grandgent: Fashion and the Broad /A/, /Nation/, Jan. 7, 1915. [47] Thomas Sheridan: A Complete Dictionary of the English Language; London, 1780. [48] It first appeared in Robert Nares' Elements of Orthography; London, 1784. In 1791 it received full approbation in John Walker's Critical Pronouncing Dictionary. [49] Robert J. Menner; The Pronunciation of English in America, /Atlantic Monthly/, March, 1915. [50] The Question of Our Speech; Boston and New York, 1906, pp. 27-29. [51] Elizabeth H. Hancock: Southern Speech, /Neale's Monthly/, Nov., 1913, pp. 606-7. [52] /Vide/ his remarks on /balance/ in his Vocabulary. See also Marsh, p. 671. [Pg063] III The Period of Growth § 1 /The New Nation/--The American language thus began to be recognizably differentiated from English in both vocabulary and pronunciation by the opening of the nineteenth century, but as yet its growth was hampered by two factors, the first being the lack of a national literature of any pretentions and the second being an internal political disharmony which greatly conditioned and enfeebled the national consciousness. During the actual Revolution common aims and common dangers forced the Americans to show a united front, but once they had achieved political independence they developed conflicting interests, and out of those conflicting interests came suspicions and hatreds which came near wrecking the new confederation more than once. Politically, their worst weakness, perhaps, was an inability to detach themselves wholly from the struggle for domination still going on in Europe. The surviving Loyalists of the revolutionary era--estimated by some authorities to have constituted fully a third of the total population in 1776--were ardently in favor of England, and such patriots as Jefferson were as ardently in favor of France. This engrossment in the quarrels of foreign nations was what Washington warned against in his Farewell Address. It was at the bottom of such bitter animosities as that between Jefferson and Hamilton. It inspired and perhaps excused the pessimism of such men as Burr. Its net effect was to make it difficult for the people of the new nation to think of themselves, politically, as Americans. Their state of mind, vacillating, uncertain, alternately timorous and [Pg064] pugnacious, has been well described by Henry Cabot Lodge in his essay on "Colonialism in America."[1] Soon after the Treaty of Paris was