The English she, they, their, them, are from the Anglo-Saxon demonstrative se, seo, thaet; its is a modern growth, not found in the first edition of our English Bible. The articles are both in use, and the demonstratives thaet, that, and thes, this, plural thas, those; the personals are used as reflexives; hwa, who, is an interrogative; other English pronouns are from Anglo-Saxon originals. So are the numerals except second, A. S. other. - There are two great classes of verbs: 1, the ancient or strong class, which formed their past tense by reduplication, repetition of their root; 2, the modern or weak class, which formed their past tense by composition with dide, did. In the first class there are five conjugations, distinguished by the vowel of the past tense. 1. The original root is a, unchanged in the past: swimman, swam, swummen, swim, swam, swum. 2. The root is i, changed to a in the past: ridan, rdd, riden, ride, rode, ridden. 3. The root is v, changed to eo, o, past ed: cleofan, cledf, clofen, cleave, clove, cloven. 4. The root was d, changed to a, past o: wacan, woc, wacen, wake, woke, waken. 5. The root a diphthong or long vowel changed to ed, e: feallan, feol, feallen, fall, fell, fallen.

The weak verbs make another conjugation: 6. The past a compound with dide, -de: lufian, lufode, lufod, love, loved, loved. The umlaut and breaking referred to in the first part of this article introduce variations of vowel in different parts of the same verb, and different variations for different verbs, so that to a superficial view there may appear to be many conjugations, or no regularity at all. The following paradigms show the inflection endings:

Indicative Mode.

Subjunctive Mode.

Participles.

Present, nimende, taking.

Passive, numen, taken; gelufod, loved.

The -th of the indicative 3d singular and the plural appears as -s in the northern dialect of Anglo-Saxon. There are said to be 168 plurals in -s and 46 in -th in the Shakespearian folio of 1623. (Prof. T. R. Lounsberry, "On Certain Forms of the English Verb," in "Transactions of the American Philological Association," 1869-'70.) The subjunctive is used for our potential and imperative, as in the English expressions, "it were a sin," "be it so"; but a periphrastic potential in may, can, might, etc, is in use. The gerund in -enne changed to -ende and then to -ing; and in the English we have in the ending -ing a verbal noun, present participle, and gerund mixed. The form given above as the present tense may be used for any modification of both present and future act, the other form to express every shade of past act; but auxiliaries are also used. A perfect in haebbe, have, and a pluperfect in harfde, had, are in full use, though the participle of the principal verb is often in the accusative case agreeing with the object of habbe: he hafth mon geworhtne, he has man wrought. A few intransitives use eom (am) and woes (was) for perfect signs: he is gecumen, he is come; he was agan, he was (=had) gone.

Sceal, shall, and wille, will, are common for future signs, though they generally have some meaning of duty, power, promise, resolve, in addition to that of future time. A progressive form is common in the active: is feohtende, is fighting, continues fighting; but not in the passive. The emphatic form in do hardly occurs. The adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and other particles are many of them common to other Indo-European tongues, and many of the more obscure may be traced to pronouns. Composition is more freely used in Anglo-Saxon than in English, and many of the suffixes and prefixes are there found as separate words. - A body of rules almost as great as those used in Latin grammar is needed to state the uses of the different cases. Some verbs govern a genitive, some a dative or instrumental, some the accusative, some two or three different cases. The uses of the subjunctive mode are various and obscure. The arrangement of the parts of a sentence is often intricate. The syntax is that of a highly inflected language.

Most of the difficulties of English idiom are to be traced to Anglo-Saxon combinations, and they are often easily understood by the help of the old meanings of the words, or the old inflection forms. - For the study of the language may be used Bosworth, "Anglo-Saxon Dictionary" (London, 1848); Marsh. "English Language and its Early Literature" (New York, 1862); Hadley, " Brief History of the English Language," in Webster's Dictionary (1865); Rask's. grammar, translated by Thorpe (London, 1865); Shute, "Manual of Anglo-Saxon for Beginners" (New York, 1867); March, "Comparative Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon," and "Introduction to the Study of Anglo-Saxon " (New York, 1870); Corson, " Handbook of Anglo-Saxon and Early English" (New York, 1871); Grimm,Deutsche Grammatik (Gottingen, 1840); Ettmiiller, Lexicon cum Synopsi Grammatica (Quedlinburg and Leipsic, 1851); Heyne, Kurtz Laut- and Flexionslehre (Paderborn, 1862); Koch, Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache (Weimar, 1863); Grein, Sprachschatz der Angelsachsischen Dichter (Cassel and Gottingen, 1864); Maetzner, Englische Grammatik (Berlin, 18(55). - Anglo-Saxon Literature. It was a habit of the early Germans to give high honor to the scop or poet, and long before their conquest of Britain there were current among them cycles of songs, of mythological and heroic ballads, such as furnish the material for epic poems.

Their exploits in Britain doubtless added to the number of current ballads, and of skilful poets and singers. We learn from Beda that the harp passed from hand to hand at feasts, and that it was disgraceful for any man not to be able to sing in turn. Bishop Aldhelm used to stand in minstrel's garb on the bridge over which the people were to pass and collect a crowd by the beauty of his song, into which, when their attention was gained, he wove words of devotion. The verse common to the northern nations was brought to great perfection among the Anglo-Saxons. It is an accentual rhythm, marked off into verses by alliteration. The common narrative verse is constructed in sections separated by a metrical pause. Each section has regularly four accents. This accent or metrical stress falls on each syllable having a primary accent in prose, on many syllables having a secondary accent, and in certain metrical emergencies on other syllables, especially the last syllable in each section. Each metrical stress is followed by a remission of voice, which may be silent, or filled by an unaccented syllable or two.