From a carefully prepared article in a recent number of the Munsey Magazine ((October, 1898), by Brander Matthews, professor of English literature in Columbia University, we extract the following from what he has to say on "The Future of the English Language:"—
"In the fourteenth century, the population of France was about ten millions, and that of the British Isles probably less than four millions, In both territories there were certainly many who did not speak the chief language; yet the proportion of those who spoke French to those who spoke English was at least ten to four.
"Now we are nearing the last year of the nineteenth century, which has been a period of unexampled expansion for the English speaking race, who have spread to India, to Australia, and to Africa, besides filling up the western parts of the United States; they now number probably a hundred and twenty-six millions. The Russians have also pushed their borders across Asia, and they show also an immense increase, now numbering about a hundred and thirty millions, although probably a very large proportion of their conglomerate population does not yet speak Russian. The Germans have supplied millions of immigrants to the United States, and thousands of expatriated traders to all the great cities of the world; and in spite of this loss they now number about seventy million, including, as before, the German portions of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The Spanish speaking peoples in the old world and the new are about forty-two millions, not half of them in Spain itself.
