RYSWICK, PEACE OF, a treaty concluded in 1697 at Ryswiek, a Dutch village between Delft and the Hague, which was signed by France, England, and Spain on fiept. 20. and by Germany on Oct. 30. It put an end to the sanguinary contest in which England had been engaged with France. It has been often said that the only equivalent then received by England for all the treasure she had transmitted to the continent, and all the blood which had been shed there, was an ackowledgment of William's title by the king of France; but it must not be forgot how much the allies were benefited by the check given to the gigantic power and overweening ambition of France.
nineteenth letter in the English and other western alphabets (the eighteenth in the Latin), belongs to the dental series, and marks the fundamental sound of ' the hissing or sibilant group, a, z, sh, eh. The Sanskrit has characters for three hiss ing or 8-sounds; the Shemitic languages had four (see ALPHABET). The Hebrew, or Plieni cian character, from which the modern 8 is derived, was called shin—i.e., tooth, and in its original form probably represented two or three teeth. The same character, with the presence or absence of a diacritic point, marked either s or sh. In England, a is used both for the sharp and flat sounds, as this, those = those. The nearness of the 8-sound to a is seen in the English loreft = loreth, and in the phenomenon of lisping yeth = yes. This seems to furnish the transition to the so frequent interchange of the High-Ger. 8 for the Low-Ger. 1, as in Ger. wasser = seater; Ger. fuss = foot. Comp.
Gr. thalassa = thalatta. The substitution of r for 8 is noticed under R. In such cases as melt, compared with smelt; pike, with spike; lick, with sleek; Ger. niesen, with Eng. sneeze; Eng. snow, Goth. snairs, with Lat, nix (gen. niv-is); mikros, with amikros; short, A.-S. wear& with curt—it is difficult to say whether the form with, or that without the s is the older. Grimm considers 8 as the remnant of an oldprefixed particle (as, is, us), having, perhaps, the force of ex in Lat. exopto, I wish greatly; or sir in Ger. urklein, very small. An initial s before a vowel in Lat. corresponds to Gr. h; comp, Lat. sub, sex, sal (salt), with Gr. hypo, hex, hats. In Greek and Latin, s was pro nounced feebly at the end of words, and still more so between two vowels. It thus ft: , quently disappeared in these positions, and this was one of the chief sources of the irregularities iu the declensions and conjugations, which had originally been formed on a uniform system (see INF•EcTioNs.) The dropping of x is one of the ways in which the forms of modern French words have become so degraded; compare Lat. magider, old Fr. nuiistre, modern Fr. maitre; presbyter, prestre, pretre. Even where still written, final a in French is mostly silent—e.g., vos, lea.