highest state of perfection. Cashmere is a region of fruitful hills, countless fountains and streams, which unite in the River Behut, that, like the Pison of Paradise, "compasseth" the whole land. The men of this country are distinguished among the nations by superior natural endowments, mental and physical. The contiguous region of Thibet also presents in a native state the various plants and animals which have been domesticated by man. Here are found for their use in the wild state, the vine, the rice-plant, the pea, the ox, the horse, the ass, the sheep, the goat, the camel, the pig, the cat, and even the reindeer, “his only friend and companion in the polar wastes."

3. The ancient Indian accounts, which are corroborated by the Scriptural narrative. The Indian accounts, equal in antiquity, it is believed, to the scriptural narrative, actually fix the first abode of man on Mount Meru, on the borders of Thibet and Cashmere. Now from Mount Meru spring four rivers, the Ganges, the Burampoota, the Indus, and another stream which flows. into Thibet. Now Michaëlis, Adelung observes, translates Genesis, ii., 10, "Four rivers flowed out of Eden, and they separated continually more and more widely from each other."

4. In these regions is the line which separates from other Asiatic races the nations who exhibit the Mongul or Tartar physiognomy..

5. The same line separates the monosyllabic languages and the polysyllabic languages. The former begin in Thibet, the latter in Cashmere.

6. The astronomical reasonings of Bailly. The theory of this astronomer is, that the various nations of the ancient world were descendants of emigrants from a primeval community superior to them in knowledge, and of which he places the locality in Central Asia. See JOHNE's Philological Proofs of the Unity of the Human Race.

THE PRIMITIVE LANGUAGE.

§ 5. Linguists formerly sought to discover the primitive language as earnestly as alchemists sought for the philosopher's stone, and as vainly. The claims of several different languages to this pre-eminence were advocated by different writers, but the Hebrew was generally the favored one. If all languages de

scended from a common parent, according to the current doctrine of the present time, then the question, which of them is the primitive language, can be dismissed as unworthy of investigation.

The affiliation of languages is one thing, their parentage another. Now the older linguists, when they found certain words to be the same in two languages, concluded that one must be the parent of the other, when, in fact, they were only sister languages, moving along side by side from a common source, developing themselves under the influence of various causes found in nature and society. Instead of endeavoring to discover whether the Hebrew, or the Dutch, or some other was the primitive language, Grotius seems to have adopted the true view, namely, that the primitive language is not extant any where in a pure state, but that its remains exist in all languages. Which of the languages is nearest to the primitive language is an open question worthy of examination.

On the supposition that all languages have a common origin, we should expect that words of prime necessity, being brought into use before the dispersion of mankind, would still, if any, be found existing in the several languages; and such is the fact. Thus, words used as numerals and personal pronouns, and those used to express the nearest and dearest relations, like father, mother, brother, sister, extensively resemble each other. Sec § 14.

It should be added that, as out of the vain search of the alchemists for the philosopher's stone grew the science of Chemistry, so out of the search of the older linguists for the primitive language grew the modern science of Comparative Philology.

§ 6. The gift of reason to the human race derives its great value from the gift of speech. Each is a complement of the ether. Each would be nearly valueless without the other. Just conceive for a moment of a soul swelling with large thoughts and strong emotions in the body of a man without the gift of utterance. Such a soul, thus confined within walls of flesh, struggling in vain to come forth into communication with others, must, to a large extent, be isolated from human kind.

In native intellect he may be angel-bright, in affections angellovely, but the workings of that intellect and those affections must be the workings of one in solitary confinement; and the consciousness of this impotence must be as is the ineffectual struggle to speak when the nightmare sits brooding on the sleeper. A single instance, however, furnishes but a faint illustration of what would be the wretched condition of the human fam

ily if they were all so many mutes. Mutum et turpe pecus would they be. Being mute, they would, of course, be degraded. Speech is the deliverer of the imprisoned soul. It brings it into communion with another soul, so that the two become one. It leads the thoughts and the emotions into light and liberty. Words reaching from the speaker's tongue to the listening ear are the links of that electric chain upon which thought flies from mind to mind, and feeling from heart to heart, through the greater or the smaller circles of human society.

THE

PERMANENT VALUE OF LANGUAGE.

§ 7. The gift of speech to the human race derives its permanent value from letters; or, to use equivalent terms, spoken language derives its permanent value from written language.

Summon to your memory some tribe of men gifted like others with reason and speech, but without the aid of letters. However correct and bright their thoughts may be, however strong and graceful their emotions, however distinct and eloquent their expression, they must all die with the individual, or be but faintly transmitted to future generations, at last to fade entirely from the memory of man, or be mingled up with fables. But let those same thoughts, and emotions, and expressions be recorded by letters and transmitted to the future, and they become the seedcorn in the minds of the next generation, to bear a glorious harvest of new thoughts and new emotions, or, at least, a profitable harvest in the application of knowledge to those arts of life which minister to human improvement. Vox volat. The voice flies from the lips to mingle with the winds, to be lost without an echo to the thought which it conveyed. Scripta manent. Written down, it may continue sounding on, as from a trumpet-tongue, through all time, speaking still to the common heart of man like Homer, or to the conscience like Paul,

IMPERFECTION OF LANGUAGE.

§ 8. While language has power to express the fine emotions and the subtile thoughts of the human mind with wonderful exactness, still it must be admitted that it is imperfect as a sign of thought. It is imperfect because the thing signified by a term in a proposition either does not exist at all in the mind of the hearer, or because it exists under different relations from what it does in the mind of the speaker. In other words, language is imperfect because the term in a proposition, if it has any meaning in the mind of the speaker, has a different one from what it has in the mind of the hearer.

Hardly any abstract term has precisely the same meaning in any two minds; when mentioned, the same term calls up different associations in one mind from what it does in another. Thus the word xápis (grace) has, in SCHLEUSNER'S Lexicon, thirteen different meanings. The phrase "beast of burden" might, to one mind, mean a horse; to another, a mule; to another, a camel.

What is thus true of the vocabulary of a language is also true of its constructions; they also, in each case, call up different associations in different minds. It should be added that there is great vagueness in the common use of language, which, in practice, increases its imperfection as a medium of thought.

But while men differ in the meaning which they attach to certain classes of terms and of constructions, they also, when they have carefully studied a language, largely agree; so largely, that they can make their agreement the sure basis of reas oning and of action on important subjects.

§ 9. As languages grow, so they decay. As old modes of thought give place to new ones, so the forms in which those modes are expressed give place to new forms. Thus the language grows and decays at the same time, just as in nature, out of the decay of vegetation, other forms of vegetable life spring up. Out of the decay and death of the Latin sprang the Romanic languages. Out of the decay and death of the AngloSaxon sprang the English. Out of the decay and death of the

Old Slavonic sprang the Russian. In the progress of a nation from the employment of hunting to that of the shepherd and then to that of commerce, there is, at each step, a death of some words and the birth of new ones. The same law obtains in the change from one form of government or of religion to that of another; as, for instance, a change from kingly government in England to that of a republican government in the United States.

THE DEATH OF LANGUAGE.

§ 10. As languages have a life, which, like the life of an individual, may be written, so they die, and are numbered only with the things that were. They may, indeed, still exist in manuscript or on the printed page, but not on the lips of men. They may be embalmed in the hearts and memories of students, but they know no resurrection into the voices of the people. This is true of the Sanscrit, of the Greek, of the Latin, of the Anglo-Saxon. These are dead languages. They are in a petrified state, and they exhibit the "modes of thought of the people who spoke them, and their relations to other races, as fossil remains show the forms and relations of animal life." Thus languages die, but portions of them exist by transmission in other languages. Thus portions of the Latin exist in the Romanic languages, portions of the Greek in the Romaic, portions of the Sanscrit in the Hindostanee, portions of the Anglo-Saxon in the English. Thus languages, though dead, live in their descendants, as men, though in their graves, live in their posterity.

THE ORIGINAL UNITY OF

LANGUAGE.

§ 11. The original unity of language is indicated,

1. By the supposed unity of the human race, of which there is satisfactory evidence.

2. By the declaration in Genesis, that the whole earth was "of one language and one speech."

3. By the analogies and affinities among the different languages, pointing to a common origin.

Affinities among languages may be seen either in their similarity of construction, in which case the proof is grammatical, or in the similarity of words themselves, in which case the proof