In this classification he proceeds from the fundamental distinction of monosyllabic and polysyllabic languages, and acknowledges the claim of the former to a higher antiquity. Without adopting a theory respecting races and their origin, or establishing one of his own, he attempts, and often successfully, to group together a vast number of cognate languages. These qualities, and a sober, though somewhat bald, style of writing and composition, have made his work a great authority in Europe. One of the later volumes, moreover, contains one of the most accurate specimens of linguistic analysis which we possess, namely, William von Humboldt's Essay on the Iberian or Basque language. Finally, it must not be forgotten, that it was the study and review of the “Mithridates” which gave Dr. Young, as he himself admitted, the first idea of inquiring into the hieroglyphical system; a subject of no less interest for the philosophy of language than for the history and chronology of antiquity.

But, judging the work by its bearings upon the definitive problem of linguistic science, we must confess that Adelung was merely a linguist, and neither an accurate philologer nor a deep philosopher; and that Vater, in his continuation, has not shown himself either the one or the other. The results of their researches are therefore only elementary and provisional. Even as a compilation, the "Mithridates" is already superannuated. Not only are its materials, in consequence of the copiousness of later discoveries and inquiries, lamentably defective; but the method of arranging and sifting those materials by no means commensurate with the demands and necessities of the present state of science.

4. PRICHARD.

In 1808, two years after Adelung began to publish his "Mithridates," a young English physician (Dr. Prichard) wrote an inaugural dissertation on the varieties of the human race. In 1813, this dissertation was enlarged into a regular work, which,

in its third edition (1836-1847), comprises five volumes, under the title "Researches into the Physical History of Mankind," dedicated to Blumenbach. This work of Dr. Prichard, whom a premature death has taken away from us, but whose name will not be forgotten in the annals of history, opens with the best and clearest discussion of all the elements of natural philosophy which bear upon the great question of the unity of the human species. Up to the present moment there exists no book which treats that question with equal depth and candour. The ethnological inquiry itself, which commences in the second volume, is conducted upon the basis of a clear geographical and ethnological exposition, in which the critical reforms introduced by Charles Ritter, Klaproth, and others, are adopted with independent judgment. In the linguistic portion, Prichard did not content himself with borrowing from Adelung, but availed himself generally of the researches of the critical German school, of which we shall soon have to speak, in those languages which had at that time been subjected to a philological analysis, and, in all the rest, he made use of the best materials which continental and English glossaries and observations offered to him. His great merit in this point is his excellent good-sense and sound judgment. Dr. Latham, in his "Natural History of the Varieties of Man" (1850), has, I think, misunderstood the real value of Prichard's work, when he terms it unparalleled in scholarship as well as physiology. Prichard had no such pretension: he was not a scholar in any language, except Kymri (his own native tongue) and English; but he had a sound knowledge of Greek, Latin, and German, and good taste in selecting and naming his masters, and in learning where he could not teach. As it stands, his work is the best of its kind; infinitely superior, on the whole, to Adelung's " Mithridates.”

Thus, by the union of philosophy, philology, physiology, ethnology, and geography, and by the combined efforts of the European nations, particularly of the German and English, the

fundamental thought of Leibnitz had, within the course of a century, been beneficially developed. But there was, as yet, a wide breach between speculation and history. What was the method of defining nearer and more distant relationship, and of distinguishing between historical and accidental, original and subsequent, connexion between the languages of the earth? The philosophers of the eighteenth century had scorned the idea of the unity of the human race: and theologians had assisted them in making the Bible say that God had created language as he had created man, and that language was not the act and work of man; though, as we have seen, the Bible, as well as reason, says the contrary.

The right step was made by a German; and it was India and the English researches into Sanskrit which called forth that step.

E

IN 1808, contemporaneous with Prichard's first appearance, two years after the publication of the first volume of the "Mithridates," a book appeared, small in extent, and on the whole a mere sketch, but possessing all those properties which constitute an epoch-making work I mean Frederic Schlegel's "Essay on the Language and Philosophy of the Hindoos (1808)." It fully established the decisive importance and precedence which grammatical forms ought to have over single words in proving the affinities of languages. He based this claim on the primeval and indestructible nature, and the unmistakeable evidence, of the grammatical system as to the original formative principles of language. By an application of this method, he triumphantly showed the intimate historical connexion between the Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Roman, and Germanic languages. This connexion had indeed been already observed by the active and elegant mind of Sir William Jones; but, unfortunately, with so little philological accuracy and philosophical clearness, that his remarks did not lead him or his friends and followers to any historical classification of languages. To the impulse given by Schlegel's work we are indebted in a high degree for the ideas on which the new linguistic school of Germany has proceeded. Its details have no longer any value, since the publication of the elaborate and accurate works on Sanskrit

etymology by A. W. von Schlegel, Bopp, Rask, Burnouf, Lassen, William von Humboldt, Pott, Benfey, Lepsius, Höfer, Max Müller, Weber, and others. All these writers have followed up the tracing of the different branches of languages connected with the Sanskrit. The unscientific expression of " Eastern languages" was abandoned by the learned. The circle of IndoGermanic languages, as they were called, was gradually extended to the Lithuanian, the Slavonic, and finally, by the combined and independent researches of Prichard, Pictet, Bopp, and Meyer, to all the languages of Celtic origin. Classical philology was not the last to benefit by this great discovery: the grammatical forms and roots of Greek and Latin began to be considered under this new light by eminent Greek and Latin scholars. Such a combination of linguistic researches with real and sound philology is of the highest importance to the success of ethnological researches. It is the only safeguard against unscientific intrusions into ethnology. Linguists, employed merely upon the classification of languages, are very apt to be drawn into a superficial comparison of incomplete and crude materials. The philological treatment of such languages as have a literature and possess literary documents of different periods is best adapted to keep such mere linguists in the path of rational criticism, should they be tempted to decide hastily upon idioms of savages and unexplored tongues, known only from incomplete and undigested vocabularies or even accidental lists of a few hundred words. In like manner, such a philological exercise of linguistic criticism is of the greatest importance to the traveller who purposes to communicate knowledge respecting the languages of savage and illiterate tribes. George Rosen, the worthy brother of the late lamented Professor in the London University College, and Richard Lepsius, when learning the Ossetic, Nubian, and Meroitic languages from the lips of the natives, were able to ask the inhabitants of the Caucasus and of the Upper Nile many more questions than ordinary travellers could have done.