A small space would contain the series of fathers or mothers as representatives of the six or seven hundred generations which may, at the utmost, have succeeded each other in Asia.

Which is more wonderful-their unity with so much diversity, or the contrasts they exhibit together with that unity?

Where are the laws, and what is the principle, the antagonistic action of which can explain the two and make these historical facts credible and intelligible?

How can Greek be connected with Chinese, or with Mongolic, or even with Hebrew? and how can a law of development be found to produce that chain?

The most natural method seems to be to consider first the phenomena, the origin and history of which are best known to us, and to show the facts respecting the progress and decay of certain given languages; then to proceed to the investigation of the general principles indicated by those phenomena; and finally to throw a glance over the still imperfectly explored idioms of the earth, and slightly touch upon the indications they present of a connection with the languages of Asia and Europe. Phenomenology, Theory, and Application will be the subjects of the three remaining sections.

the celebrated geologist of Caucasia and Armenia. He received it, when lately at Tiflis, from M. Khanikoff chief of the diplomatic Chancellerie of Russia at that place, whose article on the subject will soon appear (or has appeared) in the Petersburg Geographical Ephemerides. M. Khanikoff is a good geographer, and understands the Caucasian languages.- London, December 3. 1854.

FIRST SECTION.

THE

PHENOMENOLOGY OF LANGUAGE;

OR

THE VESTIGES OF ITS FORMATION, DEVELOPMENT, AND

DECAY.

THE

PHENOMENOLOGY OF LANGUAGE;

OR,

THE VESTIGES OF ITS FORMATION, DEVELOPMENT, AND DECAY.

FIRST CHAPTER.

ANCIENT AND MODERN GERMAN, AND THE ROMANIC. THE
OF AGE AND OF A NEW FORMATIVE ELEMENT UPON A LANGUAGE.

EFFECT

THE origin of language is enveloped in deep mystery. It is only by a patient investigation of facts, and by generalizing those facts as far as we safely can, that we may hope to establish a fair test for a speculative view of the general principles of its formation. The history of most languages is only very imperfectly known. The best method to understand the gradual formation of a language, the extent of alterations it can undergo without losing the unity of its existence, its individuality as it were, and the changes to which it can be subjected in consequence of a violent crisis, seems therefore to be to examine the origin and gradual formation of those languages where the necessary facts are generally known, or at least most easily ascertainable. These are the daughters of Latin, and the modern German and Scandinavian languages. With the exception of the Romanic or Vlachic, or the language of Wallachia, formed with an admixture of Slavonic words, the first are the tongues of the South of modern Europe. They were formed out of the Latin in consequence of the settlement of one or other of the

advancing German tribes in Romanized countries, inhabited, as to the numerical majority of the inhabitants, by a Celtic population, which in former ages had in some of them succeeded to an Iberian. This is the origin of the Italian, the Provençal, the French, the Spanish, and the Portuguese languages; the two latter have received since, through the ascendancy of the Moors, an admixture of Arabic.

We have here clearly two great elements. The German tribes, who destroyed the Roman empire, were the instigating causes of the utter decay of the declining Roman language, the native tongue of Italy for ages, and introduced into the other countries by military colonization. This language had been adopted by the Celtic populations imperfectly, but to such an extent that they gradually forgot their own language, not being gifted with sufficient formative energy to master and incorporate the intruding element. The energetic and conquering German tribes did possess this energy, and gradually made the mixed Germano-Latin language the badge of their young nationality.

The remodeling cause of the formation of those languages was therefore Germanic. The element upon which it worked was the Latin tongue, represented by a decaying Roman nationality which (with the exception of Italy Proper) had been engrafted in the South upon a Celtic, and in Valachia upon a Slavonic population. The active movement of the Germanic mind, operating upon the subject Roman population, dissolved, and as it were burst the compact structure of the Latin tongue. Thus Germanic words were first substituted for Latin, but only in respect to the nouns and verbs. As for the particles and the degenerate inflexional forms, the old ones were superseded by the substitution of periphrastic forms, derived however from the Latin, and not from the Germanic stem. Thus the words cis and ultra (originally uls) disappeared. The Italian says, al di quà, al di là; the French, au (en) delù, au (par) delù, which