the Continent was in a fearful state "honeycombed," as Mr Disraeli says, with conspiracy, and perfectly mined by Red Republicanism - would have defeated all my strategy. Genuine woman as she is, she'd have been in ecstasies at the idea of such excitement. She'd have preferred a barricade to a new bonnet any day; and, womanlike, would have confronted the worst perils of a mob for the mere pleasure of one day recounting them. Were I to say, therefore, The revolution may break out next week, it would only add speed to her lest she should arrive too late.

To assure her, as I now in all truthfulness do you, my bland reader, that the cheapness of the Continent was all sham and delusion, would have provoked the less logical than practical reply, "No worse for me than for you, Mr O'Dowd." I might be taken suddenly ill and die—I mean, to have my death reported to her. There was much to be said in favour of this course, but Mrs O'Dowd was a woman of strong measures. She might remarry, and the complication become troublesome. I had just finished Enoch Arden,' and had no ambition to appear in that now popular part.

Torn with opposing conflicting thoughts, I paced my room in a state of almost frenzied perplexity, when the thought struck me, I shall go back to Ireland-I am wanted there suddenly. There is to be a great Art Exhibition of Irish products next May, and am I one

of them? It is important to see how many cubic feet they may be able to accord me-in what section I am to stand-how I am to be illuminated when they show me by gaslight.

"Mrs O'Dowd," I telegraphed at once," tell the committee that I agree. I am doing wonders for the Exhibition here, and will be in Dublin by Tuesday - Friday at farthest. Show this to Guinness.

"O'Dowd."

If that was not enough to puzzle ordinary brains, I'm a Belgian! I pictured to my mind Mrs O'Dowd's face of embarrassment as she asked whether I was an object of industry" or one of "the fine arts"?

66

Such, intelligente publico, is my present condition. I make the explanation in all frankness, so that if-which will be much more matter of regret to me than to you—if, I say, I should fail to make my appearance before you next month, you will neither believe the stories in circulation that I have been hanged in Poland or murdered in an English railway; that I am under sentence of bigamy, convicted of felony, or a major-general in the Federal army of America. I am simply preparing myself-as certain English noblemen are said to do for their appearance as Irish Viceroys - by a course of poses plastiques, which being accomplished, I resume my O'Dowderies, expecting the continuance of your gracious and most gratifying approval.

WE have here the Second Series of Lectures which Max Müller (for all the world writes simply Max Müller, without any prefix-a sign, we take it, of general friendliness and respect) has delivered before the Royal Institution of Great Britain on the science of language. No one could reasonably expect that it would equal in interest the first series, which naturally took possession of the salient topics and the wide theoretical views now connected with the scientific study of language. But though, on this account, necessarily inferior to their predecessors, these Lectures will, we are sure, be greedily seized upon by that omnivorous person, the General Reader, who is avid of instruction when conveyed in a clear and intelligent manner. They are somewhat miscellaneous in their character, and the observations they may suggest to us will be of the same miscellaneous description.

The study of languages by those who wish to enjoy or fully to comprehend the various literatures of the world, ancient or modern, and the study of language itself, or articulate speech, as the pre-eminent gift or faculty of the human race, are two very different things. The ordinary scholar who delights in his Horace, and fights over again the battles of Homer, may be as ignorant of all that pertains to this latter study as the mere English reader, left benighted, as it is generally supposed, or relegated to such limited culture as he can extract from the literature of one modern language. Even our fortunate scholar, our model student, educated after that manner which all Europe seems at present to approve, which presents words as the chief object of knowledge, and inducts us into thinking by a litera

ture obscured to the youthful mind by a thousand difficulties,-even he may at length be able to detect the most delicate shades of meaning in a Greek or Latin epithet, and yet may never have dreamt of that laborious and ingenious study which the scientific etymologist is now engaged in. It has long been a favourite theme of the speculative philosopher to describe what might have been the origin and progressive development of human speech. Well, the scientific etymologist undertakes, by collating all the languages of the earth, and all the histories of those who speak or have spoken them, to solve the same problem. The psychologist, arguing from the nature of human thought and the order of human knowledge, forms his theory, and it is well and necessary that he should do so; but his theory remains a mere speculation till it is verified by the analysis and the history of the actual languages which have been spoken by man. Do not let the rapid speculator, content with his, perhaps, too facile method of deduction-his inferences from broad psychological principleslook with contempt upon the slow labours of those who proceed by the historic or etymological method; nor let these last, confident in what seems to them the secure basis of fact, despise the bold generalisations of those who take their stand on the philosophy of mind: the two classes of thinkers are necessary to each other. The philologist would never have given a useful direction to his labours if he had not been also in some measure a psychologist; and it is above all things gratifying to observe that some of the most important conclusions arrived at by the speculative philosopher have been con

firmed by those who have carefully analysed the various languages of mankind, and (so far as this is possible) traced their course historically.

Nothing is more easy than to dabble in etymology, and no study is more laborious than that of the veritable philologist. Thus it happens that as all persons are capable of amusing themselves, or pestering their neighbours, by fantastic derivations, and as very few are able or willing to pursue those studies that would enable them to discriminate between these etymologies of the ear and such as are sanctioned by general principles (deduced from a wide examination of the changes which language undergoes), there grows up a popular incredulity as to the results obtained by the philologist. In general, the ignorant man is too credulous ; here it is a hasty incredulity which the unscientific person has to guard himself against.

"I do not wonder," says Max Müller, speaking of another branch of his subject-namely, of the marvellous feats which have been performed in the interpretation of hieroglyphics and of other ancient inscriptions

"I do not wonder that the discoveries due to the genius and persevering industry of Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and last, not least, of Rawlinson, should seem incredible to those who only glance at them from a distance. Their incredulity will only prove the greatest compliment that could have been paid to these eminent scholars. What we at present call the Cuneiform inscriptions of Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, Artaxerxes, &c. (of which we now have several editions, translations, grammars, and dictionaries)---what were they originally? A mere conglomerate of wedges, engraved or impressed on the solitary monument of Cyrus in the Murgháb, on the ruins of Persepolis, on the rocks of Behistun, near the frontiers of Media, and the precipice of Van in Armenia. When Grotefend attempted to decipher them, he had first to prove that these scrolls were really inscriptions, and not mere arabesques or fanciful ornaments.

He had then to find out whether these magical characters were to be read

VOL. XCVI.-NO. DLXXXVIII.

horizontally or perpendicularly, from right to left or from left to right. Lichtenberg maintained that they must Grotefend, in 1802, proved that the let

be read in the same direction as Hebrew.

ters followed each other, as in Greek, from left to right. Even before Grotefend, Münter and Tychsen had observed that there was a sign to separate the words. Such a sign is, of course, an immense help in all attempts at deat once the terminations of hundreds of ciphering inscriptions, for it lays bare words, and, in an Aryan language, supplies us with a skeleton of its grammar. Yet consider the difficulties that had yet to be overcome before a single line could be read. It was unknown in what language these inscriptions were tic, a Turanian, or an Aryan language. composed; it might have been a SemiIt was unknown to what period they belonged, and whether they commemorated the conquests of Cyrus, Darius, Alexander, or Sapor. It was unknown whether the alphabet used was phonetic, syllabic, or ideographic. It would detain us too long were I to relate how all these difficulties were removed one after the other; how the proper names of Darius, Xerxes, Hystaspes, and of their god Ormusd, were traced; how from them the values of certain letters were determined; how, with an imperphered which clearly established the fect alphabet, other words were decifact that the language of these inscriptions was ancient Persian; how then, with the help of the Zend, which represents the Persian language previous to Darius, and with the help of the later Persian, a most effective cross-fire was opened; how even more powerful ordnance was brought up from the arsenal of the ancient Sanskrit; how outpost after outpost was driven in, and a practical breach effected, till at last the fortress had to surrender, and submit to the terms dictated by the Science of Language,'

It would be a poor return for such almost heroic patience, for such knowledge, ingenuity, and perseverance, to treat their results with a smile of incredulity. Yet here, as elsewhere, an intelligent public, aware that discoverers must have enthusiasm as well as patience, will often hold itself in a state of suspended judgment. Our system of interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphics, for instance, may admit of revisal or improve2 E

ment; Max Müller, in one passage of these lectures, seems to think that it is still incomplete; and even discoveries of another kind, of which he speaks more confidently, may not yet have assumed their final shape. It is unhesitatingly proclaimed to be the 'great discovery" of the modern science of language that Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Celtic, and other languages of ancient Europe, are related to some prior and unknown language, to which the name of Aryan has been given, in precisely the same manner in which the modern languages, French, Italian, and Spanish, are related to the Latin. This may be so; but if there was an Aryan language, the parent of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Teutonic, Slavonic, just as Latin was the parent of French and Italian, there must have been an Aryan people and an Aryan civilisation that have depart ed without leaving any traces of their existence-that are utterly unknown to history. It is difficult, in short, to frame a history of these Aryans that shall correspond with the part their language is said to have played. One may here acknowledge a perplexity without being rashly sceptical. The study of Sanskrit is a comparative novelty; first impressions may not endure; another generation of scholars, aided by the labours of their predecessors, may stand on a vantage-ground which we do not occupy; the 'Rig-veda,' the oldest form of Sanskrit, and reputed to be the oldest book in the world, is not yet translated; it is not unreasonable, under such circumstances, to give a certain qualified assent to this theory of an Aryan people, from whom so many other peoples are to be derived. One may rather accept it as the best hypothesis which enlightened men can at present form than the last discoverable truth.

"No sound scholar," writes Max Müller, "would ever think of deriving any Greek or Latin word from Sanskrit. Sanskrit is not the mother of Greek

and Latin, as Latin is of French and Italian. Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin are sisters, varieties of one and the earlier stage, when they were less difsame type. They all point to some ferent from each other than they now are, but no more. All we can say in favour of Sanskrit is, that it is the eldest sister; that it has retained many words and forms less changed and corrupted than Greek and Latin. The parent structure of Sanskrit have namore primitive character and transturally endeared it to the student of language, but they have not blinded him to the fact that in many points Greek and Latin- nay, Gothic and tures which Sanskrit has lost." Celtic-have preserved primitive fea

The readers of the First Series of these Lectures will remember that some rather bold hypothesis was put forth on the origin of language. Discarding what he called the Bowwow and Pooh-pooh theory - the hypothesis that interjections and the imitations of the cries of animals, or the sounds made by inanimate objects, would form the first rude speech of man-the lecturer had recourse to the bold expedient of supposing that there was some occult connection between certain roots, or primitive words, and the things signified. In the Second Series the same idea is put forth, but with still more vagueness and vacillation. The lecturer was at perfect liberty to discard, in what terms he pleased, the Bow-wow theory it is the unintelligible nature of the hypothesis he substitutes that we should quarrel with. Analysing the oldest dialects of human speech which remain for our examination, we eliminate, as our simplest elements, certain roots, primitive words, or what to us are representatives of primitive words; and the meaning of such words was apparently determined, just as the meaning of any word we now use, by custom and tradition. No analysis and no historical investigation enables us to rise to the origin of language, to explain why any object about which men had occasion to speak should have been associated with any one of these

syllables more than with another. If, therefore, we are resolved to frame any theory upon this subject, it must be from conjecture, from a balance of probabilities. We try to put ourselves in the position of men who had a language to form, who had the need and desire to communicate with each other, and found themselves in the possession of a sound-producing organ, an organ which, in one way or the other, they as spontaneously used as any of their limbs; for a child cries as readily as it kicks, and all through boyhood noise is as delightful as motion. We try to fancy what would be the steps of their progress. It must be a matter of conjecture; only let the conjecture be intelligible.

Max Müller says:

"I believed, and still believe, that in the science of language we must accept roots simply as ultimate facts, leaving to the physiologist and the psychologist the question as to the possible sympathetic and reflective action of the five organs of sensuous perception upon the motory nerves of the organ of speech."

What does he in this, and other like passages, mean? What is the question he leaves to the psychologist and the physiologist? If we had the first articulate words uttered by man before us, we might perhaps frame some question for the physiologist; we might ask him what connection there was between uttering such sounds and the impression of certain objects. But no one pretends that in Sanskrit roots, or in any other roots, we have the first articulate syllables that man made use of for the communication of his wants or his commands.

That cries, shouts, interjections of all kinds, form a part of human speech, is plain enough; and many of the animals about us share in this rude species of language, if language it is to be called. But how are we to describe the passage from this inarticulate language to the articulate speech of man? Man being an imitative creature, it has at all times been a favourite sup

position that his first words would be coined by an imitation of the cries of animals-that out of these cries he would make names for them. Such naming, however, could only form the commencement of a language-give an example, so to speak, of what might be done with this admirable pipe, this throat, these lips, ever breaking forth in some sound or other.

Max Müller admits that such imitations may carry us to a certain point on our road, but how are we to account, he asks, for words of objects which emit no sound, and are not immediately associated with such as do? He seems to think it impossible that men, after having framed, accidentally so to speak, a certain number of vocal signs, and having found the utility of them, should purposely frame other signs by a mere variation of those they already possessed. Yet such a stage in the process does not appear to us very difficult to imagine. Having some words and wanting others, one can imagine these other words coined by some variation of those already in use. Our lecturer puts the case thus :

"That sounds can be rendered in language by sounds, and that each language possesses a large stock of words imitating the sounds given out by cer

tain things, who would deny? And who would deny that some words originally expressive of sound only, might be transferred to other things which have some analogy with sound? But how are all things which do not appeal ideas of going, moving, standing, sinkto the sense of hearing-how are the ing, tasting, thinking, to be expressed?”

We will not long detain our readers over a matter on which they have probably come to the conclusion that nothing quite satisfactory can be said. The early stages by which the first people framed a language, are as irrecoverable as those early stages in each man's individual consciousness by which he advanced to the complete use of his senses. The suggestions which we would offer to bridge over