of new stars in the firmament, according to what astronomers tell us, must be a pre-órdained event in the annals of creation. And if you agree with me in these reflections, you will also methinks feel as I do, that in tracing the history of any pursuit, we are not so much indulging a fond curiosity, or following the progress of man's ingenuity, as watching the beautiful courses whereby God hath gradually removed the veil from before some hidden knowledge, first lifting up one corner thereof, then another, till the whole is rolled away and you will with me delight in studying the purposes and applications thereby intended, both towards our humble instruction and His increasing glory.

LECTURE THE SECOND;

ON THE

COMPARATIVE STUDY OF LANGUAGES.

PART II.

SUMMARY OF RESULTS exposed in the preceding Lecture.— Continuation.-Third; Relationship between the different families.-Present state of the study; its two principal Schools, founded on the comparison of words, and of grammatical forms.-Remarks directed towards reconciling them.-Errors regarding the supposed power of development in languages; opinion of Humboldt.-Power of external circumstances to alter the grammatical structure of a language. Proposed rule for the comparison of words.-Dr. Young's application of the calculus of probabilities to the discovery of the common origin of two languages, by a comparison of words.-Lepsius on the affinities between Hebrew and Sanskrit. His farther and inedited researches into the connexion between Hebrew and ancient Egyptian.-Proposed comparison of Semitic and IndoEuropean grammatical forms (referred to a note).—Conclusions of modern Ethnographers.-First; That all language was originally one; Alex. von Humboldt, Academy of St. Petersburgh, Merian, Klaproth, Fred. Schlegel.-Secondly; That the separation was by a violent and sudden cause; Herder, Turner, Abel-Rémusat, Niebuhr, Balbi.

AMERICAN LANGUAGES. Difficulties arising from their multiplicity. Attempts of Vater, Smith-Barton, and Malte-Brun, to trace them to Asiatic languages.-Unity of family proved by similarity of grammar; subdivision into groups. Their number accounted for by the experience of the science; con

firmation of their Asiatic origin from other coincidences.General remarks on the providential connexion of the different states of religion with different families of languages.

ALBEIT, in my last Discourse, after leading you through a compendious history of philological ethnography in ages past, I brought you into our own times, and endeavoured to make you acquainted with the labours of many who yet live; nevertheless, I may be said to have there only given you the proeme, as it were, or introduction to the modern study, and to the principles whereon it is conducted. For, such was the abundance of matter furnished by my theme, that, after all convenient abridgment used, I saw myself compelled either to abuse your patience by too long a discourse, or divide my subject, to the disparagement of its better understanding. And so, choosing this part, which threw the difficulties upon myself rather than upon those who so courteously attend me,

"Contro il piacer mio per piacerli,

Trassi dell' acqua non sazia la spugna."

In requital for this, I must request you to summon back to your recollection the chiefest points whereof we seemed to have gained sufficient evidence; and these are, that the comparative study of languages has brought into certain relationship many which heretofore had seemed divided in sunder, forming thereof great groups or families, so that nations and tribes

covering vast tracts of territory are in this study accounted as only one people; and that its subsequent researches tend in every instance to diminish the number of independent languages, to widen the pale of these larger provinces, and to bring the number of original stocks much nearer to what might be supposed to have arisen on a sudden, among the few inhabitants of the earlier world.

The next important point to be ascertained is, whether any relationship can be discovered between languages of different families, so as to deduce that they have once been in closer connexion than at present; in other words, that they descend from a common stock. Now, the inquiries which have been carried on to ascertain this delicate and important point, are so intimately connected with the present state of the study, and the schools into which it is divided, that it becomes absolutely necessary for us to interrupt our course, and examine this actual condition of philological ethnography; if, indeed, we are to call an interruption what essentially enters into the design of our original plan. As one of the schools sets but little value upon the methods pursued by the other, and consequently upon the results thence gained, it would be unjust to receive them as undisputed; and I should be deceiving you were I to lay before you these results as the uncontested discoveries of the science, or without explaining how far they may be considered satisfactory.

Two things I will premise; first, that so far as we have proceeded, all agree; so that the results I have laid before you may be considered as quite placed out of doubt; secondly, that you will find we have suffered nothing, or rather have gained, by the severer principles which one school has adopted.

The principal ethnographers of modern times may be divided into two classes; one whereof seeks the affinity of languages in their words, the other in their grammar: their methods may be respectively called, lexical and grammatical comparison. The chief supporters of the first method are principally to be found in France, England, and Russia; such as Klaproth, Balbi, Abel-Rémusat, Whiter, Vans Kennedy, Gaulianoff, the younger Adelung, and Merian. In Germany, Von Hammer, and perhaps Frederick Schlegel, might be considered as of the same school. The principle followed by these writers may be perhaps summed up in the observation made somewhere by Klaproth, that "words are the stuff or matter of language, and grammar its fashioning or form." And in a work by the late Baron Merian, which Klaproth edited, we have all the principles whereon he and his school conduct the study clearly and systematically laid down, with all the results they have thence deduced.* The other class is confined in a great measure to Germany, and reckons W. A. von Schlegel and the lamented Baron W.

*

'Principes de l'Étude comparative des Langues." Paris,