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the honor of having first discovered their true connection with it. Bunsen claims, as has been stated, that their place in the history of language, lies midway between the old Egyptian, which he regards as the most primeval language yet discovered, and the Sanscrit, "the Celtic, never having had the Sanscrit development; so that, while it exhibits a systematic affinity with it in some respects, it shows also in others a manifest estrangement from it." The old Egyptian exhibits, at any rate, a deep inward resemblance to it, not only in its roots, but also in the whole verb-structure of the language. On any and every view, the Sanscrit, old Egyptian, and Celtic languages are all of one common origin; and it is not at present absolutely certain, in what way we should state the true order of their sequence. It is manifest that the Celts led the van of occidental emigration through the wilderness of primeval Europe, and spread over Gaul, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, and Britain. But they nowhere maintained a firm foothold against the influx of the races that succeeded them, except at the most advanced outposts of the continent, whence there was no region beyond, into which they could be driven, except the sea.

The Celtic possesses now but a sporadic existence. The institutions that the Celts founded, and the very vocabulary that they used, were early overborne by Roman conquests, ideas, and influences. That German element also, in modern society, which has so largely modified all the aspects of the civilized world, came in afterwards upon them, with all its force, and overlaid them with its own peculiar character. And yet the Celtic has also left its manifest impress upon the German; which, being developed geographically, midway between the Celtic and Slavonic nations, has also partaken of their characteristics mutually, but much more of the Celtic than of the Slavonic. It is spoken still in the central and southern parts of Ireland, in the north-western parts of Scotland, in the Hebrides and the islands between England and Ireland, and also in Wales, and on the continent, in Brittany. The Celts are all now under the British yoke, except those living in Brittany, over whom France

rules. And as they form, in their geographical and historical position alike, the advanced guard of all the nations of Europe, it is both natural and logical to conclude that, if of Sanscrit origin, as is probable, and not of an antecedent date, they constitute the first cleavage from the great primary elemental mass of Indo-European mind.

The Celtic family includes

(1.) The Cymric.

(2.) The Gadhelic.1

Under the Cymric are included, (a.) The Welsh.

(b.) The Cornish, which was confined to Cornwall, and ceased to be a living language about 60 years ago.

(c.) The Low Breton or Armorican, which prevails in French Brittany. This whole class of Cymric languages is separated very distinctly from the kindred Gadhelic. Under the Gadhelic are included,

(a.) The Gaelic proper, or High Scotch.

(b.) The Irish or Erse.

(c.) The Manx, or that spoken in the Isle of Man.

The Irish language possesses beyond any other of the Celtic languages the most ancient forms. What the Germans call the Umlaut, prevails here abundantly.

In conclusion, it is worth the while to consider, even though in the briefest possible manner, the lessons which are taught us by historical philology. They are these: 1. The unity of the race. Nations and tribes that have no features physical, intellectual or spiritual, in common, are yet found, by a comparison of their languages, to be bound closely together in the bonds of a common primeval brotherhood. Every new discovery in philology reveals new

This is Diefenbach's classification of them, and differs somewhat from that of other scholars. He is a more recent investigator than others in this field, and is one of the highest of all authorities in philology; like Bopp, Pott, the brothers Grimm, and Ahrens, among the elder lights in this field, and Schleicher, Kuhn, Curtius, and Aufrecht, among its younger leaders.

2 This means a softening of the radical vowel of a word into an e sound, to denote a difference of person in a noun or of tense in a verb, as in our words brother and brethren, foot and feet, was and were.

and wider connections between them, and harmonizes the voice of history with that of the Scriptures, just as in geology, each new advance of the science serves to prove still more fully that the genesis of nature was exactly the same as the Genesis of Revelation.

2. The greatly determining influence in man's history, of the material, passive, and receptive side of his nature. Human language wonderfully exhibits the play of physical influences upon us in respect to our speech and our ideas, our experience and our employment, our pleasure and pain, our social state and our social progress. It almost says that man is the sport of circumstances. This it would say absolutely, were it not for the counteractive power of that gentle but ever active providence of God, which, while not disturbing at all the working of the most delicate, minute, unguarded elements of free agency in our nature, yet always broods over each individual, to influence him to the best possible development of himself, and to combine the actual results of his untrammelled choice and action, in harmony with that of every other one, in the production of that greatest possible amount of good to all. There is thus a true materialism, which philosophy must recognize as one of the fundamental bases of all her theories of man, whether individually or collectively. Not more truly is man himself a compound being, composed of body and soul, or the body itself a duality in the details of its structure, than human experience and human development are two sided, active and passive, material and spiritual.

3. The low degree of man's inventive power. The very word inventive indicates in its etymology, that he stumbles by chance upon his discoveries. The history of the arts of life, as well as that of the natural sciences, each wonderfully illustrates this fact, but neither of them more strikingly than that of language. All the new forms to be found in any language are but new combinations of elements in previous existence, and but slightly, and in the most accidental manner, generally, modified to a new use, or to a new form of expression for an old use. No new language is ever

made, or was ever made by man: for the reason that man is not only incapable of such a work, but also, that from the very sense of his incapacity for it, he is immovably averse both to the effort and to the very thought of it. How amazing accordingly seems the stupefied atheistic wonder of the sceptical German philologists at the fact, so incomprehensible to them, and to any one else who does not see in language the handiwork of God, that the earlier languages were so much more complete in their forms than those of modern times.

4. The necessity, for the proper comprehension of any one language, of a thorough survey and analysis of its connections with other and older languages. Comparative philology is a science of even more interest than comparative anatomy. In its two chief departments of comparative grammar and comparative lexicography, it reveals wonderful resemblances between the older and newer languages, any and all of them, even in the most minute details. Etymology, taught and studied on thoroughly scientific and philological principles, is not only one of the most engaging, but also one of the most profitable of all studies. The time is near at hand, and may it come soon, when in our universities and high schools the languages can no more be taught in a narrow, mechanical, and profitless manner; and when mere verbal accuracy in translation, and the careful skimming off of a few facts and principles of Syntax from the surface of the lesson, shall not be deemed adequate results, to be gained in so high a department of study. A professorship of Sanscrit, embracing the whole field of compara tive philology, is, as a part of the true ideal of classical instruction, an absolute necessity in every college; and it must erelong be recognized as such in every institution that aspires to the character of doing, honestly and earnestly, its true work in the world. There is surely no one department of instruction in the collegiate course that, in respect to all the elements and uses of a liberal education, can compare in importance with that of the languages. And to be found ignorant amid all the lights of modern philology, of the

multiplied connections of Greek and Latin, one with the other, as well as of their connection with the Sanscrit before them, and with the modern languages behind them; to make no use, or but little use of these great facts, enlightening and inspiring as they are, in the work of instruction, should entitle him who thus dishonors his high calling, to exchange at once his false position, as a professed guide to others, for the true one, of a learner for himself in respect to its first principles. With the educated men of the country are lodged its fortune and its fate. And republicanism of the highest form claims as one of its chief supports a broad and columnar style of scholarship among them.

ARTICLE VI.

COMPARISON OF JEREMIAH 23: 5, 6, AND 33: 14-16.

BY S. A. WORCESTER, MISSIONARY TO THE CHEROKEES.

To see clearly the mutual relation of these two passages, let us place the corresponding parts side by side.

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