Scandinavia, that they were the burial-places of a people more ancient than the Celts. Similar remains discovered in France, are supposed by MM. Robert and Serres to have belonged to the Cymrian or Welsh branch of the Celtic race; and these anatomists suppose a second class of heads of a larger shape, found in tombs containing metallic implements, to have been those of a people allied to the Irish or Gaelic branch. A third set of monumental relics are referred by Retzius to a superior race, supposed to have been Swedes or Saxons, or some branch of the Teutonic family.

It is much to be regretted that the ancient nations of Europe, those races from whom Englishmen, Germans, and Frenchmen are descended, were so obstinate in their barbarism, that they despised the use of letters, and remained for centuries in intercourse with the cultivated Massilians, and with Roman colonies, without adopting this art; and that all the sepulchral remains of the northern regions are without inscriptions, or a single name that may be a clue to their various history. On the other hand, parts of Asia and Africa, now the seat of barbarism, are covered, if we may use the expression, with inscriptions. Numerous and long inscriptions scattered over all India on rocks, the sides of caves, and on various monuments, in Cabul, through the ancient empires of Iran and Assyria, through Hadramaut and Oman, the remotest districts of Arabia, and through the North of Africa, to say nothing of the more celebrated relics of Egypt, prove that the use of letters was well known in these countries at a time when Europe was barbarous. In all those countries inscriptions, which have been gazed at with stupid wonder by the descendants of the people who composed them, and have been regarded as the workmanship of genii and imps, have been at length read and explained for the first time after twenty centuries. All this has been done within a few years. The discovery began, as every one knows, with the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphics. The efforts of Dr Young and Champollion gained the clue, unravelling mysteries in a field where it has been reserved for a distinguished scholar of the present day (the Chevalier Bunsen) to erect the edifice of the most ancient history

of the world,--a monument of the intelligence of modern Europe more exalted than the royal pomp of the Pyramids, whose real builders now, for the first time, come forth to our view after having been concealed in the rubbish of 4000 years. Scarcely less remarkable is the achievement of our illustrious countryman Mr Prinsep, in the East, who has read and interpreted the inscriptions spread over India and Afghanistan. It is a curious fact, that these most ancient records of the furthest East preserve not the victories of warriors, but the decrees of Buddhistical sovereigns, commanding throughout the provinces of their great empire the establishment of hospitals for the cure of men and brute animals. Many curious facts in history have been preserved by these inscriptions, and among others the extension of a Macedonian empire over a great part of India, and the conquest of the Island of Ceylon by a sovereign of Hindustan three centuries before the Christian era. Not less remarkable are the inscriptions cut in letters composed of wedgeshaped strokes which are spread through the empire of the great Cyrus, and have been lately read. These were engraved by the subjects of the Persian kings. Another set of these cuneiform inscriptions belonged to the older Assyrians and Babylonians. The clue to all these discoveries was obtained by Dr Grotefend, Lassen, and Burnouf; and by its aid our countryman, Major Rawlinson, has succeeded in reading the history of the Achæmenidæ engraven on their own monuments in a language which was doubtless spoken at the courts of Susa and Persepolis, but has not been heard since the overthrow of the last Darius. Even the old Assyrian inscriptions are now partially understood, and the name of Nebuchadnezzar has been found on the walls of his palaces.

Many ethnological facts may be collected from these inscriptions. I shall instance the supposed existence of the Affghans among the nations subject to Darius, and who, doubtless, contributed to form the armies that fought at Marathon and Thermopyle. It would be curious to find the ancestors of Akhbar Khan among the invaders of Europe 2000 years ago.

The inscriptions spread through Arabia and Ethiopia will

probably throw light on the most ancient relations between Asia and Africa. We may expect to find in them the history of those queens of Ethiopia who reigned successively under the name of Candace, known to the generals of Augustus Cæsar, and one of whom is mentioned by St Luke the Evangelist.

I shall only refer to another set of inscriptions deciphered within a few years in several of the ancient Italic languages, by means of which we have gained some knowledge of the languages spoken in Italy before the ascendancy of Rome. They have afforded an ethnological result, which is also of some importance in relation to classical history. It seems from them that the old Italic nations, the Latins, the Umbrians, the Opici or Oscans, the Ausonians, the Siculians, the Samnites and Sabines, all the old Italic nations except the Tuscans, were not, as the older writers, Frêret, Larcher, and even as Niebuhr supposed, partly Celtic or other barbaric tribes, and partly Greeks, or at least Pelasgi, but a distinct and particular branch of the Indo-European family of nations, and that they all spoke dialects of one language, which may be termed the old Italic, and of which Latin is but one variety.

The most important aids to historical researches into the origin and affinity of nations is undoubtedly the analytical comparison of languages. This may be considered as almost a new department of knowledge, since, although long ago sketched out, and followed to a certain extent, it has been wonderfully augmented in recent times, and it is only in its later development that it comes to have any important relations with ethnology. Leibnitz is considered to have been its originator. The Adelungs, Vater, Klaproth, Bopp, Frederick Schlegel, and Jacob Grimm, have been among its most successful cultivators; and lastly, to William von Humboldt it owes its greatest extension and the character of a profound philosophical investigation. But it is not, in this point of view that I contemplate the results of philological researches. It is as an auxiliary to history, and as serving in many instances to extend, combine, and confirm historical evidence, that the comparison of languages contributes to the advancement of

ethnology. Great caution is, however, requisite when we attempt to draw inferences as to the relationship of nations from the resemblance or even identity of their language. We know that conquests, followed by permanent subjugation, have caused nations to lose their original languages and adopt those of their conquerors. The intercourse of traffic between neighbouring countries, the introduction of a new religion or of new habits of life, especially when rude and barbarous tribes have been brought into near connection with civilized ones, have given rise to great changes in the originat idioms of nations, and have caused languages originally different to approximate. It is only when we have good reasons for believing that no contingent event has interfered to change the original speech of any particular race, or supplant it by the idiom of a different tribe, that we can be justified in founding on such ground an argument as to affinity in descent. Evidence may be collected on this point sometimes from historical facts, or from considerations founded on the known condition of particular nations. When we learn from history that two nations have been remotely separated from each other from a very distant age, and have never been brought into habits of intercourse, we may presume, that marks of affinity discovered in their languages can bear no other explanation than that of an original unity of descent. In other instances, phenomena are discoverable in languages themselves which enable us to determine whether traits of resemblance have been the effect of late intercourse between nations, or arose in the original development of their languages, and thus prove a common origin in the tribes of people who speak them. A careful analysis will often detect analogies of such kind as to afford undoubted evidence of primitive affinity between languages which have acquired in the lapse of time and the course of events great differences, and when each dialect has become unintelligible to people who speak another of the same stock. The investigation of affinity between languages has lately assumed the character of a scientific study, and when pursued with reference to certain general principles, has led to striking and important results. I shall briefly advert to some of

these principles which have not yet been stated, as far as I know, in a systematic manner.

It is the prevalent opinion of philologists, that the most extensive relations between languages and those which are the least liable to be effaced by time and foreign intercourse, are the fundamental principles of construction. Grammatical construction, or the laws which govern the relations of words in sentences, appear to be very enduring and constant, since it extends to whole classes of languages which have few words in common, though it is supposed that they originally had more. But beyond this, there is a cognate character in words themselves which pervades the entire vocabulary of a whole family of languages, the words being formed in the same manner, and according to some artificial rule. This may be exemplified by the monosyllabic structure of the Chinese and Indo-Chinese languages, and by the principle of vocalic harmony pervading the languages of High Asia, to which I shall have occasion again to advert. Of grammatical analogy, or correspondence in the laws of inflection and construction, we have a specimen in the Aboriginal languages of the New World, whose structure is known to be very complicated and artificial, and at the same time common to all the idioms of America which have been examined.

Another example of a more definite character is afforded by the grammatical structure of the languages of High Asia and Great Tartary, and a still more striking one by that of the Indo-European idioms.

Connected with the subject of the formation of words is the remark, that in the various branches of particular families of languages which spring by gradual development from the same root, the elements of words, consonants and occasionally vowels, are found to undergo changes according to certain rules. Particular classes of consonants in one language are substituted for other classes in another language of the same family. One European idiom, for example, substitutes palatine letters for sibilunts; another rejects them both, and substitutes labials in their place. When corresponding phenomena can be traced through a great part of the vocabulary of two languages, we recognise