n were of one
language and of one speech. Though on the same authority they believed
that the plain of Shinar has seen that confusion of tongues whence
sprang all the languages upon earth, they seem to have considered that
the words of each separate language were nevertheless derived from this
original tongue. And as Hebrew was the language of the Chosen People,
it was naturally assumed that this original tongue was Hebrew. Hence
we find Dante declaring in his treatise on the Vulgar Tongue (Dante "de
Vulgari Eloquio", I. 4.) that the first word man uttered in Paradise
must have been "El," the Hebrew name of his Maker, while as a result of
the fall of Adam, the first utterance of every child now born into this
world of sin and misery is "heu," Alas! After the splendidly engraved
bronze plates containing, as we now know, ritual regulations for certain
cults, were discovered in 1444 at the town of Gubbio, in Umbria, they
were declared, by some authorities, to be written in excellent Hebrew.
The study of them has been the fascination and the despair of many a
philologist. Thanks to the devoted labours of numerous scholars, mainly
in the last sixty years, the general drift of these inscriptions is
now known. They are the only important records of the ancient Umbrian
language, which was related closely to that of the Samnites and,
though not so closely, to that of the Romans on the other side of
the Apennines. Yet less than twenty years ago a book was published in
Germany, which boasts itself the home of Comparative Philology,
wherein the German origin of the Umbrian language was no less solemnly
demonstrated than had been its Celtic origin by Sir William Betham in
1842.

It is good that the study of language should be historical, but the
first requisite is that the history should be sound. How little had been
learnt of the true history of language a century ago may be seen from a
little book by Stephen Weston first published in 1802 and several
times reprinted, where accidental assonance is considered sufficient to
establish connection. Is there not a word "bad" in English and a word
"bad" in Persian which mean the same thing? Clearly therefore Persian
and English must be connected. The conclusion is true, but it is drawn
from erroneous premises. As stated, this identity has no more value
than the similar assonance between the English "cover" and the Hebrew
"kophar", where the history of "cover" as coming through French from