h Greek, and the Celtic, the Teutonic, and Slavonic languages, together
likewise with the ancient dialects of India and Persia, must have sprung
from an earlier language, the mother of the whole Indo-European or Aryan
family of speech; if we see how Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac, with several
minor dialects, are but different impressions of one and the same common
type, and must all have flowed from the same source, the original language
of the Semitic race; and if we add to these two, the Aryan and Semitic, at
least one more well-established class of languages, the Turanian,
comprising the dialects of the nomad races scattered over Central and
Northern Asia, the Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic,(18) Samoyedic, and Finnic,
all radii from one common centre of speech:--if we watch this stream of
language rolling on through centuries in these three mighty arms, which,
before they disappear from our sight in the far distance, clearly show a
convergence towards one common source: it would seem, indeed, as if there
were an historical life inherent in language, and as if both the will of
man and the power of time could tell, if not on its substance, at least on
its form. And even if the mere local varieties of speech were not
considered sufficient ground for excluding language from the domain of
natural science, there would still remain the greater difficulty of
reconciling with the recognized principles of physical science the
historical changes affecting every one of these varieties. Every part of
nature, whether mineral, plant, or animal, is the same in kind from the
beginning to the end of its existence, whereas few languages could be
recognized as the same after the lapse of but a thousand years. The
language of Alfred is so different from the English of the present day
that we have to study it in the same manner as we study Greek and Latin.
We can read Milton and Bacon, Shakespeare and Hooker; we can make out
Wycliffe and Chaucer; but, when we come to the English of the thirteenth
century, we can but guess its meaning, and we fail even in this with works
previous to the Ormulum and Layamon. The historical changes of language
may be more or less rapid, but they take place at all times and in all
countries. They have reduced the rich and powerful idiom of the poets of
the Veda to the meagre and impure jargon of the modern Sepoy. They have
transformed the language of the Zend-Avesta and of the mountain records of
Behistun into that of