roglyphics and cuneiform inscriptions put together. The stories
they have told us are beginning to be old stories now. Many of you
have heard them before. But do not let them cease to be marvels, like
so many things which cease to be marvels because they happen every
day. And do not think that there is nothing left for you to do. There
are more marvels still to be discovered in language than have ever
been revealed to us; nay, there is no word, however common, if only
you know how to take it to pieces, like a cunningly contrived work of
art, fitted together thousands of years ago by the most cunning of
artists, the human mind, that will not make you listen and marvel more
than any chapter of the Arabian Nights.

But I must not allow myself to be carried away from my proper subject.
All I wish to impress on you by way of introduction is that the
results of the Science of Language, which, without the aid of
Sanskrit, would never have been obtained, form an essential element of
what we call a liberal, that is an historical education--an education
which will enable a man to do what the French call _s'orienter_, that
is, "to find his East," "his true East," and thus to determine his
real place in the world; to know, in fact, the port whence man
started, the course he has followed, and the port toward which he has
to steer.

We all come from the East--all that we value most has come to us from
the East, and in going to the East, not only those who have received a
special Oriental training, but everybody who has enjoyed the
advantages of a liberal, that is, of a truly historical education,
ought to feel that he is going to his "old home," full of memories, if
only he can read them. Instead of feeling your hearts sink within you,
when next year you approach the shores of India, I wish that every one
of you could feel what Sir William Jones felt, when, just one hundred
years ago, he came to the end of his long voyage from England, and saw
the shores of India rising on the horizon. At that time, young men
going to the wonderland of India were not ashamed of dreaming dreams
and seeing visions; and this was the dream dreamed and the vision seen
by Sir William Jones, then simple Mr. Jones:

"When I was at sea last August (that is in August, 1783), on
my last voyage to this country (India) I had long and
ardently desired to visit, I found one evening, on inspecting
the observations of the day, that _India_ lay befo