Happy the man who can make knowledge
entertaining! Thrice happy his readers! The author of these Lectures is
already well known as not only, perhaps, the best living scholar of
Sanscrit literature, (and by scholar we mean one who regards study as a
means, not an end, and who is capable of drawing original conclusions,)
but a _savant_ who can teach without tiring, and can administer learning
as if it were something else than medicine. Whoever reads this volume will
regret that Mr. Mueller's eminent qualifications for the Boden
Professorship at Oxford should have failed to turn the scale against the
assumed superior orthodoxy of his competitor. Was it in Sanscrit that he
was heterodox? or in Hindoo mythology?

The Lectures are nine in number. The titles of them will show the range
and nature of Mr. Mueller's dissertations. They are, (1.) On the science of
language as one of the physical sciences; (2.) On the growth of language
in contradistinction to the history of language; (3.) On the empirical
stage in the science of language; (4.) On the classificatory stage in the
same; (5.) On the genealogical classification of languages; (6.) On
comparative grammar; (7.) On the constituent elements of language; (8.) On
the morphological classification of languages; (9.) On the theoretical
stage in the science of languages and the origin of language. An Appendix
contains a genealogical table of languages; and an ample Index (why have
authors forgotten, what was once so well known, that an index is all that
saves the contents of a book from being mere birds in the bush?) makes the
volume as useful on the shelf as it is interesting and instructive in the
hand. Of the catholic spirit in which Mr. Mueller treats his various topics
of discussion and illustration, his own theory of the true method of
investigation is the best proof.

"There are two ways," he says, in discussing the origin of
language, "of judging of former philosophers. One is, to put aside
their opinions as simply erroneous, where they differ from our
own. This is the least satisfactory way of studying ancient
philosophy. Another way is, to try to enter into the opinions of
those from whom we differ, to make them, our a time at least, our
own, till at least we discover the point of view from which each
philosopher looked at the facts before him and catch the light in
which he regarded them. We shall then find that there is much less