d me a table (key) to _your_ own
transliteration. For your table of the forty-eight is otherwise not easy
for my good English readers, or even for me; and to most it is
unintelligible. With the others I shall soon find my way.

I intend to insert a chapter on definite terminology. I think it must be
settled from the only tenable hypothesis, namely, the spreading abroad
from one central point in mid-Asia,--that is, from the great district which
(originally) was bounded towards the north by the open Polar Sea, with the
Ural Island or Peninsula; to the west by the Caucasus and Ararat; east by
the Altai and Altan Mountains; and south by the continuation of the Taurus
Mountains, which stretch in the interior from west east, as far as the
Hindu-Kush.

Therefore, for Turanian == Ural-Altaic, or the northeastern branch.

For Semitic == Aramean, from Aram, the Mesopotamian highland.

For Japhetic == Eastern highland, or southeastern branch.

What do you think of this? I must get free from Semitie, etc., because
_Chamitic_ appears to be primitive Semitic, just as Turanian leans towards
Iranian.

The carriage is there. Best thanks to Aufrecht.

You are indulging in a beautiful dream if you imagine that I have Dietrich
here. I have studied his two volumes. I wish I could summon him to help
me. He was most anxious to come to England. I am afraid of a young scholar
whom I do not know personally.

[40.]

_August 4, 1853._

Only a word, my dear friend, to express to you my delight and admiration
at your Turanian article. I was so carried away by it that I was occupied
with it till far into the night. It is exhaustive, convincing, and
succinct.

What do you feel about the present state of the investigations on the
Basque? I have convinced myself by my extracts from the grammar and
dictionary that Basque is Turanian, but I have nothing fit for printing. I
have never seen Rask's work. Do you know it, and can you make anything out
of it?

There is only one point on which I do not agree with you. You say there is
no purely monosyllabic language. But even that wretched modern Chinese has
no dissyllabic word, as that would entail a loss of the accent. Or do you
deny this? I have covered the baldness of our German vulgarism, "thief,"
"liar," in Boehtlingk versus Schott, and said, "With an animosity more
German than Attic." Does that please you? Greetings to Aufrecht.

[41.]

ABBEY LODGE, _August 22, 1853_.

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