discoveries of Anquetil du Perron and others in India and France, at
the end of the last century; then materially assisted and furthered
by the researches of Sir William Jones, Colebrooke, and others, in
India and England during the early part of this century, and finally
have become identical with those of Wilson, Bopp, Lassen, and Max
Mueller, at the present day. The affinity which exists in a
mythological and philological point of view between the Aryan or
Indo-European languages on the one hand, and the Sanscrit on the
other, is now the first article of a literary creed, and the man who
denies it puts himself as much beyond the pale of argument as he who,
in a religious discussion, should meet a grave divine of the Church
of England with the strict contradictory of her first article, and
loudly declare his conviction, that there was no God. In a general
way, then, we may be permitted to dogmatize, and to lay it down as a
law which is always in force, that the first authentic history of a
nation is the history of its tongue. We can form no notion of the
literature of a country apart from its language, and the
consideration of its language necessarily involves the consideration
of its history. Here is England, for instance, with a language, and
therefore a literature, composed of Celtic, Roman, Saxon, Norse, and
Romance elements. Is not this simple fact suggestive of, nay, does it
not challenge us to, an inquiry into the origin and history of the
races who have passed over our island, and left their mark not only
on the soil, but on our speech? Again, to take a wider view, and to
rise from archaeology to science, what problem has interested the
world in a greater degree than the origin of man, and what toil has
not been spent in tracing all races back to their common stock? The
science of comparative philology--the inquiry, not into one isolated
language--for nowadays it may fairly be said of a man who knows only
one language that he knows none--but into all the languages of one