the Welsh word trev (a house), when preceded by the prefix a, becomes a-threv, the mute being rendered into an aspirate. The Welsh marw (dead) becomes di-varu (immortal), the labial w being changed into the vocal aspirate. This is the reverse of a Cockney peculiarity, which makes divide, di-wide.

Dr Meyer concludes, from a careful examination of the Celtic tongues, that while they are of the Sanscrit class, they have decided affinities with the Egyptian, the Semitic, and the Finnish languages, and may be regarded as more primitive or ancient than any of the other Indo-European tongues; that is to say, they broke off from the parent stem, and took a fixed set before any of the others had reached their characteristic development.

Tartar, Tatar, or Turanian Languages.

themselves was the first occasion of bringing out these | dently to suit a certain habit of articulation. Thus uniformities of interchange, and has completely established the existence of two distinct German stocks, having nearly the same vocabulary differently articulated; one of which, including the low dialects, is the older and softer of the two. Although the two stocks branch out into subordinate divisions, the characteristic difference of pronunciation follows them throughout. Thus where we say day, the High German says tac, tag; where we say sleep, they say slafan, schlafan. The Scandinavian tongues rank with Dutch, Flemish, Frisian, Anglo-Saxon, and our own language, among the low German class. Each of these tongues has its distinctive and assignable peculiarities of vocables and grammar, showing an independent growth subsequent to their separation from the parent stem, and doubtless determined by the characters and fortunes of the separate peoples. The only point touching on their connections or differences to which we can here allude, is that relating to Anglo-Saxon and English. It is customary to assert that Anglo-Saxon was the only Gothic language in this country prior to the Norman invasion; and that shortly after this event, it became transmuted into English, a language differing from it in some of the most durable peculiarities of grammatical structure. But when we consider the difficulty there would be in inducing a whole people accustomed to say, to bear, to die, &c. as the infinitive forms of the verb, to change to the form bearan, where the preposition is at the end, there being no assignable motive for making such a change, we may safely assert that no sufficient proof has hitherto been adduced that the opposite change took place within a century, and that a large class of other changes of a kind equally difficult and uncalled for was made within the same period. Hitherto, the growth of English out of Anglo-Saxon has been tacitly assumed as a thing hardly requiring any evidence farther than the affinity of the languages, and the known disappearance of one of them; the steps adequate to effect so stupendous a revolution in the habits of articulation over a large empire have never been suggested by any one.

In the English language there are computed to be about 53,000 words, of which 3820 are primitives; of these primitives, 2513 are common to English and the German tongues; and 1250 common to English and the classic tongues. This calculation will serve to show how far the knowledge of English avails us in acquiring Greek and Latin, as well as the modern European languages.

The Celtic tongues have only of late been shown to belong to the class of Indo-European languages; but the proof of their being so related is now considered complete. They suffer the same division into high and low as the rest of the family. The high are the Welsh, Cornish, and Armorican; the low are the Erse division, or the Gaelic, Irish, and Manx. The high languages are also the youngest, and the peoples they belong to are believed to have been the latest to occupy their seats in the west of Europe. The periods of the westerly migrations of the Celtic nations have not been clearly made out; one set of movements are traced to the sixth century before Christ, and others preceded this epoch by an unknown interval.

One striking characteristic of the Celtic tongues is their adhering to the same letters as the Sanscrit, Greek, and Latin, in the words that are regularly changed in the Gothic tongues. Thus in the word tooth, which is spelt with a d (danta) in Sanscrit, changed into to in all the German languages, the Celtic adheres to the Sanscrit; in Welsh it is dant, in Irish dead. So pada, Sanscrit; ped, Welsh. This peculiarity has enabled Dr Meyer to specify certain English words that have been obtained direct from the Celts, and not from the common ancestry of the Indo-European tongues. Thus take, tread, taper, time, are examples of words so derived; also bake, bath, basket, bride. Another Celtic peculiarity is the regular alteration of certain consonants when preceded by vowels, evi

These languages belong to the vast group of nations that have received the name of Tartars, and are commonly understood to lead a pastoral and migratory life. They have never attained a high degree of civilisation, and what they have seems only in part their own. Their celebrity in the world has been owing to the conquests that they have achieved over civilised nations by the brute force of numbers. They cover the immense plains of Central and Northern Asia, and extend into the Polar regions of Europe. The name Turanian has reference to the high table-land of Asia, called Turan, as the lower table-land is called Iran.

M. Abel Remusat, in his work on the Tartar languages, divides them into four great tribes radically distinct from each other. Beginning at the east, where they are in contact with the Chinese, the first division is the Tongous. Their territory is divided into two halfs by the line that fixes the frontiers of the Russian and Chinese empires. From them have proceeded, among others, the Mantchou Tartars, at present the ruling dynasty of China. The second division is the Mongols, celebrated for their conquests under Ghenghiz Khan. The greater number of their tribes are now under the power of China. The third division, more numerous than either of the other two, is the Turks, whose origin is more westerly: they also are known from their vast conquering career, and from their still possessing one of the largest empires of Europe. The fourth division is the Tibetans, or Tartars of Thibet, the more exclusive occupants of the table-land of Central Asia, and having, from their position, close connections with China, Persia, India, and Tartary. The Mongols have for a long time governed their country, but at present the Chinese exercise over it a preponderating influence.

Respecting the Tartar languages, M. Remusat sums up the conclusions of his researches as follows:-The words that refer to objects of the first necessity and prominence are radically different in all the four, and are not analogous to any other known language. The resemblances that may be traced throughout them all refer to the objects of the arts, to titles, dignities, and religious or philosophical ideas: they prove that there have been some common influences of commerce, war, politics, and religion; and they are of the same character as the words introduced from foreign languages. The grammatical forms are few in number and very little complicated; the relations of names are marked by affixes or annexed words, without elision or fusion; the verbs are in general without conjugations; the tenses most used are impersonal; the construction is rigorously inverse; their literature, like all their philosophical and religious ideas, is entirely borrowed.

Another class of nations, named the Ugrian tribes, are considered as having affinity with these four Tartar races. Their original country reached through northern Europe, from the Danish islands to the North Cape of Asia; but they have been driven from the greater part of this region, and the only portion of them now extant in the heart of Europe is the Magyars of Hungary. The Finns, Laplanders, &c. are of this race. The relations above alluded to, of some of the Celtic peculiari

ties to the Finnish languages, may be connected with the fact, that the Celts, in marching through the European continent, most probably encountered Finnish or some of the Ugrian tribes. The Celts being the first of the Indo-European peoples to occupy Europe, they must have borne the chief brunt of the battle with its previous occupants of the Turanian family. It has even been supposed that the Celts must themselves be considered as a mixture of an Indo-European tribe with one of Finnish or Lappish descent.

The Old Iberian language of Spain, of which the Basque is supposed to be a relic, is likewise classed among the primitive languages of Europe, prior to the advent of any Indo-European people.

The aborigines of India, who were subdued from the west by an Iranian tribe, speaking the Sanscrit language, are also reckoned of Turanian or Tartar descent. In the south of India they are still traced as a separate race, having a speech allied to the Tartar.

Attempts have been made to include other scattered tribes in the same great family; but the evidence for such alliances is at best but precarious. For example, the languages of Australia have been supposed to have some affinity with the Tamulian or aboriginal Tartar of the south of India.

Semitic Languages.

The prominent members of this tribe are the Hebrew and the Arabic, to which are added the Aramaic, or the languages of the ancient nations of Aram, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Babylonia, which were Syriac in the west and Chaldaic in the east; and also the Ethiopic, or the ancient and now sacred language of Abyssinia.

In addition to these are six other languages still unplaced. Dr Latham gives copious lists from the vocabularies of these various tongues, and discovers a great many cases of coincidence, such as to show the probability of the common descent of many of the remotelysituated tribes.

The ancient Egyptian language is perhaps the most celebrated and interesting of the African tongues. The study of its structure has led some to the belief that it has a midway position between the Indo-European and Semitic languages, and forms a connecting link between the two, as if it were a branch from a very old and primitive language from which both these great tribes alike sprung. The affinities and resemblances of the Celtic, the most ancient of the Iranian tongues, to the Egyptian, have been brought forward to support this view. It is one of the points respecting ancient Egypt especially urged in the recent erudite work of the Chevalier Bunsen.

The Malay Languages

form a class by themselves. They are spoken in Malacca, and the islands of the East Indian Archipelago (Java, Sumatra, &c.), and are also found, in close proximity with Africa, on the island of Madagascar. The dialects of the Polynesian Islands in the Pacific Ocean have been lately identified with the same class; thereby furnishing an important clue to the peopling of these remote localities. A difficulty still remains with the Papua language, spoken by the black and woolly-haired tribes in Australia and New Guinea, who are also the aborigines of the island of Borneo, and who occupy a few small Polynesian islands.

Chinese Language.

The Hebrew language is remarkable on a great many accounts. Its alphabet has been adopted by European nations, whose own languages are of a totally different tribe. It is of a structure considerably different from the Indo-European tongues, and supposed to be in some respects more primitive than theirs. The roots are for the most part verbs; that is to say, action is the primitive idea of each-which circumstance, how-dient of adding syllables to one another in the way of ever, we have seen to be the most natural, or the most accordant with the operation of the human faculties in the invention of articulate sounds. What is more remarkable about these roots, is their being dissyllabic or trisyllabic; that is, they are made up of three consonants, or consonantial syllables. The inflections are formed by internal changes in the words, more than by affixes and prefixes, as in the Iranian tongues, being similar to the strong conjugation in English-as come, came, brake, broke. There is no verb of general affirmation like our verb is, are, were.

The Hebrew language has been found capable of the highest order of poetry, and the Arabic has served the purposes of scientific expression, as well as literary uses in general. The ancient Phoenicians and Carthaginians spoke a Hebrew dialect.

Like other portions of their civilisation, the language of the Chinese is peculiar, and contrasts with all other nations. It has been called monosyllabic, not only to distinguish it from the trisyllabic roots of the Semitic tongues, but to show that it has not adopted the expeinflections, as in the Iranian languages. For denoting the connections, and relations, and circumstances expressed by inflections, it uses separate words; and in showing the exact force of these words, dependence is placed on their arrangement in the first place; and in the second place, on the tone and accent of their pronunciation. The words are all names of objects, and they require to stand for nouns, verbs, adjectives, or prepositions, as the case may be. There are said to be no more than a few hundreds of these syllable words to compose the language; these being multiplied three or four times by variety of accent.

The writing of the Chinese is wholly independent of their speech, and is the only language universally understood over the whole empire. It is exactly in the predicament of our numerals 1, 2, 3, &c., which are of no particular language, and have a different sound in each; being universal to the eye, but not to the ear. The process of comparing picture - marks with sounds, which gave rise to the alphabet, has never been performed by the Chinese.

American Languages.

These languages received the name' Polysynthetic,' from their excessive tendency to agglutinate syllables into long words; and this being supposed to be a kind of inflection like the Greek or Sanscrit forms, it was thought to indicate a high order of speech. But in fact nothing could be farther from regular inflections than such a process; it being nothing but an indiscriminate huddling of syllables; sometimes two or three put on for the same meaning, evidently caused by a habit or instinct of flowing articulation. No satisfactory attempt has yet been made to classify these languages, or to trace an affinity between them and the other great families above-mentioned. Alleged affinities are denied by those most intimately acquainted with the languages themselves.

CONSTITUTION OF SOCIETY-GOVERNMENT.

In the two preceding numbers we have drawn attention | our thoughts pass into other hearts, or to share the to the physical and mental constitution of man, and to the great instrument of thought by which he is enabled to give scope to the development of that constitution either in an individual or in a collective capacity. We devote the present sheet to a review of man's social nature to that condition in which he lays aside the sole consideration of self, and enters upon a scheme of union and co-relation, whereby he finds his own happiness in the happiness of those with whom he is associated; and advances in civilisation and refinement not as an individual only, but as a nation or race, and that in proportion to the perfection of the social system he has been able to eliminate.

what appears to be the primary principles of human relationship; for there are not wanting parties who would endeavour to rear systems of society in which the family compact is to have no place, and parental care is to be absolved from its duties-a dream of the imagination, which the common sense of mankind will ever reject as visionary, and consider, for all good and enduring purposes, to be utterly impracticable.

Society, as has been shown, is necessarily composed of distinct families. The manner, however, in which these families should associate with respect to each other, is a question which has been often agitated, and here deserves some degree of notice. The true explanation, we think, lies in an appeal to nature.

It would appear that from the beginning of the world every nation has consisted of a certain number of families, and that each family, in its general circumstances, has been independent of others. Families, as in the patriarchal times, may have been less or more dependent on or connected with the head of a tribe; but we nowhere read of families yielding up their individual identity, and living in private community with each other. Each family has always had its own house, its own joys, sorrows, hopes, and fears. Each father of a family, a sovereign within his own domain, has been left to govern his little realm, and to undertake the obligation of finding his wife, children, and domestics in the means of daily subsistence.

A practice so universal cannot be supposed to be a violation of either nature or convenience. It has sprung up from the wants and feelings of mankind, and may be said to be a spontaneous result of unalterable circumstances. Tracing it to its true source in the mental constitution, we find that the independence of individual action affords the widest scope for personal enterprise, perseverance, and other useful emotions. No doubt it is selfish in principle, but selfishness may be productive of good as well as bad ends, and is acknowledgedly allied to some of the nobler aspirations. It is at least certain that individual independence, so far as family government, location, and industrial pursuits are concerned, is the basis of all which commands respect in civilised society.

In reply to this, it is urged that, by leaving society to spontaneous arrangement, there comes a time when each nation is consumed by its internal disorders. The clever, the industrious, and the persevering, become wealthy; vast numbers, either from lack of capacity or opportunity, sink into a state of extreme indigence; and a number become criminals, and prey on the others. There is truth in this severe statement of facts; for in every nation there are rich and poor, good and bad. Nevertheless, such a mingled tissue is only an inevitable consequence not of the mere structure of society, but of human nature, on which society is founded. If there be anything wrong, we must seek a remedy in the improvement of man's moral and intellectual constitution, not in subverting the whole organisation of society, and attempting to reunite it on fantastic, or, at all events, new and untried principles. Nor should any alarm be entertained respecting the lamentable evils which seem to be the doom of society as it at present exists. These evils, and they are great, will never utterly disappear, because human perfection is unattainable, but they will in time be much modified. In every region society goes through a period of infancy, during which many cruelties are perpetrated and privations endured; after this, as men become enlightened, the worst kind of evils gradually disappear, and others of lesser severity remain. At present, society in Great Britain and most civilised nations is in a transition state from barbarism to enlightenment. Within even the recollection of men now living, the steps in advance have been considerable, and every year adds to the number of both physical and social ameliorations. Can there be any reasonable doubt that society will continue in all respects to improve, and that much that is now matter for regret and reproach will be amended or removed?

Utopian Communities.

Ingenious men have at different times conceived to themselves the idea of a state of society, or republic, in which vice, sorrow, indolence, poverty, and other evils shall either be unknown, or at least reduced to a scarcely perceptible amount. None of these theories has gained so much celebrity as that announced by Sir Thomas More, under the name of Utopia (from a Greek word signifying no place). The author was chancellor of England in the reign of Henry VIII., and was a man of the highest and most honourable character. His work on Utopia was written in Latin, and the elegance with which he propounded his apparently benevolent but really satirical scheme, has made the name of his imaginary republic to be adopted in our language as a current expression to denote any plan of social economy which is founded on too favourable views of human nature to be practicable.

The work was written not long after the discovery of America, near which continent, south of the line, the island of Utopia is supposed to lie. The story of discovering this island is represented as being told by a venerable traveller whom the author met at Antwerp, and may be condensed as follows:

Among other countries through which the traveller with his companions passed, there was one which appeared particularly worthy of attention: this was an island situated not far from the mainland, and called the Utopia, from an old chief of the name of Utopus. The island was about five hundred miles long, and about two hundred in the broadest part; but it lay in the form of a crescent, bent together at the ends, which were narrow, and not more than eleven miles apart; so that there was a large bay of the sea, as it were, in the very centre of the country. The entrance to this vast natural harbour was, however, obstructed by rocks, and hardly safe to any except natives, who were acquainted with the landmarks in view. The other side of the island had a number of harbours; but the coast being generally rocky, the roads leading from them into the country were steep and difficult. There are in the country twenty-four large towns, all magnificently built, and spacious; the situation of each is chosen so like that of the rest, that in the very arrangement of their streets, and their general appearance, when you see one, you have a complete idea of all the others. The same language is spoken over the whole island; and the laws, institutions, and manners of the towns are similar throughout. There are none of them above a day's walk from each other, and several only about twenty-four miles. The chief town is Amaurotum, which has been chosen on account of its central situation, as being convenient for the general meeting of deputies, of whom three are chosen from each town, generally men of some age and of experience in business, for deliberating on the public affairs. The cities are so situated, that each has a large country district lying around it, which is well stocked with farm-houses, and all the materials of a thriving husbandry. The land is cultivated by the townspeople themselves, who take it in turn, one set going to labour in the country, while another remain at their occupations in the town.

The cultivators are arranged, while in the country, into families of forty free persons and two slaves; with each family there is an elder and a matron of respectable characters; and over every three hundred families there is an officer called a Phylarch. Of the forty persons who compose a family, twenty return each season to the town, and are replaced by twenty others sent from thence; so that each person remains on the farm two years together, where by this means there is always a moiety acquainted with country labour, and able to instruct the others; numbers, however, request to remain a longer time, from the pleasure they take in farming and field-work. Their business is to attend to the crops, to rear domestic animals, and to prepare wood, and take it to the towns. They rear immense flocks of chickens, which, however, they

hatch not in the usual way, but by the heat of an oven | learns some one, the women generally performing -a process in which they are very expert and successful. They raise corn for bread only, not for brewing or distilling; and for drink they have the vine, as we have, as well as the liquor of apples and pears. In laying out their land, they calculate how much corn, meat, and other produce will be wanted for a city and its dependent territory, and take care always to have a much larger quantity than is necessary, that after each district has supplied its own demand, they may be able to afford a portion in any quarter where there may be a deficiency. Whatever articles of the manufacture of the towns are wanted, the cultivators receive them on demand, without offering anything in exchange; and when the crops are ready for harvesting, the country phylarchs or overseers give notice to the authorities in the towns, upon which the whole population is set to work, and the crops are secured almost in a single day.