Well now, how thoughtful he is to leave Mr. Dare and Ralph together! You know, Ruth, poor Mr. Dare's affairs are in a very bad way, and he has come to talk things over with my Ralph." "I hope Ralph will make him put his cottages in order," said Ruth, with sudden interest, shaking back her hair from her shoulders. 66 'Do you think he will?" "Whatever Ralph advises will be sure to be right," replied Evelyn, with the soft conviction of his infallibility which caused her to be considered by most of Ralph's masculine friends an ideal wife. It is women without reasoning powers of any kind whom the nobler sex should be careful to marry if they wish to be regarded through life in this delightful way by their wives. Men not particularly heroic in themselves, who yet are anxious to pose as heroes in their domestic circle, should remember that the smallest modicum of common sense on the part of the worshipper will inevitably mar a happiness, the very existence of which depends entirely on a blind, unreasoning devotion. In middle life the absence of reason begins perhaps to be felt; but why in youth take thought for such a far-off morrow? "I hope he will," said Ruth, half to herself. "What an opportunity that man has if he only sees it! There is so much to be done, and it is all in his hands." "Yes, it's not entailed; but I don't think there is so very much," said Evelyn. "But then, so long as people are nice, I never care whether they are rich or poor. That is the first question I ask when people come into the neighborhood. Are they really nice? Dear me, Ruth, what beautiful hair you have; and mine coming off so! And, talking of hair, did you ever see anything like Mr. Dare's? Somebody must really speak to him about it. If he would keep his hands still, and not talk so quick, and let his hair grow a little, I really think he would not look so like a foreigner." "I don't suppose he minds looking like one." 66 My dear!" "His mother was a Frenchwoman, wasn't she? I am sure I have heard so fifty times since his uncle died." "And if she was," said Evelyn reprovingly, "is not that an extra reason for his giving up anything that will remind people of it? And we ought to try to forget it, Ruth, and behave just the same to him as if she had been an English woman. I wonder if he is a Roman Catholic?" "Ask him." "I hope he is not," continued Evelyn, taking up her candle to go. "We never had one to stay in the house before. I don't mean," catching a glimpse at Ruth's face, "that Catholics are well- I don't mean that. But still, you know, one would not like to make great friends with a Catholic, would one, Ruth? And he is so nice and so amusing that I do hope, as he is going to be a neighbor, he is a Protestant." And after a few more remarks of about the same calibre from Evelyn, the two cousins kissed and parted for the night. "Will he do it?" said Ruth to herself, when she was alone. "Has he character enough, and perseverance enough, and money enough? Oh! I wish Uncle John would talk to him." Ruth was not aware that one word from herself would have more weight with a man like Dare than any number from an angel of heaven, if that angel were of the masculine gender. If at the other side of the house Dare could have known how earnestly Ruth was thinking about him, he would not have been surprised (for he was not without experience), but he would have felt immensely flattered. Vandon lay in a distant part of Mr. Alwynn's parish, and a perpetual curate had charge of the district. Mr. Alwynn consequently seldom went there, but on the few occasions on which Ruth had ac companied him in his periodical visits, she had seen enough. Who cares for a recital of what she saw? Misery and want are so common. We can see them for ourselves any day. In Ruth's heart a great indignation had kindled against old Mr. Dare, of Vandor, who was inaccessible as a ghost in his own house, haunting the same rooms, but never to be found when Mr. Alwynn called upon him to "put things before him in their true light." And when Mr. Dare descended to the Vandon vault, all Mr. Alwynn's interest, and consequently a good deal of Ruth's, had centred in the new heir, who was so difficult to find, and who ultimately turned up from the other end of nowhere just when people were beginning to despair of his ever turning up at all. And now that he had come, would he make the crooked straight? Would the new broom sweep clean? Ruth recalled the new broom's brown handsome face, with the eager eyes and raised eyebrows, and involuntarily shook her head. It is difficult to be an impartial judge of any one with a feeling for music, and a pathetic tenor voice; but the face she had called to mind did not inspire her with confidence. It was kindly, amiable, pleasant; but was it strong? In other words, was it not a trifle weak? She found herself comparing it with another, a thin, reserved face, with keen light eyes and a firm mouth; a mouth with a cigar in it at that moment on the lawn. The comparison, however, did not help her meditations much, being decidedly prejudicial to the "new broom;" and the faint chime of the clock on the dressingtable breaking in on them at the same moment, she dismissed them for the night, and proceeded to busy herself in putting to bed her various little articles of jewellery before betaking herself there also. Any doubts entertained by Evelyn about Dare's religious views were completely set at rest the following morning, which happened to be a Sunday. He appeared at breakfast in a black frock coat, the splendor of which quite threw Ralph's ancient Sunday garment into the shade. He wore also a chastened, decorous aspect, which seemed unfamiliar to his mobile face, and rather ill suited to it. After breakfast, he inquired when service would be, and expressed a wish to attend it. He brought down a high hat and an enormous prayer-book, and figured with them in the garden. "Who is going to Greenacre, and who is going to Slumberleigh?" called out Ralph from the smoking-room window. "Because, if any of you are going to foot it to Slumberleigh, you had better be starting. Which are you going to, Charles?' "I am going where Molly goes. Which is it to be, Molly?" "Slumberleigh," said Molly with decision, "because it's the shortest sermon, and I want to see the little foal in Brown's field." "Slumberleigh be it," said Charles. "Now, Miss Deyncourt," as Ruth appeared, "which church are you going to support- Greenacre, which is close in more senses than one, where they never open the windows, and the clergyman preaches for an hour; or Slumberleigh, shady, airy, cool, lying past a meadow with a foal in it? If I may offer that as any inducement, Molly and I intend to patronize Slumberleigh." Ruth said she would do the same. "Now, Dare, you will be able to decide whether Greenacre, with a little fat tower, or Slumberleigh, with a beautiful tall steeple, suits your religious views best." "I will also go to Slumberleigh," said Dare, without a moment's hesitation. "I thought so. I suppose to Ralph and Evelyn "you are going to Greenacre with Aunt Mary? Tell her I have gone to church, will you? It will cheer her up. Sunday is a very depressing day with her, I know. She thinks of all she has done in the week, preparatory to doing a little more on Monday. Good-bye. Now, then, Molly, have you got your prayer-book? Miss Deyncourt, I don't see yours anywhere. Oh, there it is! No, don't let Dare carry it for you. Give it me. He will have enough to do, poor fellow, to travel with his own. Come, Molly! Is Vic chained up? Yes, I can hear him howling. The craving for church privileges of that dumb animal, Miss Deyncourt, is an example to us Christians. Molly, have you got your penny? Miss Deyncourt, can I accommodate you with a threepenny bit? Now, are we all ready to start? "When this outburst of eloquence has subsided," said Ruth, "the audience will be happy to move on.' And so they started across the fields, where the grass was already springing faint and green after the haymaking. There was a fresh wandering air, which fluttered the ribbons in Molly's hat, as she danced on ahead, frisking in her short white skirt beside her uncle, her hand in his. Charles was the essence of wit to Molly, with his grave face that so seldom smiled, and the twinkle in the kind eyes, that always went before those wonderful delightful jokes which he alone could make. Sometimes, as she laughed, she looked back at Ruth and Dare, half a field behind, in pity at what they were missing. "Shall we wait and tell them that story, Uncle Charles?" No, Molly. I dare say he is telling her another which is just as good." "I don't think that he knows any like yours.' "Some people like the old, old story best." "Do I know the old, old one, Uncle Charles ?" 66 No, Molly." "Can you tell it?” "No. I have never been able to tell that particular story." "And do you really think he is telling it to her now?" with a backward glance. "Not at this moment. It's no good running back. He's only thinking about it now. He will tell her in about a month or six weeks' time." it." "I hope I shall be there when he tells | announcement excited a flutter in the newspapers, many of whose readers had probably never heard of the Aryans before, while others of them had the vaguest possible idea of what was meant by the name. "I hope you may; but I don't think it is likely. And now, Molly, set your hat straight, and leave off jumping. I never jump when I go to church with Aunt Mary. Quietly now, for there's the church, and Mr. Alwynn's looking out of the window." Dare, meanwhile, walking with Ruth, caught sight of the church and lych-gate with heartfelt regret. The stretches of sunny meadow land, the faint clamor of church bells, the pale, refined face beside him, had each individually and all three together appealed to his imagination, always vivid when he himself was concerned. He suddenly felt as if a great gulf had fixed itself, without any will of his own, between his old easy-going life and the new existence that was opening out before him. Unfortunately it is a name which, unless carefully defined, is likely to mislead or confuse. It was first introduced by Professor Max Müller, and applied by him in a purely linguistic sense. The "discovery" of Sanskrit and the researches of the pioneers of comparative philology had shown that a great family of speech existed, comprising Sanskrit and Persian, Greek and Latin, Teutonic and Slav, all of them sister languages descended from a common parent, of which, however, no literary monuments survived. In place of the defective or cumbersome titles of Indo-German, Indo-European, and the like, which had been suggested for it, Professor Max Müller proposed to call it Aryan a title derived from the Sanskrit Arya, interpreted "noble " in later Sanskrit, but used as a national name in the hymns of the Rig-Veda. It is much to be regretted that the name has not been generally adopted. Such is the case, however, and it is to-day like a soul seeking a body in which to find a habitation. But the name is an excellent one, though the philologists of Germany, who govern us in such matters, have refused to accept it in the sense proposed by its author; and we are there. fore at liberty to discover for it a new abode, and to give to it a new scientific meaning. He had crossed from the old to the new without any perception of such a gulf, and now, as he looked back, it seemed to yawn between him and all that hitherto he had been. He did not care to look back, so he looked forward. He felt as if he were the central figure (when was he not a central figure?) in a new drama. He was fond of acting, on and off the stage, and now he seemed to be playing a new part, in which he was not yet thoroughly at ease, but which he rather suspected would become him exceedingly well. It amused him to see himself going to church to church! to hear himself conversing on flowers and music with a young English girl. The idea that he was rapidly falling in love was specially delightful. He called himself a vieux scélérat, and watched the progress of feelings which he felt did him credit with extreme satisfaction. He and Ruth arrived at the church porch all too soon for Dare; and though he had the pleas-secrets of man's origin and earlier history. ure of sitting on one side of her during the service, he would have preferred that Charles, of whom he felt a vague distrust, had not happened to be on the other. From The Contemporary Review. THE PRIMITIVE HOME OF THE ARYANS. IN my address to the Anthropological Section of the British Association in 1887, I stated that, in common with many other anthropologists and comparative philologists, I had come to the conclusion that the primitive home of the Aryans was to be sought in north-eastern Europe. The In the enthusiasm kindled by the sight of the fresh world that was opening out before them, the first disciples of the science of comparative philology believed that they had found the key to all the The parent speech of the Indo-European languages was entitled the Ursprache, or "primeval language," and its analysis, it was imagined, would disclose the elements of articulate speech and the process whereby they had developed into the manifold languages of the present world. But this was not enough. The students of language went even further. They claimed not only the domain of philology as their own, but the domain of ethnology as well. Language was confounded with race, and the relationship of tribe with tribe, of nation with nation, was determined by the languages they spoke. If the origin of a people was required, the question was summarily decided by tracing the origin of its language. English is on the whole | which it threw on the forms of Greek and a Teutonic language, and therefore the Latin speech, comparative philology might whole English people must have a Teu- never have been born. Sanskrit was the tonic ancestry. The dark-skinned Bengali magician's wand which had called the new speaks languages akin to our own; there- science into existence, and without the fore the blood which runs in his veins help of Sanskrit the philologist would not must be derived from the same source as have advanced beyond the speculations that which runs in ours. and guesses of classical scholars. What wonder, then, if the language which had thus been a key to the mysteries of Greek and Latin, and which seemed to embody older forms of speech than they, should have been assumed to stand nearer to the Ursprache than the cognate languages of Europe? The assumption was aided by the extravagant age assigned to the monuments of Sanskrit literature. The poems of Homer might be old, but the hymns of the Veda, it was alleged, mounted back to a primeval antiquity, while the Institutes of Manu represented the oldest code of laws existing in the world. The dreams of universal conquest indulged in by a young science soon pass away as facts accumulate and the limit of its powers is more and more strictly determined. The Ursprache has become a language of comparatively late date in the history of linguistic development, which differed from Sanskrit or Greek only in its fuller inflexional character. The light its analysis was believed to cast on the origin of speech has proved to be the light of a will-o'-the-wisp, leading astray and perverting the energies of those who might have done more profitable work. The mechanism of primitive language often lies more clearly revealed in a modern Bushman's dialect or the grammar of Esquimaux, than in that much-vaunted Ursprache from which such great things were once expected by the philosophy of human speech. Ethnology has avenged the invasion of its territory by linguistic science, and has in turn claimed a province which is not its own. It is no longer the comparative philologist, but the ethnologist, who now and again uses philological terms in an ethnological sense, or settles racial affinities by an appeal to language. The philologist first talked about an "IndoEuropean race; "such an expression could now be heard only from the lips of a youthful ethnologist. There was yet another reason which contributed to the belief that Sanskrit was the first-born of the Indo-European family. The founders of comparative philology had been preceded in their analytic work by the ancient grammarians of India. It was from Pânini and his predecessors that the followers of Bopp inherited their doctrine of roots and suffixes and their analysis of Indo-European words. The language of the Veda had been analyzed two thousand years ago as no other single language had ever been analyzed before or since. Its very sounds had been carefully probed and distinguished, and an alphabet of extraordinary completeness had been devised to represent them. It appeared as if the elements out of which the Sanskrit vocabulary and grammar had grown had been laid bare in a way that was pos Sanskrit accordingly the scholars of Europe seemed to feel themselves near to the very beginnings of speech. As soon as the discovery was made that the Indo-European languages were de-sible in no other language, and in studying rived from a common mother, scholars began to ask where that common mothertongue was spoken. But it was agreed on all hands that this must have been some. where in Asia. Theology and history alike had taught that mankind came from the East, and from the East accordingly the Ursprache must have come too. Hitherto Hebrew had been generally regarded as the original language of humanity; now that the Indo-European Ursprache had deprived Hebrew of its place of honor, it was natural, if not inevitable, that, like Hebrew, it should be accounted of Asiatic origin. Moreover it was the discovery of Sanskrit that had led to the discovery of the Ursprache. Had it not been for Sanskrit, with its copious grammar, its early literature, and the light But it was soon perceived that if the primitive home of the Indo-European languages were Asia, they themselves ought to exhibit evidences of the fact. There are certain objects and certain phenomena which are peculiar to Asia, or at all events are not to be found in Europe, and words expressive of these ought to be met with in the scattered branches of the IndoEuropean family. If the parent language had been spoken in India, the climate in which they were born must have left its mark upon the face of its offspring. But here a grave difficulty presented itself. Men have short memories, and the name of an object which ceases to come before the senses is either forgotten or transferred to something else. The tiger may have been known to the speakers of the parent language, but the words that denoted it would have dropped out of the vocabulary of the derived languages which were spoken in Europe. The same word which signifies an oak in Greek signifies a beech in Latin. We cannot expect to find the European languages employing words with meanings which recall objects met with only in Asia. How then are we to force the closed lips of our Indo-European languages, and compel them to reveal the secret of their birthplace? Attempts have been made to answer this question in two different ways. On the one hand it has been assumed that the absence in a particular language, or group of languages, of a term which seems to have been possessed by the parent speech, is evidence that the object denoted by it was unknown to the speakers, But the assumption is contradicted by experience. Because the Latin equus has been replaced by caballus in the modern Romanic languages, we cannot conclude that the horse was unknown in western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. The native Basque word for a "knife," haistoa, has been found by Prince L.-L. Bonaparte in a single obscure village; elsewhere it has been replaced by terms borrowed from French or Spanish. Yet we cannot suppose that the Basques were unacquainted with instruments for cutting until they had been furnished with them by their French and Spanish neighbors. Greek and Latin have different words for "fire; we cannot argue from this that the knowledge of fire was ever lost among any of the speak ers of the Indo-European tongues. In short, we cannot infer from the absence of a word in any particular language that the word never existed in it; on the contrary, when a language is known to us only in its literary form it is safe to say that it must have employed many words besides those contained in its dictionary. A good illustration of the impossibility of arriving at any certain results as long as we confine our attention to words which appear in one but not in another of two cognate languages is afforded by the Indo-European words which denote a sheet of water. There is no word of which it can be positively said that it is found in the Asiatic and the European branches of the family. Lake, ocean, even river and stream, go by different names. A "' it doubt hangs over the word for "sea; is possible, but only possible, that the Sanskrit pâthas is the same word as the Greek Tóvтos, the etymology of which is not yet settled. Nevertheless, we know that the speakers of the parent language must have been acquainted, if not with the sea, at all events with large rivers. Naus, "a ship," is the common heritage of Sanskrit and Greek, and must thus go back to the days when the speakers of the dialects which afterwards developed into Sanskrit and Greek still lived side by side. It survives, like a fossil in the rocks, to assure us that they were a water-faring people, and that the want of a common Indo-European word for lake or river is no proof that such a word may not have once existed. The example I have just given illus. trates the second way in which the attempt has been made to solve the riddle of the Indo-European birthplace. It is the only way in which the attempt can succeed. Where precisely the same word, with the same meaning, exists in both the Asiatic and the European members of the IndoEuropean family - always supposing, of course, that it has not been borrowed by either of them we may conclude that it also existed in the parent speech. When we find the Sanskrit as was and the Latin equus, the exact phonetic equivalents of one another, both alike signifying" horse," we are justified in believing that the horse was known in the country from which both languages derived their ancestry. Though the argument from a negative proves little or nothing, the argument from agreement proves a great deal. The comparative philologist has by means of it succeeded in sketching in outline the state of culture possessed by the speakers of the parent language, and the objects which were known to them. They inhabited a cold country. Their seasons were three in number, perhaps four, and not two, as would have been the case had they lived south of the temperate zone. They were nomad herdsmen, dwelling in hovels, similar, it may be, to the low round huts of sticks and straw built by the Kabyles on the mountain slopes of Algeria. Such hovels could be erected in a few hours, and left again as the cattle moved into higher ground with the approach of spring, or descended into the valleys when the winter advanced. The art of grinding corn seems to have been unknown, and crushed spelt was eaten instead of bread. A rude sort of agriculture was, however, already practised; |