make it quite clear which of two nouns concerned is subject and which object, for instance, whether it was a chief who killed a bear, or a bear who killed a chief. A particle properly attached will do this, as when the Algonquin Indians put on the syllable un both to noun and verb, in a way which we may try to translate by the pronoun him, thus:

To

This gives a notion of the natural manner in which grammatical government may have come into use to mark the parts of the sentence. At the same time, it shows that different languages may go different ways to work, for here the verb and object agree together, and the subject (so to speak) governs both, which is quite unlike our familiar rule of the verb agreeing with the nominative or subject. see the working of concord or agreement in a far clearer and completer form than Latin can show it, we may look at the Hottentot language, where a sentence may run somewhat thus, "That woman-she, our tribe's-she, rich-being-she, another village-in-dwelling-she, praise-we-do cattle-of-she, shedoes present-us two calves-of-she-from." Here the pronoun running through the whole sentence makes it clear to the dullest hearer that it is the woman who is rich, who dwells in another village, whose cattle are praised, and who gives two of her calves. The terminations in a Greek or Latin sentence, which show the agreement of substantive and adjective with their proper verb, are remains of affixes which may have once carried their signification as plainly as they still do in the language of the Hottentots. A different plan of concord, but even more instructive to the classical scholar,

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appears in the Zulu language, which divides things into classes, and then carries the marking syllable of the class right through the sentence, so as to connect all the words it is attached to. Thus “u-bu-kosi b-etu o-bu-kulu bu-ya-bonakala si-bu-tanda,” means our great kingdom appears, we love it." Here bu, the mark of the class to which kingdom belongs, is repeated through every word referring to it. To give an idea how this acts in holding the sentence together, Dr. Bleek translates it by repeating the dom of kingdom in a similar way; "the king-dom, our dom, which dom is the great dom, the dom appears, we love the dom." This is clumsy, but it answers the great purpose of speech, that of making one's meaning certain beyond mistake. So, by using different class-syllables for singular and plural, and carrying them on through the whole sentence, the Zulu shows the agreement in number more plainly than Greek or Latin can do. But the Zulu language does not recognise by its classsyllables what we call gender. It is in fact one of the puzzles of philology, what can have led the speaker of Aryan languages like Greek, or Semitic languages like Hebrew, to classify things and thoughts by sex so unreasonably as they do. For Latin examples, take the following groups: pes (masc.), manus (fem.), brachium (neut.); amor (masc.), virtus (fem.), delictum (neut.). German shows gender in as practically absurd a state, as witness der Hund, die Ratte; das Thier, die Pflanze. In Anglo-Saxon, wif (English wife), was neuter, while wif-man (ie. "wife-man," English woman) was masculine. English, in discarding an old system of grammatical gender that had come to be worse than useless, has set an example which French and German might do well to follow. Yet it must be borne in mind that the devices of language, though they may decay into absurdity, were never originally absurd.

Modern

No doubt the gender-system of the classic languages is the remains of an older and more consistent plan. There are languages outside our classical education which show that gender (that is genus, kind, class,) is by no means necessarily according to sex. Thus in the Algonquin languages of North America, and the Dravidian languages of South India, things are divided not as male or female, but as alive or dead, rational or irrational, and put accordingly in the animate or major gender, or in the inanimate or minor gender. Having noticed how the Zulu concord does its work by regularly repeating the class-sign, we seem to understand how in the Aryan languages the signs of number and gender may have come to be used as a similar means of carrying through the sentence the information that this substantive belongs to that adjective and that verb. Yet even in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and Gothic, such concord falls short of the fulness and clearness it has among the barbarians of Africa, while in the languages of modern Europe, especially our own, it has mostly disappeared, probably because with the advance of intelligence it was no longer found necessary.

The facts in this chapter will have given the reader some idea how man has been and still is at work building up language. Any one who began by studying the grammars of such languages as Greek or Arabic, or even of such barbarous tongues as Zulu or Eskimo, would think them wonderfully artificial systems. Indeed, had one of these languages suddenly come into existence among a tribe of men, this would have been an event mysterious and unaccountable in the highest degree. But when one begins at the other end, by noticing the steps by which word-making and composition, declension and conjugation, concord and syntax, arise from the simplest and rudest beginnings, then the formation of language is seen to be reasonable, purpose

ful, and intelligible. It was shown in the last chapter that man still possesses the faculty of bringing into use fresh sounds to express thoughts, and now it may be added that he still possesses the faculty of framing these sounds into full articulate speech. Thus every human tribe has the capabilities which, had they not inherited a language readymade from their parents, would have enabled them to make a new language of their own.

CHAPTER VI.

LANGUAGE AND RACE.

Adoption and loss of Language, 152-Ance tral Language, 153– Families of Language, 155-Aryan, 156-Semitic, 159-Egyptian, Berber, &c. 160-Tatar or Turanian, 161-South-East Asian, 162 - Malayo-Polynesian, 163 Dravidian, 164 · African, Bantu, Hottentot, 164—American, 165—Early Languages and Race, 165.

THE next question is, What can be learnt from languages as to the history of the nations speaking them, and the races these nations belong to?

In former chapters, in dividing mankind into stocks or races according to their skulls, complexions, and other bodily characters, language was not taken into account as a mark of race. In fact, a man's language is no full and certain proof of his parentage. There are even cases in which it is totally misleading, as when some of us have seen persons whose language is English, but their faces Chinese or African, and who, on inquiry, are found to have been brought away in infancy from their native countries. It is within every one's experience how one parent language disappears in intermarriage, as where persons called Boileau or Muller may be now absolutely English as to language, in spite of their French or German ancestry. Now not only individuals but whole populations may have their native