teresting are all the lines which radiate from the Italic centre on the annexed table, the dead Oscan and Umbrian, the dead Provençal and Langue d'Oil, and the living Romance languages, which are affiliated to Latin by so direct a descent,-which are, in fact, little more than Latin subjected to a progressive analysis,—of which one is the language of Camoens, and one the language of Calderon and of Cervantes, and one the language of Dante and Tasso, and one the language of Bossuet and of Descartes. The language of the Italic family cannot boast of the subtle grace, harmony, and finish of Greek, any more than its ancient literature can be placed in comparison with that of the Hellenes. The Latin verb, as an instrument for the expression of accurate thought, is immensely inferior to the Greek. It bears the stamp of such obvious defects as a loss of the aorist, and of the perfect participle active. The absence of an article is another mark of inferiority, and perhaps from the rude contact of some aboriginal language Latin lost, more and more, its original flexibility. The fact that the necessity for synthesis in our scientific nomenclature drives us to frame it almost entirely from Greek elements, when we should so much more naturally have gone to Latin, shows how completely Latin had lost the faculty for framing compound words. Yet with what wonderful force does the renovating power of language remedy

these defects, and frame even out of its own deficiencies new elements of compression and strength. One might say that, like the Gallionella Ferruginea, the Latin language had articulations of iron. It is pre-eminently the voice of Empire and of Law, of War and of the State,-the best language for the measured research of History, and the indignant declamation of moral satire; rigid in its constructions, parsimonious in its synonyms; yet majestic in its bareness, impressive in its conciseness; the true language of history, instinct with the spirit of nations, and not with the passions of individuals ; breathing the maxims of the world, and not the tenets of the schools; one and uniform in its air and spirit, whether touched by the stern and haughty Sallust, by the open and discursive Livy, by the reserved and thoughtful Tacitus.'

With Greek and Latin alone as the instruments of education we possess, if only we knew how to use them rightly, not only the keys to the richest and mightiest literature of the ancient world, but also the best means for the proper comprehension of human language as an expression of the inmost nature of man's mind. There is, perhaps, scarcely one principle of speech which could not be illustrated and rendered easily comprehensible by an intelligent instruction in these two classical languages; and by a comparison of Latin with Italian, or French, or Spanish, we may learn in a most

interesting manner that law of progress from synthesis to analysis, which is, in fact, nothing else than the process of perpetual renovation in the midst of perpetual decomposition, which willingly sacrifices grace of form for distinctness of expression, and which gains in simplicity and general adaptability for every purpose what it loses in intensity and finish. No profound knowledge of metaphysics is attainable without a careful study of the phenomena of language; and in no languages can metaphysical phenomena be better studied than in Latin and Greek. It is only our way of handling the classical languages which makes them so ludicrously infructuous for educational purposes; it is only because we sacrifice a knowledge of literature, and of all that makes a language best worth learning, to an idle and painful attempt to make all boys alike do something which is miscalled composition; it is only because teachers think they have done their duty when they have spent years in failing to hammer into youthful minds the recollection of a few paradigms and two or three dozen of common idioms, not one of which has ever been reasonably explained to them; it is only because in the days of Bopp, and Grimm, and Pott, and Schleicher, classics are taught considerably worse than they were in the days of Erasmus-it is, I say, only on these accounts that the whole system of classical instruction has

fallen into natural disrepute. It is not surprising that men should declare it time to lay the axe at the root of a tree which so many of its professed guardians condemn to a hopeless sterility incapable of producing either leaves or fruit.

In ancient Italy we can trace the existence of three entirely separate languages: * the Iapygian, which was gradually driven into the extreme south, and is probably the aboriginal language of the peninsula; the Etruscan, of which we know but little, but which appear to have had at least some Aryan affinities; and the Italic, in which are observable three main dialects-Latin, Oscan, and Umbrian.† Oscan lasted down to the time of the empire, but is now only known to us by various inscriptions. The most important remains of Umbrian are to be found in the celebrated Eugubine tables— seven bronzed tablets found at Gubbio, the ancient Iguvium.

* We may tabulate the Italic family as follows:

-

The main works on Oscan and Umbrian are: Mommsen,

Oskische Studien; Lepsius, De tabulis Eugubinis; Anfrecht and Kirchhoff, Die umbrischen Sprachdenkmäler, 1849 1851.

Of Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese,-languages which may be studied with the utmost ease by any one desirous of doing so, it is needless to speak, but we may say a word about the less. known Wallachian, or limba romanesca. It is divided by the Danube into two dialects, the northern and southern,† and, as already remarked, stands in much the same relation to Latin that Albanian does to Greek. Its grammar, except in the postposition of the article (e. g. ochiu'l for oculus ille, ‘the eye')‡ closely resembles that of the other Romance languages, but it has adopted a new alphabet based on the Cyrillic,§ and has borrowed from its

* French, as will be seen from the table, is a descendant of the Langue d'oil, i. e. of the dialect in which oil (= hoc illud=oui) was used for 'yes;' in Provençal oc (=hoc) was used for 'yes.' Similarly German was sometimes called the Langue d'jò or ja, and Italian the Langue de sì (Dante, De Vulg. Eloq., i. 8). Cf. Inferno, cant. xxxiii.

79:

'Ahi Pisa, vituperio delle genti

Del bel paese là dove il sì suona.'

The dominion of French as par excellence the language of cultivated society began very early. In 1275 a Venetian writer says that it court parmi le monde,' and Brunetto Latini, Dante's master, writing his Trésor in French, does so 'parce que la parlure de France est plus commune à toutes gens et plus délectable.'

Of the Northern or Daco-Romanic dialect there is a grammar and small dictionary by Clemens, 1836 (2nd ed.), and a grammar by Alexi; of the Southern or Macedo-Wallachian there is a grammar by Bojadschi, 1803, and Ad. Mussafia, 1868.

E.g. Omul este moritoriu,' man is mortal. A similar peculiarity is found in Basque.

§ Some account of the Cyrillic alphabet may be found in Max Müller's Survey of Language, p. 44, sqq.