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as we find them carved on the rocks of Kapurdigiri, Dhauli, and Giznar. The soft, melodious Pracrit of later Indian names soon led to further decline, until finally all vital principles seem to have been extinguished in the Bengal of our day. Thus we are enabled to trace the Sanscrit from its earliest rise through days of most brilliant splendor, from generation to generation, marking each stage of its gradual decay, until we see it now, as the Latin in Europe, no longer a living language, but limited in use to literary and religious purposes. Hopes are even entertained that the last and only direct descendant of this most ancient tongue, which Europe knows, the language of the Gipsies, may help to throw new light on the subject. It is one of the gratifying results of modern researches, that the various medlar dialects of that mysterious race have at last been proved to point all to Asia. The learned Pott has succeeded in tracing them, under all the various names they obtained since they first appeared, during the fourteenth century, in the Eastern part of Europe, to their only genuine designation of "Sinte," a slightly modified form of the old "Ind." Rejecting all mere epithets like "Kalo" or "Mellele," which merely refer to their darker color; or, like the French "Bohemians," the English "Gipsies," the German "Zigeuner," the Spanish "Gitano," and even the local "Pharao-nepek" (Pharao-people), which designate their supposed home, he establishes by philological arguments and proofs, their descent from the earlier nations of Asia, and thus secures for the remote mother of tongues an humble but genuine representative in the very heart of Europe.

To these advantages of a continuous history, abounding with illustrations, the Sanscrit adds the merit of a clear and

transparent organism. It is more complete, says the profoundest of Sanscrit scholars, Franz Bopp, more distinct and more organic in its structure than any other tongue, and exhibits, moreover, a conspicuous originality of grammatical structure. Containing, in its original state, not a single exotic term, and nothing but simple roots in their primitive form; it is, on the other hand, the most successful of inflected languages. Compositive and flexible like no other tongue, it admits us into the very secrets of the formation of idioms, and thus has first taught us, by example, the criticism of language; i. e., the fact that languages, also, are governed by certain, rational laws. If, therefore, the Sanscrit has been at one time, and probably is yet, overestimated, it will still ever retain the undoubted merit of having furnished the best material for the first scientific study of languages and their comparison. The very error of considering it, as was at first very generally the case, the mother tongue of all languages of the earth, led, in being corrected, to the discovery of great truths. It was soon questioned whether Sanscrit was the parent even of European tongues or merely an elder sister, holding the same relation to them as the Latin to the Romans, and the more careful inquiry into such relations produced those most astonishing results which, of late, have raised the study of these points to the dignity of a science.

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CHAPTER XVII.

THE RULING LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD.

The Sanscrit-The Iranian-The Greek-The Latin-The Celtic-The Gothic and Germanic-The Slavic-Other European idioms.

NOR will it ever be forgotten that the Sanscrit was the first and oldest of those Indo-European tongues, which were spoken by the races that have successively ruled the world. At a time when tradition still lingers and history is but just beginning, the Sanscrit was already heard on the sides of the heaven-aspiring Himalaya, and in the luxuriant plains of the Ganges. A people of high intelligence spoke it, and sages and philosophers used it in teaching those doctrines from which most of our philosophy even is derived, and which contained ideas that, recast by Plato and grafted by the fathers of the Church on Christianity, form no unimportant part of our own boasted wisdom.

When it decayed, the old tree sent up young and vigorous shoots, one of which, the Iranian, became, in its turn, the language of those who held the sceptre of the world. The Medians and Persians, whose vernacular it was, founded under Cyrus and Cambyses the mightiest monarchies, extending from the Indus to the Nile, that this globe has ever witnessed. Its sovereignty in the dominions of the intellect was even more brilliant and permanent. In broken accents we hear it, even in

our day, speak through the wedge inscriptions of Persia, relatting the lofty deeds of Cyrus, Darius or Xerxes; whilst already, in the middle of the last century, Anquetil du Perron discovered in Surat that memorable monument of Asiatic wisdom, the Zend Avesta. Well named the "Living Word," this Iranian book is a striking proof of the lofty intelligence of this race, and the high perfection of their language. It unfolds to us the grand Monotheism of Zoroaster, and in so doing, exhibits that language in its older form, which still survives in the modern Persian, the Pehlevi, the idiom of the Sassanians, and the Pazend, the mother of the common dialects of our day, and represented, in its purity, in the well known epic poem of Ferdusi.

Whilst these masters of the world and "Kings of Kings" were still in the midst of their career of glory, the sceptre imperceptibly passed into the power of a new tongue, spoken by a few, apparently insignificant tribes, which had migrated westward from Central Asia, and, as Thracians or Pelasgi, mingled their blood with that of the Phoenicians on the islands and coasts of Greece and Asia Minor. As their power increased they felt ashamed of being called the children of foreign climes, claimed to be autochthones, and, finally, on the plains of Marathon, wrested the sceptre of the world from the Iranic race. Their classic language and ample literature ruled supremely wherever science was honored and arts were cultivated, and, through them, exercised a powerful influence on later ages. Their share in the history of our race, was the light of science in its widest extent, and in all the clear brilliancy of exposition which it could derive from art. In their language sang the

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greatest bard that our era knows; in it the venerable father of history wrote his unsurpassed masterwork, and in the same idiom have the earliest sages of Europe bequeathed to posterity the very sum and substance of Greek wisdom and philosophy. In Greek spoke the masters of forensic eloquence in favor of those principles of rational freedom and equality which it has cost centuries to confirm and permanently to establish; in Greek, finally, the Hellenic mind created that fullest representation of the eternal laws which rule the fate of man in political society, the drama.

When the Hellenic race had accomplished its great vocation in the succession of supreme nations-to teach, by example, the possibility and virtue of self-government, equally independent of hierarchical tyranny and of absolute monarchism, a cognate tribe rose farther west, to give, in its turn, a new form and a new direction to the fate of man. The Romanic race, cognate and contemporary with the Hellenic, and, like the latter, the result of a mixture of various elements, the Umbrian, Oscan and Etruscan, with Sabine and Greek additions, spoke a language bearing on its face the marks of a similar amalgamation of linguistic elements. Tracing its origin back to the socalled Pelasgic, a form even older than the Greek which we know, it abounds with elements derived from the sister tongues, the Umbrian and the Oscan, which latter was spoken as late as the Era of the Cæsars; its Etruscan elements, and those belonging to Messapia, which are of still unknown parentage, are overlaid with a strong admixture of barbarian, possibly Celtic origin. It is to this latter portion, probably, that the language as well as the national character of the Roman, owed its essen