spread their nets, and a thousand sinewy hands are fashioning the Sphinx's granite heart. There is no speech nor language, but with the gleam of a magic word the stark statues ring out their Memnon-music down the years, even to these ends of the earth. Who shall say that the age of Fairies and Genii is past, when on such ethereal wings we can behold all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them.

It is only a chart of this wonderful journey that Müller gives us, but even its points are points of bewildering beauty. He startles us, in the first place, with the assertion that language is one of the physical sciences, as truly as botany or geology; in proof of which he distinguishes so clearly between the growth of language and the history of language, he traces back the former to its germ in the human breast so logically, he points out so unmistakably the fact which commends itself at once to our consciousness, that it is not in the power of men to produce or prevent the ceaseless change in language, that they can no more control the laws of speech than the circulation of blood, nor invent new words at pleasure than add a cubit to their stature, that he compels assent. The underlying principle which shapes his researches, the key wherewith he unlocks these secret cells, is that everything in language had originally a meaning. By distinguishing and describing the two processes which comprise

the growth of language, viz. Phonetic Decay, as if, for instance, "Yes, madam," should fade into "Yes, ma'am," and that into "Yes 'm,"-and Dialectical Regeneration, or the continued replenishing of a language from its various dialects, he illustrates his principle with singular success, filling up form with substance, or rather bringing to light the substance which has long lain lost amid the shadows of the form. Thus he shows the origin and meaning of the d in loved, making the tragic change from love living to love dead. He combats the prevalent idea that dialects are corruptions of a pure, classical language, and insists that they are rather its feeders. He teaches that many dialects originally led a life of republican equality, but those spoken in isolated places having no standard, continually changed, an entire change taking place sometimes in so short a period as the lifetime of a single generation, while those that were more central and consolidated around a literature created by songs, festivals, laws, and occasional intercourse, gradually assumed supremacy. If by any means a literature came to be written, the dialect in which it was written at once swallowed up the rest. But its momentary greatness was atoned for by immediate death. As soon as a tongue becomes fixed, classical, it crystallizes. It is hard, cold,—a dead language, beautiful but unbreathing. All this, however, is quite beyond the control of man. The growth, though not like that

of a tree from within, is like that of the crust of the earth, by combinations of given elements according to established, though unknown laws.

The Christian tone of the book is vigorous and refreshing. Scientific men are very apt to patronize the Bible. Müller does not. He never suspects that it must be bolstered up by any clumsy contrivances. He has so much faith in it that he lets it stand on its own ground and pushes his researches without the slightest misgiving of collision. He dates the real beginning of the science from the first day of Pentecost. Christ had to come to teach that mankind were of one blood before the science of mankind and the language of mankind could spring into life. The common origin of mankind and their susceptibility of the highest culture became problems of scientific, because of more than scientific interest. He affirms that the apostles were the pioneers of the science, and their true successors, the missionaries, the most useful allies of the philologer. The translation of the Bible and the Lord's Prayer into every dialect of the world form his most valuable materials. There is a world of good, sturdy, but not very common sense in his way of preventing "not only those who are forever attacking the Bible with arrows that cannot reach it, but likewise those who defend it with weapons they know not how to wield, from disturbing in any way the quiet progress of the science of language." The defence of incompe

tent friends is much more disastrous than the attack of able enemies.

Without for a moment granting that the subject is dull, we may admit that the book is all the more interesting for being enlivened by humor and illustrated by anecdote. It is respectful to its predecessors, though it cannot help a sly laugh now and then, which does no harm, so long as it is good-humored, attractive in style, and symmetrical in construction.

XVIII.

CHRIST IN CAROLINA.

E

VEN on a very serious subject, one can hardly help being amused at the remarkable logic of Mr. Jefferson Davis in his message to that assembly which call itself the Confederate Congress. The loving-kindness and tender mercy of the slaveowner bubbles over in speaking of "the unfortunate negroes" upon whose sufferings he dwells, and whose grievances he recounts with a pity beautiful to behold; showing the superior benefit to the negroes of slavery over freedom by adding: "By the Northern man, on whose deep-rooted prejudices no kindly restraining influence is exercised, they are treated with aversion and neglect," and in the very next paragraph affirming that "full confirmation is afforded by statements published in the Northern journals by humane persons engaged in making appeals to the charitable for aid in preventing the ravages of disease, exposure and starvation among the negro women and chil