ed to be given to it, such as glossography, glossology, and others of the like kind; but those names have been uniformly rejected. The Germans, with more success, have called it, and still call it linguistik; but no other European nation that we know of has followed their example, while the name philology, for some years past, appears to have been generally adopted, even in Germany. It is believed that it was first used in this sense in the United States. Our Webster, in his excellent dictionary, is the first who has defined the word in this, its most appropriate meaning. "Philology," he says, "is that branch of literature which comprehends a knowledge of the etymology or origin and combination of words, and whatever relates to the history and present state of languages. It sometimes includes rhetoric, poetry, history and antiquities." Indeed, the word philology has been gradually falling off from its original acceptation, as no longer requisite for the heterogeneous mass of sciences to which it was formerly applied. Literature, criticism, archæology, philosophy, history, grammar, rhetoric, logic, metaphysics, and all else which once came under this sweeping denomination, have all received specific and appropriate names, and each of them is now too vast and too extensive, and many of them too distant from each other, to allow of their being classed under one general appellation. The word philology, therefore, had become as it were in abeyance, and the science of human language, comprehending all its various divisions and subdivisions, has very properly taken hold of it, and appropriated it to itself with universal consent. Under this impression, we have headed this article Philology, and under it, we shall endeavor to give a general idea of the science which it denominates. The science of languages, in its present extent, is of very late date. The ancients (we mean the Greeks and Romans) had, indeed, analyzed, with great judgment, their respective idioms, and reduced them to grammatical systems truly worthy of admiration; but beyond that they did not go. They called every language but their own barbarous, and did not think any other worthy of attention. We have learned nothing from them of the Punic, nor of the ancient Persian, though they were so long at war with the nations that spoke those idioms. Their excessive pride has suffered those idioms to perish, though there is reason to believe that they were both rich in literature of their own. Even of the language of Egypt, where they

so long governed, the Romans have told us nothing, and the Greeks very little. How interesting would be, at this day, a Coptic grammar, written by a Roman or Greek grammarian, with some explanation, at least, of their hieroglyphic characters, more satisfactory than what we have received from Herodotus and Clement of Alexandria! An incomplete translation of the works of Horus Apollo is all that we have, and it has rather increased than dispelled our ignorance of the system of that ancient mode of writing. It led us into a false track, in which we continued until Champollion showed us another and a better way. This prejudice continued until a very late period. Even in the days of Dante, Petrarch and Macchiavelli, atid later still, in those of Ariosto and Tasso, the beautiful Italian language was styled, in opposition to the Latin, la lingua volgare; that is to say, the lingua rustica, the patois, the jargon, the dialect of the vulgar. The same contempt followed the other modern idioms. It was taught in the colleges that there were but four mother tongues, the Latin, the Greek, the Hebrew and the Syriac (the two last were added by the theologians on account of their supposed sacred origin). All other languages were mere dialects. The German, of course, was included, though derived from neither of the pretended mother tongues. Such was the ignorance that prevailed on the subject of languages. In the seventeenth century, the cloud began to be dispelled, but gradually indeed. A great step was made by Messieurs de Port Royal, who, in 1660, published their Grammaire générale et raisonnée, the work of Arnaud and Lancelot, two of their members. Here the first attempt was made to generalize the grammatical science, and to deduce from it principles and rules applicable to all languages. That work was much and justly admired when it appeared, and has been the model of almost all that have been published since on the same subject. But the foundation was wanting for such a work at that time. The knowledge of languages was yet confined to a few. The Greek, the Latin, the Hebrew, with the French and Italian, and, perhaps, the Spanish, were the most that a philologist aspired to know. One cannot refrain from smiling, when he sees Messieurs de Port Royal, after stating a principle or rule common to the languages that they knew, gravely asserting that that principle governs in every language (dans toutes les langues). This assertion is frequently met with in the General Grammar,

and may at this day be as often easily disproved. The variety of forms existing in languages was not even suspected. The missionaries had not yet made known the extraordinary structure of the Chinese on the one hand, and of the American idioms on the other; what little was known of them might produce a momentary wonder, but did not excite the curiosity of grammarians and philologists. It was not until about the middle of the eighteenth century that a broad and comprehensive view of the various languages of men began to be taken by the learned. M. Maupertuis, who did not deserve all the ridicule which the jealousy of Voltaire endeavored to throw upon him, published an essay on the Origin of Language, in which he recommended studying the idioms even of savage and barbarous nations, "because," said he, "there may be found among them some that are formed on new plans of ideas." So little was the world prepared for this view of the subject, that M. Turgot, a man, certainly, of great sense and judgment, who was afterwards minister to the unfortunate Louis XVI, in a similar essay that he published, thought proper to sneer at this expression, saying that he could not understand what was meant by plans of ideas. The science was then in its infancy. Languages were considered only in respect to the etymology of their words and their affinity with each other. For more than three centuries, attempts had been made from time to time to collect materials for the comparison of languages. These consisted of vocabularies, and of the Lord's prayer printed in various idioms, but all on a very limited scale. Adelung has given us a list of those works at the end of the first volume of the Mithridates, beginning with Johann Schildberger, who, about the year 1427, at the end of a book of travels, published the Pater Noster in the Armenian and Tartar languages. In all these the science was considered as confined to the knowledge and comparison of words; the importance of the grammatical forms and internal structure of the various idioms might have struck some privileged minds, as it did that of M. Maupertuis, but it was far from being understood by the grammarians and philologists of that day. The science did not begin to extend its bounds until about the period of our revolution. Hervas, in 1784, published at Cesena, in the Roman states, his catalogue of known languages (Catalogo delle Lingue conosciute, e Notizia delle loro Affinità e Diversità), and afterwards his polyglot vocabulary of 150

languages, and a collection of the Lord's prayer in more than 300. But, while he was engaged in the composition of these works, an illustrious sovereign, at the other end of the eastern hemisphere, Catharine the Second, empress of Russia, was meditating another, on a plan much more extensive, which was no less than a comparative vocabulary of all the languages in the world. This noble idea she not only conceived, but actually carried into execution, with the aid of professor Pallas, for the languages of Asia and Europe, and of Mr. Theodore Jankiewitsch, for those of Africa and America. Then, and not till then, philology began to be a science. Still etymology alone was the only object which that great work had in view. The various structure of languages had not yet attracted the attention of the learned. In the celebrated French Encyclopédie, under the word Langue, languages, in this respect, are divided only into two classes, those which admit of inversions, like the Latin and Greek, and in some measure the German, and those which do not, like the French and some other modern European idioms. The monosyllabic Chinese, with its absence of forms, the polysyllabic and polysynthetic structure of the American languages, were not at all taken into consideration in the classification of the various modes of human speech; indeed, that classification had not even been attempted, either in respect to etymological affinities, or to the grammatical construction and arrangement of words; or, if some efforts were made, they were so limited in their range, and on the whole so unsatisfactory, that they are undeserving of any attention at this day. To two illustrious Germans, John Christopher Adelung, and his able successor, John Severin Vater, is due the honor of having first presented the world with a scientific classification of all the known languages, and a correct description of each idiom, particularly with regard to its grammatical structure. This was done in their admirable work, the Mithridates, a work so well known to the learned, that it is unnecessary to mention more than its title. We may venture to call this book, without fear of being contradicted, the fountain of all philological knowledge; and we do not hesitate to say that it deserves to be placed among the greatest and happiest efforts of the human mind. translation of it into the English or French language has been long desired, and it is astonishing that no one has been yet found to attempt it. M. Balbi has lately pub

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lished, at Paris, a valuable work, entitled Atlas Ethnographique du Globe, in which he gives a succinct view of the different languages, with the addition of the knowledge acquired since the publication of the Mithridates. But the form which he has adopted that of a large folio atlas, with synoptic tables-has prevented him from executing as perfect a work as he might otherwise have done with the knowledge and talent which he possesses; and we are compelled to say that a translation of the Mithridates is still a desideratum in the philological science. The fashionable mode, imitated from Lesage, of publishing every thing in the shape of an atlas, appears to us the most inconvenient that could have been chosen for a work of science. Besides the unwieldy size of those gigantic books, they have the incurable defect of being like the bed of Procrustes, where every thing must be condensed or dilated, so as to fill the given space allotted to each part of the subject. It is one of the childish whims of the present day, which, like all other similar fancies, will last only for a time, and be forgotten. Nevertheless, we do not mean to depreciate the work of M. Balbi. Next to the Mithridates, we think it the most useful book of its kind that has appeared within this century. It will afford considerable aid to those who apply themselves to the study of that science. We only regret that he did not follow the method of his predecessors, which we think infinitely better adapted to the subject. The progress of philology since the publication of the empress Catharine's vocabulary and of the Mithridates, and particularly since the general pacification of 1814, is hardly to be conceived. We wish we could mention here all the valuable and important works that have appeared in the thirty years that have elapsed of the present century, in Russia, Germany, France, and elsewhere in Europe and in the U. States, either on the general subject of languages, or on particular idioms till then little known, and some of which were even entirely unknown to the learned. The shortest notices that we could take of all those publications would fill more than the remainder of the space allotted to this article. It would give us infinite pleasure to expatiate on the labors of Adelung, Klaproth, the two Humboldts, De Sacy, Remusat, Jomard, St. Martin, Pougens, Burnouf, Akerblad, Young, Colebrooke, Champollion, Heeren, Eichhorn, Stewart, Murray, Barton, Hodgson, Pickering, Webster, and so many others, whose

names crowd so fast upon our pen, that we find ourselves obliged to stop, and proceed to another part of our subject. From the aggregate of the labors of these men and their illustrious predecessors, has resulted the science which we call philology a science as vast in its extent as interesting in its details. Like all other sciences, it requires to be subjected to some methodical order, in order that a comprehensive view may be taken of its whole extent, and a regular system pursued in the study of its component parts. We do not find that any attempt has been made in Europe to give to philology a definite form, by delineating its constituent members. We are, therefore, obliged to adopt, as the only one that we are acquainted with, the division which Mr. Duponceau has made of it, into three principal parts, which he calls phonology, etymology, and ideology, and which he defines as follows:

Phonology is the knowledge of the sounds produced by the human voice. It teaches us to distinguish those sounds, with their various tones, accents and inflections; to analyze, class and compare them with each other, and represent them as much as possible by visible signs. Etymology is the knowledge of those constituent parts of speech that we call words. By means of it we are enabled to trace the affinities of the different idioms of the earth, and the filiation of the numerous races and families of men who inhabit it; and, lastly, ideology is the comparative study of the grammatical forms and idiomatic structure of languages, by which we are taught to distinguish the different shapes in which ideas combine themselves, in order to fix perceptions in our minds, and transmit them to those of others. (See the Preface to the translation of Zeisberger's Grammar of the Lenni-Lenape, or Delaware Language, in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. iii, new series, p. 75.) Having adopted this division of our general subject, we shall, as briefly as possible, consider separately each of the three parts of which it is composed.

I. Phonology. This we have defined to be "the knowledge of the sounds produced by the human voice." According to this definition, it seems to include music, and it does, in fact, comprehend it; for music is a language, and the only one that may be called universal. It is true, that its sphere is limited; still it conveys the impression of passions and feelings from mind to mind by means of audible sounds, and, coupled with the language of