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his marriage, its mischievous issues came upon him after. Upon the whole, there seemed a poor likelihood of his obtaining anything suitable or sufficient. His father had received from Lord Moira a trifling but for him comfortable appointment (that of barrack-master) in Dublin, but in the changes which followed he was deprived of this. Moore and his friends succeeded in obtaining for him a portion of the income by way of a retiring pension, and Moore made up the deficiency of the income out of his own pocket. It is in reference to this disappointment, which seems to have weighed heavily on his parents' spirits, that he writes the only letter of objurgation which appears in these volumes addressed home. Though a contrast in the gravity of its remonstrating tone with the cheerful, affectionate, filial letters with which these volumes. abound, it is yet so sensible, so respectful, and so generous in the mode of the rebuke which it, apparently most deservedly, administers, that we are tempted to quote it.

TO HIS MOTHER.

"My Dearest Mother,

"Jan. 26, 1815.

'My father's last letter would have made us very unhappy indeed, if we had not had the pleasing thought that by that time you hat received the intelligence of Lord Mulgrave's letter, and were lightened at least of half your sorrow; indeed, my darling mother, I am quite ashamed of the little resolution you seem to have shown upon this occurrence; it was an event I have been expecting for years, and which I know you yourselves were hourly apprehensive of; therefore, instead of looking upon it as such an overwhelming thunderclap, you ought to thank Providence for having let you enjoy it so long, and for having deferred the loss till I was in a situation (which, thank God! I am now) to keep you comfortably without it. I venture to say 'comfortably,' because I do think (when the expenses of that house, and the et-ceteras which always attend an establishment, are deducted) you will manage to live as well upon your 2007. a-year, as you did then upon your 3507., which I suppose was the utmost the place altogether was worth. Surely, my dear mother, the stroke was just as heavy to us as to you, for I trust we have no separate interests, but share clouds and sunshine equally together; yet you would have seen no gloom in us-nothing like it; we instantly made up our minds to the reduction and economy that would be necessary, and felt nothing but gratitude to Heaven for being able to do so well; and this, my sweet

mother, is the temper of mind in which you should take it. If you knew the hundreds of poor clerks that have been laid low in the progress of this retrenchment that is going on, and have no means in the world of supporting their families, you would bless your lot, instead of yielding to such sinful despondency about it; for my father's sake (who is by no means as stout himself as he ought to be) you ought to summon up your spirits, and make the best and brightest of it.

Let him draw upon Power at two months for whatever he may want for the barrack-money, and when the rent comes due in March, we shall take care of it. Ever, my dearest mother, your own affectionate

TOM.

Long before the issue of these poor pieces of patronage had been reached, Moore had made up his mind to trust, and thankfully, to his own pen and his own industry for the support of his own family. In looking to patronage, he found nothing but disappointment.-" Il me donne," he says of Lord Moira, "des manchettes et je n'ai point de chemise,”—and he finally dismisses all hope or at least all reliance in this quarter from his mind,

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"I have but just time to tell you that I have at last had an interview with Lord Moira; he has fought very shy of me ever since he came here. I had heard that he had nothing left to give, the Royal Family having put upon him three clerks, the only remaining places of his household that he had to dispose of; so that I was well prepared for what occurred between us. He began by telling me that he had not been oblivious of me--had not been oblivious of me!' After this devil of a word, there was but little heart or soul to be expected from him. He was sorry, however, to add that all the Indian patronage he was allowed to exercise here was already exhausted; if, however, on his going to India, he should find anything worth my going out for, he would let me know. In the meantime, he had a right to expect that Ministers would serve his friends here in exchange for what he would do to serve their friends in India, and that he would try to get something for me through this channel. To this I replied, that from his hands I should always be most willing to accept anything, and that perhaps it might yet be in his power to serve me; but that I begged he would not take the trouble of applying for me to the patronage of Ministers, as I would rather struggle on as I was than take anything that would have the effect of tying up my tongue under such a system as the present.' Thus the matter rests, and such is the end of my long-cherished

hopes from the Earl of Moira, K. G. &c. He has certainly not done his duty by me his manner since his appointment has been even worse than his deficiencies of matter; but (except to such friends as you) I shall never complain of him. He served my father when my father much wanted it, and he and his sister took my dear Bessy by the hand most cordially and seasonably; for all this I give him complete absolution; and as to disappointment, I feel but little of ¡t, as his late conduct had taught me not to rely much upon him."

One feature in the present volumes, a very pleasant one, we regret to say is fast disappearing from the biography of our times-we mean the insertion of other letters than those of the person whose life is being recorded. We must confess to a feeling of great disappointment in reference to many lives lately published, at the entire absence of the letters of correspondents. This systematic omission greatly diminishes the life and variety of such biographies. It may be difficult to select, and still more dangerous and delicate to reject. But the consequence of the entire omission of these sources of interest is, that allusions are sometimes but half understood, and the hero seems to stand solitary on the battle-field of life.

Not the least entertaining and interesting of the letters in these volumes are those from friends, especially those from Lady Donegal and her sister. The frankness, sincerity, good sense and kind feeling which pervade these epistles are very much to the credit of the writers. From these as from many other parts of the volumes most interesting and amusing extracts might be made. But no one who has any liking for Moore will fail to read them: and we shall ourselves defer any general estimate of Moore, his character or his influence, until we have the opportunity, which we shall greedily embrace, of continuing our perusal of this fascinating biography.

ART. III.-FORSTER'S PRIMEVAL LANGUAGE.

1. The One Primeval Language, traced experimentally through Ancient Inscriptions, including the Voice of Israel from the Rocks of Sinai. By the Rev. Charles Forster, B.D. Part I. 1851.-Part II. The Monuments of Egypt, and their Vestiges of Patriarchal Tradition. 1852.

2. Ein und zwanzig Sinaitische Inschriften. Versuch einer Erklärung. Von Friedrich Tuch. 1849.

THE one primæval language has been an ignis fatuus which has led historians and philologers into many a weary and unprofitable chace. Those who engaged in it in former times had some plausible ground for expecting that the pursuit might be successful. Hebrew indeed is assumed as the language of mankind from the Creation to the Deluge; and as the origin of the principal nations of antiquity seemed to be separated only by two or three generations from the time when "all the earth was of one language and of one speech," it was a natural inference that if we only knew what was the original language of Egypt, Arabia, and Babylonia, we should find in it all the essential parts of the tongue in which Shem, Ham, and Japheth conversed with their father. With our present knowledge the problem is by no means so simple. Historical criticism rejects the supposition that great monarchies started into existence in the third generation after an event which reduced the whole human race to a single family. The zoologist declares it to have been impossible that the countless forms of animal life should have been collected in one locality or diffused from it. The ethnographer and linguist, surveying the endless variety of structure and roots in human language, from the monosyllabic Chinese to the polysynthetic Mexican, in which an oak is called Amanganaschquiminsi, abandons the idea of their derivation from any single stock, and regards speech as an organic development of man's intellectual and physical nature, and therefore varied by all the influences which outward circumstances exercise over him.

CHRISTIAN TEACHER.-No. 59.

D

the

To Mr. Forster, however, all the discoveries of science, all the improvements in reasoning on historical subjects, go for nothing, and he writes on them as he might have done three centuries ago. He stands resolutely upon old paths, not to see and ask where is the good way, but to denounce every other as wrong and dangerous. Availing himself of the peculiar and extreme sensibility of the public mind in this country, he calls theological prejudice to the aid of his argument, deals infidel and atheist around him, and declares that to question on any ground whatever, the historical authority, the literal fidelity, the infallible exactness even of the gospel genealogies (to suppose Heber for instance not to have been a real person, but the assumed eponymus of the Hebrew nation), "is to strike at the root of Christianity and Revelation." His work is written throughout under the bias which these words. betray, and no one who is acquainted with the writings of those who start with the same assumption as he does, will expect sound and dispassionate argument. The sensibility to which we have alluded, however, secures him many favourable judges and a temporary reputation.

His work on the "Historical Geography of Arabia,” rendered service to palæography, by making known the Himyaritic inscriptions of Hadramaut, to the interpretation of which he had been guided, by finding an account of them in an old Arabic writer. The "Voice of Israel from the Rocks of Sinai," is an attempt to read and interpret the inscriptions which are scattered through the valleys of this region, and are particularly abundant in one, which has been thence called Wadi Mokatteb, "the inscribed valley." They were first noticed by Cosmas*, a voyager to India in the reign of Justinian, who in a work entitled "Christian Topography," relates that some Jews who accompanied him in his travels declared them to be in Hebrew, and the work of their ancestors when they came out of Egypt, marking the dates and stages of their journey †. The publication of this work of Cosmas by

* Mr. Forster thinks he has discovered the autograph of Cosmas among the Sinaitic inscriptions, calling himself Tßdvaurios, i. e. voyager to Thibet. Voice of Israel, p. 4. Such a voyage would rank with the shipwreck on the coast

of Bohemia.

As Montfauçon's book is rare, and the work of Cosmas has not been printed separately, we subjoin a translation of the part which relates to the

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