for which this memoir was written has been answered. The Lord give us his grace, that we may also," through faith and patience, inherit the promises."

[We are glad to learn that the esteemed correspondent who has favoured us with the above narratives, has been induced to reprint his excellent Lectures upon 1 Peter iv. 7—the substance of which appeared in the Christian Observer-in a separate little volume, with his name affixed to it: "The Rev. J. M. Hiffernan, Curate of Fethard, in the Diocese of Cashel." Not a few of our readers expressed the interest and profit with which they perused those essays, as they went forth in our Numbers; and we doubt not they will be glad to procure and circulate them in their collected form.]

CURSORY REMARKS ON THE ORIGIN AND EARLY RECORDS OF LANGUAGE.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

HAVING perused a sensible article written by "Medicus Surriensis," which you inserted in March last, on the supposed Mosaic origin of the Hebrew Alphabet, I have been partly led thereby into the same train of thought, and propose to submit to your readers another paper on the origin of language in general, whether inarticulate or articulate, symbolical or legible. I should premise, that my own ideas on the subject, and reasoning, will be substantiated by those of the most esteemed, learned, and popular authorities, so far as they have been themselves under the pupilage of Holy Writ.

I shall commence then, first, with the consideration of inarticulate and articulate language. It is undeniable that the brute creation have been endowed by God with an instinctive power of expressing their wants. The passions likewise of affection, fear, anger, grief, and pleasure, appear to arise from their physiological temperaments, peculiar dispositions, and circumstantial localities; and to be evidenced under various forms by the sounds or cries of those domestic animals which are familiar to us, and of those wilder inhabitants of remote climes, classed in the departments of natural history, among which Linnæus and more recent naturalists will furnish us with some singular examples. I shall content myself with adducing one instance of the nearest approach to rational articulation in one of the inferior animals, which is cited by Mr. Locke, from a work entitled " Memoirs of what passed in Christendom from 1672 to 1679." The author of the work received the account from Prince Maurice himself. When that Prince was Governor in Brazil, he met there with an unusually large and aged parrot, which was believed by those of his suite to be bewitched. When it first was ushered into the same apartment with him, where there were assembled several Dutchmen, having sent for it from a distance to gratify his own curiosity, it said: "What a company of white men are here!" They asked it, "What that man was?" pointing to the Prince. It answered: " Some General or other." "Whence come you?" Answer: " From Marignan." The Prince: "To whom do you belong?" Answer: "To a Portuguese." "What do you there?" "I look after the chickens." The Prince, laughing: "You look after the chickens?" "Yes, I; and I know well enough how to do it," The

conversation was carried on in Brazilian, and there were present two interpreters-the one a Dutchman who spoke Brazilian, and the other a Brazilian who spoke Dutch-both of whom, on examination, separately and privately, agreed in the truth of the story. If I should be myself required to offer any philosophical explanation of this narration, I should assert my own incredulity in regard to the faculty of reason in the parrot; and my belief that its instinct, being exercised by continual imitation, from the frequency of ordinary converse with those around it, since it came into the hands of its possessor, had acquired by tuition a power of repartee, but which was confined to those sounds, in respect to persons and subjects, to which it had become habituated; and had any diversified questions been put to it on foreign topics, or concerning individuals who were strangers to it, the answers would have totally failed.

It has been rashly and absurdly imagined, that if infants were removed from their parents immediately after their birth, and placed in a solitary situation, they would gradually articulate the primitive language of the human race. Psammitichus, king of Egypt, made the experiment by placing two young children under the superintendence of a shepherd, who was directed not to speak a word to them, but to suckle them by means of goats, in a cottage, apart from all other society; watching at the same time the first articulate sound which they should utter. After two years had elapsed, the shepherd having opened the door of the cottage, both the children stretched out their hands, and exclaimed, Bec, bec.' This utterance being repeated, and being reported to Psammitichus, he commanded them to be brought before him; and having inquired by what nation this word was pronounced, he was informed that the same was the Phrygian appellation for bread. It was therefore concluded that the Phrygians, who had disputed their antiquity with the Egyptians, were the most ancient people. This anecdote is differently related by historians; but the truth of the matter seems to be, that the children acquired the note in question from the bleating of the goats, thus accented, 'be-ec, be-ec,' and as food is called by a like sound in Hebrew, beg,' (Daniel i. 8., and xi. 26) the argument, were it not futile, would be as applicable to that tongue as to the Phrygian.

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From the natural construction of the human organs, the lungs, trachea, larynx, and glottis, the shape and muscles of the tongue, it is obvious that man is so physically formed as to be capable of uttering a voice; just as the pipes of the great and well-known organ at Haarlem are so artificially manufactured as to emit a note and cadence, which, thus modulated, is called the "vox humana," and the performance of which I myself once paid the organist sundry guilders, or florins, to hear. It is equally certain that such a tone of speech in man must be inarticulate, till it becomes regulated by the sense of hearing, and consequently all persons born stone-deaf are also dumb. A middle-aged person of my acquaintance, who from his birth was deaf and dumb, having learned to read, compose, and transcribe writing, and to calculate figures, at the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, which he accomplishes with much facility, can half articulate the monosyllables Yes and No, together with a very few other words; which he must have been taught by a mere mechanical process, for no sensitive impression can be made upon his ears except by the report of a cannon at the distance of a few yards; in which case the vibration of the at

mosphere causes a corresponding sensation upon his nerves. He can have, therefore, no more notion of the pronunciation of such words as house or tree, from the conveyance of sound through the orifice and drum of the ear, than a blind man, who reads embossed characters, can deduce from them the idea of scarlet; which, notwithstanding, may be only comparable in his mind to the sound of a trumpet. Though the physical organ of the tongue in men is anatomically adapted to the production of articulate sound, yet it does not follow that it is absolutely and unexceptionably necessary; for in the Transactions of the Philosophical Society, between the years 1742 and 1747, there is published the case of a young woman named Margaret Cutting, of Wickham Market, near Ipswich in Suffolk, who entirely lost her tongue, when she was four years of age, from a cancer, but who continued to taste and swallow her food, as well as to speak, converse, and sing, without impediment, and could utter those syllables which need the tip of the tongue for their correct pronunciation. She retained only a few of her teeth, which were sunk in her gums from the same disorder which had deprived her of the organ of speech. The attestation of the fact by the minister of the parish, a medical man, and another person of respectability, was not sufficient to satisfy the Royal Society on the subject of this category, nor the examination of other witnesses; till the young woman herself was introduced to them, which placed the matter beyond question.

Philosophers have been divided in opinion in regard to the origination of human articulate speech; some entertaining the doctrine that' one individual from among mankind, or in conjunction with others, like a scientific monarchy or aristocracy, at an early age of the world, dictated to the inferior and rude populace around them the use of language; while others have presumed that there was some first language of nature, from which the rest have imperceptibly sprung, and in the course of time attained to maturity. According to the interpretation of the Targum of Onkelos on the 7th verse of Genesis, chapter 2; "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul;" man was formed a speaking spirit, whether we conceive him to have been endued with the gift of speaking innately some one language, or simply with the power of speech; for we read in verse 16, that the Creator first audibly addressed the creature, before Adam spoke himself, " And the Lord God commanded the man, saying;" and again in verse 18, " And the Lord God said." This same language which was taught by God to Adam, who progressively may be supposed to have become proficient in it, was continued through the generations of the antediluvian patriarchs; for we learn from Genesis xi. 1, " And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech," after the flood, and till the building of Babel.

I am now led to the second head of my subject, which is symbolical or legible language. It is obvious that the earliest and most illiterate mode of expressing ideas in significant characters, must have been by hieroglyphics or emblematical representations of visible objects, before the gradual invention of the more manageable method of legible orthography. The ancient symbolical process of engraving upon stone appears in the ruins of Egypt, Babylon, and Persepolis, as well as in other parts of the East, together with legible fragments; so that the changes from pictorial delineations to alphabetical may be dis

cerned, as they passed into each other. The public seals of Eastern princes at the present time have legible sentences engraven upon them. According to the annals of China, the Chinese were in a state of barbarous ignorance nearly 500 years after the deluge. The Y-King, or oldest of their sacred books, consists of horizontal lines, the characters of which are so mysteriously cut and arranged, that their meaning has been only so far ascertained as partly to unravel the nature of their religion, which consists of a belief in the one God, and a recognition of the Emperor as King and High-Priest. An earlier date, however, has been assigned as the era of the Chinese empire. There is reason for supposing that the Hindoos may have been in possession of the art of symbolical or legible writing as early as the time of Moses; while there is considerable diversity of opinion between the statements of Sir William Jones, and those of later travellers and authors, regarding the age of their religious institutes; but according to the researches of the first-mentioned Asiatic linguist, some of them existed 1580 years before the birth of Christ, and therefore before Moses. Mr. Judson, the late Missionary to the Burmese, states likewise of the Boodhists that they contest the antiquity of their religion with that of Bramah. It is reasonable to believe that the Hebrew letters were neither the invention of Moses, nor given to him for the first time by the Lord from Sinai, but that they were in use before the deluge and after it; and Scaliger is of opinion that the same letters were known to Adam. It is undeniable that in that age there were not only agriculturists, but musicians and artificers. As the Old Testament books, the Law and the Prophets, were written in Hebrew, it may be concluded that the same language which was indited by Jehovah, in inspiring those prophets and delivering the law, was the same in which He spake to Adam; though the artificial and literal representation of it, may have been the work of the first man after the Fall. The Targum of Jonathan, the commentators Jarchi, Aben-Ezra, and other Jewish writers, designate the Hebrew as the holy tongue; and plead for its priority in point of antiquity, of which there seems to be little or no doubt. Though the Phoenician or Samaritan, the Syriac or Chaldee, the Arabic or Ethiopian, have laid claim to the same primeval root, yet they can only be admitted to be dialects of the Hebrew, and borrowed from it, which, in respect to its simplicity and dignity, is superior to them, and in the perfection of its letters and points; nor will it yield place to the Greek, Armenian, Latin, Gothic, and European tongues, which are either cognate and kindred with it, or its descendants. The term Hebrew is derived from Heber, from whom it passed through Peleg and Abraham to the Jewish nation; and the existing alphabet has been accredited to be the same as in the time of Solomon and David; for it is discoverable in the 119th Psalm and others, in the last chapter of Proverbs, and in the Lamentations, which were written anterior to and at the commencement of the Babylonish captivity. The paranomasia used by Adam, when he called his wife woman, agrees with the Hebrew only, "She shall be called 'Ishah,' woman, because she was taken out of man (Gen. ii. 23). The names also of the places and persons, before the confusion of Babel, are in Hebrew. Thus, Eden denotes delight; Nod, to wander; as Adam is derived from adamah, earth; Eve from chayah, to live; Cain, from another Hebrew word,

signifying possession; Abel, vanity; Seth, appointed; and the patriarchal names down to Noah, have similar significations.

It is worthy of observation, that there are certain words which seem to have been derived from one and the same source, and to have formed the common stock of various languages: for example, the generic terms Papa or Father, which have a Hebrew origin, and are common to the Greek and Latin, like universal patronymics. Nor is there a single tongue, whether civilized or savage, in any quarter of the globe, in which they do not occur; and we are therefore led to consider the human family as having the same derivative origination, and as having been occupants of the same country which was their birth-place.

Again: the etymon man occurs in Hebrew under the word (maneh), a verb which signifies to discriminate. In Sanscrit and Egyptian, it is synonymous with Adam, or the first man. In Greek μενος denotes the human mind, which is mens in Latin. In the Gothic and northern European dialects, man is the same as the English word. In Bengalee and Hindostanee, manshee; in Malayan, manizee; in Japanese, munio; in the Sandwich Islands, manawa is the mind or spirit; and in New Guinea, sonaman, which is compounded of man. I might bring forward other instances of a similar kind in the words Deity, death, sir, young, regent, &c.

There seems to have been no fixed rule universally adhered to over the Gentile world in the manner of writing; for, in the earliest specimens of Greek, the letters sometimes run from right to left, and at other times from left to right, which has been thence called the ploughing style while in Egypt, Persia, and China, they are perpendicular. The combinations of which twenty-four letters are capable, are almost innumerable e; as ten numerical figures may be extended ad infinitum, and the whole range of music is comprised in seven notes. To the art of writing and engraving Job makes allusion, when he exclaims, "Oh! that my words were now written; oh! that they were printed in a book—that they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever," (xix. 23, 24). In Exodus xvii. 14, we read: "And the Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book or table ;" and again, xxviii. 36, “And thou shalt make a plate of pure gold, and grave upon it, like the engraving of a signet, Holiness to the Lord;" and hence we may infer that with the same the Jews were acquainted as well as other nations. Compare also Deut. xxvii. 2, 3, and Hab. ii. 2. After the like custom, some time after books were invented, Hannibal is reported to have engraved a memorial upon the Alps, of his passage over them. Again, we read in Numbers xvii. 2, "Speak unto the children of Israel, and take of every one of them a rod, according to the house of their fathers; of all their princes, according to the house of their fathers, twelve rods; write thou every man's name upon his rod." After the same manner writing on sticks was practised by the Greeks; and Plutarch and Aulus Gellius mention that the laws of Solon were inscribed upon tablets of wood, and preserved at Athens. To the Eastern use of rushes or flags, Isaiah alludes, xix. 7, "The paper-reeds by the brooks, by the mouth of the brooks, and everything sown by the brooks, shall wither, be driven away, and be no more." Parchment was rolled round a stick, tied with a string and sealed; whence the Hebraism (megittah), a volume, and the term roll in Ezra vi. 2, Jer. xxxvi. 2, and Is. xxxiv. 4; but this