mechanical world than James Watt. The History of England produced by a Scotchman is still emphatically the English History;' nor, with all its defects, is it likely to be soon superseded. Robertson, if inferior in the untaught felicities of narration to his illustrious countryman, is at least inferior to none of his English contemporaries. The prose fictions of Smollett have kept their ground quite as well as those of Fielding, and better than those of Richardson. Nor does England during the century exhibit higher manifestations of the poetic spirit than those exhibited by Thomson and by Burns. To use a homely but expressive Scotticism, Scotland seems to have lost her bairn-time of the giants; but in the after bairn-time of merely tall men, her children were quite as tall as any of their contemporaries. his editorship extended over a period of about thirty years. In 1847 he resigned the conduct of the paper to a very able political writer, MR ALEXANDER RUSSEL (1814-1876), who was author of a treatise on the Salmon, and of contributions to the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews: a man of great energy, and of bright and versatile powers. In 1869, two volumes of Mr Maclaren's Select Writings were published by Mr Robert Cox and Professor James Nicol of Aberdeen. CHARLES DARWIN. This eminent naturalist, grandson of the poet (ante, p. 15), was born at Shrewsbury in 1809. After education at the grammar-school of his native The Life and Letters of Hugh Miller have town, and at the universities of Edinburgh and been published by PETER BAYNE, M.A., two Cambridge, he volunteered to accompany Captain volumes, 1871. This is a copious-too copious- Fitzroy in H.M.S. Beagle as naturalist on an but interesting work, embracing a full account of expedition for the survey of South America, and the ecclesiastical questions in which Miller was so the circumnavigation of the globe. About five deeply and earnestly engaged. An excellent sum-years were spent on this survey, and Mr Darwin mary of his life and works is also given in a had ample opportunities for studying nature under volume of biographies, entitled Golden Lives, by new and interesting aspects: HENRY A. PAGE, 1874. Popular views of physical science in almost every department will be found in the works of DR DIONYSIUS LARDNER (1793-1859). These are-Hand-book of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, three volumes, 1851-53; Museum of Science and Art, twelve volumes, 1854-56; Railway Economy, 1850; with treatises on Hydrostatics and Pneumatics, Heat, &c. MR DAVID THOMAS Ansted (born in London in 1814), Professor of Geology at King's College, London, has written several valuable works on his favourite science. The most popular of these is his Geology, Introductory, Descriptive, and Practical, two volumes, 1844; The Ancient World, or Picturesque Sketches of Great Britain, 1847; also several geological manuals. Few men have done more to popularise any one branch of science than Professor Ansted. In 1844 he was appointed Vice-secretary of the Geological Society; in 1868, Examiner in Physical Geography in the Department of Science and Art. The late PROFESSOR JOHN FLEMING, Edinburgh (1785-1857), did much to advance natural science in Scotland. His principal works areThe Philosophy of Zoology, two volumes, 1822; The History of British Animals, 1828; Molluscous Animals, including Shell-fish, 1837; The Temperature of the Seasons, 1851; On the Different Branches of Natural History (Address at the meeting of the British Association), 1855; The Lithology of Edinburgh, 1858; and various papers in the scientific journals. Dr Fleming was born at Kirkroads, near Bathgate, Linlithgowshire. | He entered the Scottish church, and was successively minister of Bressay in Shetland, Flisk in Fifeshire, and Clackmannan. He afterwards was Professor of Natural Philosophy in King's College, Aberdeen. Another early student of geology in Scotland was MR CHARLES MACLAREN, Edinburgh_(1782-1866), who published an account of the Geology of Fife and the Lothians, 1839. Before this, he had contributed to various scientific journals, and written a Dissertation on the Topography of the Plain of Troy, 1822. Mr Maclaren was the original editor of The Scotsman, Edinburgh newspaper, commenced in 1817, and First Conception of the Theory of Natural Selection. When (he says) I visited, during the voyage of the Pacific Ocean, about five hundred miles from South H.M.S. Beagle, the Galapagos Archipelago, situated in America, I found myself surrounded by peculiar species of birds, reptiles, and plants, existing nowhere else in the world. Yet they nearly all bore an American stamp. In the song of the mocking-thrush, in the harsh cry of the carrion-hawk, in the great candlestick-like opuntias, I clearly perceived the neighbourhood of America, though the islands were separated by so many miles of ocean from the mainland, and differed much in their geological Still more surprising was the constitution and climate. fact that most of the inhabitants of each separate island though most clearly related to each other. The archiin this small archipelago were specifically different, pelago, with its innumerable craters and bare streams of lava, appeared to be of recent origin, and thus I fancied myself brought near to the very act of creation. I often asked myself how these many peculiar animals and plants had been produced: the simplest answer seemed to be that the inhabitants of the several islands had descended from each other, undergoing modification in the course of their descent; and that all the inhabitants of the archipelago were descended from those of the nearest land, namely, America, whence colonists would naturally have been derived. But it long remained to of modification could have been effected, and it would me an inexplicable problem how the necessary degree thus have remained for ever had I not studied domestic productions, and thus acquired a just idea of the power of selection. As soon as I had fully realised this idea, I saw on reading Malthus on Population, that natural selection was the inevitable result of the rapid increase of all organic beings; for I was prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence by having long studied the habits of animals. Mr Darwin returned to England in October 1836, and commenced publishing the results of his long voyage and his minute observation : Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries visited during the Voyage of H.M.S. 'Beagle,' 1839; On the Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs, 1842; Geological Observations on Volcanic Islands, 1844; Geological Observations on South America, 1846; and A Monograph of the Cirripedia, published by the Ray Society in 1851-3 (a remarkable work on zoology). Mr Darwin's next work was that which may be said to have stirred all Europe by the boldness of its speculations and theories-On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 1859. His subsequent publications have been-Fertilisation of Orchids through Insect Agency, and as to the Good of Inter-crossing, 1862; Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, 1867; The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 1871; Expression of the Emotions to Man and Animals, 1872; Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants, 1874; and numerous geological and botanical papers in scientific journals. The theory of natural selection advocated by Mr Darwin is of ancient date-as old as Lucretius-and has been maintained by Lamarck and others; but Mr Darwin conceived that these previous schemes or theories afford no explanation of the mode in which the alleged progressive transmutation of organic bodies from the lowest to the highest grades has taken place. Species, he says, are not immutable. Örganisms vary and multiply at a greater rate than their means of subsistence. The offspring resemble their parents in general points, but vary in particulars. Amid the struggle for existence which has been always going on among living beings, variations of bodily conformation and structure, if in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring.' In the struggle for life, the strongest of course prevail; the weak die; and this is the principle or hypothesis of natural selection, or survival of the fittest, which Mr Darwin illustrates by a vast store of facts, gleaned from almost innumerable sources, and brought forward with a philosophic calmness and modesty worthy of all honour and imitation. The illustrations are often interesting, but the theory wants proof; even Professor Huxley admits that it is not absolutely proven that a group of animals, having all the characters exhibited by species in nature, has ever been orig; inated by selection, whether artificial or natural.' M. Agassiz wholly repudiates it: The animals known to the ancients are still in existence, exhibiting to this day the characters they exhibited of old. Until the facts of nature are shewn to have been mistaken by those who have collected them, and that they have a different meaning from that now generally assigned to them, I shall therefore consider the transmutation theory as a scientific mistake, untrue in its facts, unscientific in its methods, and mischievous in its tendency.' Professor Owen, in his Classification of Mammalia, is also opposed to the theory. Mr Darwin, in his Origin of Species, has given what we may call A Poetical View of Natural Selection. It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being growth with reproduction; inheritance, which is almost implied by reproduction; varia bility from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a ratio of increase so high as to lead to a struggle for life, and as a consequence to natural selection, entailing divergence of Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, character and the extinction of less-improved forms. the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving—namely, the production of the higher animals— directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved. Utilitarianism is not the sole motive or mover: I willingly admit that a great number of male animals, as all our most gorgeous birds, some fishes, reptiles, and mammals, and a host of magnificently coloured butterflies, have been rendered beautiful for beauty's sake, but this has been effected through sexual selection-that is, by the more beautiful males having been continually preferred by the females, and not for the delight of man. So it is with the music of birds. We only infer from all this that a nearly similar taste for beautiful colours and for musical sounds runs through a large part of the animal kingdom. This seems as fanciful and poetical as the elder Darwin's Loves of the Plants. The theory of evolution has been carried to its farthest extreme the descent of man. Mr Darwin conceives that our early or common progenitor was an ape -one of the quadrumana. The quadrumana and all the higher mammals are probably derived from an ancient marsupial animal, and this through a long line of diversified forms, either from some reptile-like or some amphibian-like animal. Of course, a theory so revolting to the some fish-like creature, and this again from pride of human nature-so irreconcilable with the records of both revelation and geology-was sure to occasion keen controversy. One of the most learned opponents of Mr Darwin is Mr St George Mivart, who contends that man, the ape, and the half-ape cannot be arranged in a single ascending series of which man is the term and culmination. The similarity of structure in some things is no proof of common origin. Each species has been independently created. Bishop Wilberforce attacked the theory in the Quarterly Review, and various other answers appeared. 'The endeavour of Cuvier to construct from the study of fossil bones an anatomical and physiological history of the individual animal of which these bones are the sole remains, was quite logical; but is wholly different in principle from the fallacious attempts to make the facts of ontogenesis, or individual embryonic development, prove the validity of phylogenesis, or evolution of the line of all living forms by gradual increase and modification of structure throughout innumerable generations, in the course of millions of years, from a spontaneously produced shapeless mass of protoplasm, like the flake of the white of an egg.'* Of the mental difference between man and the lower animals-the gulf that separates them—and especially on the subject of language, some remarks by Professor Max Müller will be found in * Mr Wharton Jones's Lectures on Evolution. a subsequent page. The following extracts will plants; many of these variations being of no service to give some idea of Mr Darwin's style: Variability. Not only the various domestic races, but the most distinct genera and orders within the same great classfor instance, mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes-are all the descendants of one common progenitor, and we must admit that the whole vast amount of difference between these forms has primarily arisen from simple variability. To consider the subject under this point of view is enough to strike one dumb with amazement. But our amazement ought to be lessened when we reflect that beings almost infinite in number, during an almost infinite lapse of time, have often had their whole organisation rendered in some degree plastic, and that each slight modification of structure which was in any way beneficial under excessively complex conditions of life has been preserved, whilst each which was in any way injurious has been rigorously destroyed. And the long-continued accumulation of beneficial variations will infallibly have led to structures as diversified, as beautifully adapted for various purposes, and as excellently co-ordinated as we see in the animals and plants around us. Hence I have spoken of selection as the paramount power, whether applied by man to the formation of domestic breeds, or by nature to the production of species. If an architect were to rear a noble and commodious edifice, without the use of cut stone, by selecting from the fragments at the base of a precipice wedge-formed stones for his arches, elongated stones for his lintels, and flat stones for his roof, we should admire his skill, and regard him as the paramount power. Now, the fragments of stone, though indispensable to the architect, bear to the edifice built by him, the same relation which the fluctuating variations of organic beings bear to the varied and admirable structures ultimately acquired by their modified descendants. Some authors have declared that natural selection explains nothing, unless the precise cause of each slight individual difference be made clear. If it were explained to a savage utterly ignorant of the art of building how the edifice had been raised stone upon stone, and why wedge-formed fragments were used for the arches, flat stones for the roof, &c.; and if the use of each part and of the whole building were pointed out, it would be unreasonable if he declared that nothing had been made clear to him, because the precise cause of the shape of each fragment could not be told. But this is a nearly parallel case with the objection that selection explains nothing, because we know not the cause of each individual difference in the structure of each being. man, and not beneficial, far more often injurious, to the creatures themselves? Did He ordain that the crop and tail-feathers of the pigeon should vary in order that the fancier might make his grotesque pouter and fantail breeds? Did He cause the frame and mental qualities of the dog to vary in order that a breed might be formed of indomitable ferocity, with jaws fitted to pin down the bull for man's brutal sport? But if we give up the principle in one case-if we do not admit that the variations of the primeval dog were intentionally guided in order that the greyhound, for instance, that perfect image of symmetry and vigour, might be formed-no shadow of reason can be assigned for the belief that variations, alike in nature and the result of the same general laws, which have been the groundwork through natural selection of the formation of the most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, were intentionally and specially guided. However much we may wish it, we can hardly follow Professor Asa Gray in his belief, that variation has been led along certain bene ficial lines of irrigation.' If we assume that each particular variation was from the beginning of all time preordained, then that plasticity of organisation which leads to many injurious deviations of structure, as well as the redundant power of reproduction which inevitably leads to a struggle for existence, and as a consequence, to the natural selection or survival of the fittest, must appear to us superfluous laws of nature. On the other hand, an omnipotent and omniscient Creator ordains everything and foresees everything. Thus we are brought face to face with a difficulty as insoluble as is that of free will and predestination. Improvement in Flowers. Buffon, on comparing the flowers, fruit, and vegetables which were then cultivated with some excellent drawings made a hundred and fifty years previously, was struck with surprise at the great improvement which had been effected; and remarks that these ancient flowers and vegetables would now be rejected, not only by a florist, but by a village gardener. Since the time of Buffon the work of improvement has steadily and rapidly gone on. Every florist who compares our present flowers with those figured in books published not long since, is astonished at the change. A well-known amateur, in speaking of the varieties of Pelargonium raised by Mr Garth only twenty-two years before, remarks: What a rage they excited; surely we had attained perfection, it was said, and now not one of the flowers of those days will be looked at. But none the less is the debt of gratitude which we owe to those who The shape of the fragments of stone at the base of our saw what was to be done, and did it.' Mr Paul, the precipice may be called accidental, but this is not well-known horticulturist, in writing of the same flower, strictly correct; for the shape of each depends on a says he remembers, when young, being delighted with the long sequence of events, all obeying natural laws; on portraits in Sweet's work; but what are they in point the nature of the rock, on the lines of deposition or of beauty compared with the Pelargoniums of this day? cleavage, on the form of the mountain, which depends Here, again, nature did not advance by leaps; the imon its upheaval and subsequent denudation, and lastly provement was gradual, and if we had neglected those on the storm or earthquake which throws down the very gradual advances, we must have foregone the fragments. But in regard to the use to which the frag-present grand results.' How well this practical hortiments may be put, their shape may be strictly said to be accidental. And here we are led to face a great difficulty, in alluding to which I am aware I am travelling beyond my proper province. An omniscient Creator must have foreseen every consequence which results from the laws imposed by Him. But can it reasonably be maintained that the Creator intentionally ordered, if we use the words in any ordinary sense, that certain fragments of rock should assume certain shapes so that the builder might erect his edifice? If the various laws which have determined the shape of each fragment were not predetermined for the builder's sake, can it be maintained with any greater probability that He specially ordained for the sake of the breeder each of the innumerable variations in our domestic animals and culturist appreciates and illustrates the gradual and accumulative force of selection! The dahlia has advanced in beauty in like manner; the line of improvement being guided by fashion, and by the successive modifications which the flower slowly underwent. A steady and gradual change has been noticed in many other flowers: thus, an old florist, after describing the leading varieties of the pink which were grown in 1813, adds, 'the pinks of those days would now be scarcely grown as borderflowers.' The improvement of so many flowers, and the number of the varieties which have been raised, is all the more striking when we hear (from Prescott's History of Mexico) that the earliest known flower-garden in Europe, namely, at Padua, dates only from the year 1545. THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY. In love of science, as well as in similarity of opinions and pursuits, PROFESSOR HUXLEY resembles his friend Mr Darwin. Having studied medicine, in his twenty-first year he obtained the appointment of assistant-surgeon to H.M.S. Rattlesnake during the surveying cruise in the South Pacific and Torres Straits. During the three years of the survey, Mr Huxley studied the numerous marine animals which were collected from time to time, and sent home notes of his observations, which were published in the Philosophical Transactions under the title of ' On the Anatomy and Affinities of the Family of the Medusa.' Further contributions to the same work were published, and were so highly appreciated that in 1851 Mr Huxley was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and next year received one of the two royal medals of the Society. He had now taken his place as one of the most distinguished naturalists and comparative anatomists of the age, and in 1854 he was appointed successor to Edward Forbes as Professor of Natural History in the Royal School of Mines. His scientific publications have earned from him fame and honours both at home and abroad. The most notable of these works are- -Observations on Glaciers, written jointly with Mr Tyndall, 1857; On the Theory of the Vertebrate Skull, 1858; The Oceanic Hydrozoa, 1858; Man's Place in Nature, 1863; Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, 1864; Lessons in Elementary Physiology, 1866; Classification of Animals, 1869; Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews, 1870; &c. The contributions of Mr Huxley to scientific journals and associations are much too numerous for us to mention here. Some of his lectures on the Phenomena of Organic Nature, delivered to working-men at the Museum of Practical Geology, have been published in a separate form, and widely circulated. Mr Huxley is a bold and fearless thinker and inquirer. Men of science,' he says, do not pledge themselves to creeds; they are bound by articles of no sort; there is not a single belief that it is not a bounden duty with them to hold with a light hand, and to part with it cheerfully the moment it is really proved to be contrary to any fact, great or small.' The proof, however, must be irresistible, and on this point we may quote another observation made by Mr Huxley : Caution to Philosophic Inquirers. The growth of physical science is now so prodigiously rapid, that those who are actively engaged in keeping up with the present, have much ado to find time to look at the past, and even grow into the habit of neglecting it. But natural as this result may be, it is none the less detrimental. The intellect loses, for there is assuredly no more effectual method of clearing up one's own mind on any subject than by talking it over, so to speak, with men of real power and grasp who have considered it from a totally different point of view. The parallax of time helps us to the true conception, as the parallax of space helps us to that of a star. And the moral nature loses no less. It is well to turn aside from the fretful stir of the present, and to dwell with gratitude and respect upon the services of those mighty men of old who have gone down to the grave with their weapons of war, but who, while they yet lived, won splendid victories over ignorance. Professor Huxley is a native of Ealing in Middlesex, born in 1825. He studied medicine in the Medical School of Charing-Cross Hospital, and in 1846 entered the medical service of the royal Royal College of Surgeons, and Fullerian Pronavy. He is now Professor of Anatomy in the fessor of Physiology in the Royal Institution. He is a Vice-president of the Zoological and the Geological Societies, &c. The Objectors to Scientific Inquiry. There are in the world a number of extremely worthy, well-meaning persons, whose judgments and opinions are entitled to the utmost respect on account of their sincerity, who are of opinion that vital phenomena, and especially all questions relating to the origin of vital phenomena, are questions quite apart from the ordinary run of inquiry, and are, by their very nature, placed out of our reach. They say that all these phenomena originated miraculously, or in some way totally different from conceive it to be futile, not to say presumptuous, to the ordinary course of nature, and that therefore they attempt to inquire into them. To such sincere and earnest persons I would only say, that a question of this kind is not to be shelved upon theoretic or speculative grounds. You may remember the story of the Sophist who demonstrated to Diogenes in the most complete and satisfactory manner, that he could not walk; that, in fact, all motion was an impossibility; and that Diogenes refuted him by simply getting up and walking round his tub. So, in the same way, the man of science replies to objections of this kind, by simply getting up and walking onward, and shewing what science has done and is doing-by pointing to the immense mass of facts which have been ascertained and systematised under the forms of the great doctrines of Morphology, of Development, of Distribution, and the like." He sees an enormous mass of facts and laws relating to organic beings, which stand on the same good sound foundation as every other natural law. With this mass of facts and laws before us, therefore, seeing that, as far as organic matters have hitherto been accessible and studied, they have shewn themselves capable of yielding to scientific investigation, we may accept this as a proof that order and law reign science says nothing to objectors of this sort, but supposes that we can and shall walk to a knowledge of organic nature, in the same way that we have walked to a knowledge of the laws and principles of the inorganic world. there as well as in the rest of nature. The man of But there are objectors who say the same from ignorance and ill-will. To such I would reply that the objection comes ill from them, and that the real presumption-I may almost say, the real blasphemy-in this matter, is in the attempt to limit that inquiry into the causes of phenomena, which is the source of all human blessings, and from which has sprung all human prosperity and progress; for, after all, we can accomplish comparatively little; the limited range of our own faculties bounds us on every side-the field of our powers of observation is small enough, and he who endeavours to narrow the sphere of our inquiries is only pursuing a course that is likely to produce the greatest harm to his fellow-men. ... All human inquiry must stop somewhere; all our knowledge and all our investigation cannot take us beyond the limits set by the finite and restricted character of our faculties, or destroy the endless unknown, which accompanies, like its shadow, the endless procession of phenomena. So far as I can venture to offer an opinion on such a matter, the purpose of our being in existence, the highest object that human beings can set before themselves is not the pursuit of any such chimera as the annihilation of the unknown; but it is simply the unwearied endeavour to remove its boundary a little often that in many things we are like the beasts of further from our little sphere of action. The Power of Speech. What is it that constitutes and makes man what he is? What is it but his power of language—that language giving him the means of recording his experience-making every generation somewhat wiser than its predecessor-more in accordance with the established order of the universe? What is it but this power of speech, of recording experience, which enables men to be men -looking before and after, and, in some dim sense, understanding the working of this wondrous universeand which distinguishes man from the whole of the brute world? I say that this functional difference is vast, unfathomable, and truly infinite in its consequences. FRIEDRICH MAXIMILIAN MÜLLER. We may supplement Mr Huxley's eloquent sentence by observations from Professor Max Müller on the same subject: Language the Barrier between Brute and Man. We see that the lowest of savages-men whose language is said to be no better than the clucking of hens, or the twittering of birds, and who have been declared in many respects lower than even animals, possess this one specific characteristic, that if you take one of their babies, and bring it up in England, it will learn to speak as well as any English baby, while no amount of education will elicit any attempts at language from the highest animals, whether biped or quadruped. That disposition cannot have been formed by definite nervous structures, congenitally framed, for we are told by the best agriologists that both father and mother clucked like hens. This fact, therefore, unless disproved by experiment, remains, whatever the explanation may be... the field, but that like ourselves, and like ourselves only, we can rise superior to our bestial self, and strive after what is unselfish, good, and Godlike. The wing by which we soar above the sensuous, was called by wise men of old the logos; the wing which lifts us above the sensual, was called by good men of old the daimonion. Let us take continual care, especially within the precincts of the temple of science, lest by abusing the gift of speech, or doing violence to the voice of conscience, we soil the two wings of our soul, and fall back, through our own fault, to the dreaded level of the gorilla. Few FRIEDRICH MAXIMILIAN MÜLLER (usually contracted to F. Max Müller) is, as his name imports, a native of Germany, born at Dessau in 1823. He studied at Leipsic, and was early distinguished for his proficiency in Sanscrit. He repaired to Berlin and to Paris for the prosecution of his philological studies, and especially to collate MSS. relative to his Rig-Veda-Sanhita, or Sacred Hymns of the Brahmans. For the same purpose, he examined the MSS. in the Bodleian Library at Oxford and in the Indian House. His great work was published at the expense of the East India Company. He took up his residence at Oxford, where he gave lectures on comparative philology, was made a member of Christ Church and M.A. in 1851, Professor of Modern Languages, curator in the Bodleian Library, Fellow of All Souls, &c. He was made one of the eight foreign members of the Institute of France, and has received the honorary degree of LL.D. from both the universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh. foreigners have been so honoured in England, or so familiar with its language and literature and institutions. As an oriental scholar, Professor Müller has no superior in England or in Germany. His Rig-Veda extends to six quarto volumes, and Language is the one great barrier between the brute he has published Hand-books for the study of Man speaks, and no brute has ever uttered a Sanscrit, a Sanscrit English Dictionary and word. Language is something more palpable than a Grammar, &c. His Lectures on the Science of fold of the brain or an angle of the skull. It admits of Language, two volumes, are now (1876) in their no cavilling, and no process of natural selection will ever distil significant words out of the notes of birds or the eighth edition; his Introduction to the Science of cries of beasts. No scholar, so far as I know, has ever Religion (four lectures delivered at the Royal controverted any of these statements. But when evolu- Institution), with Essays on Mythology, On the tionism became, as it fully deserved, the absorbing Stratification of Language, On Missions (a lecture interest of all students of nature; when it was supposed delivered in Westminster Abbey in 1873), and that, if a moneres could develop into a man, bow-wow Chips from a German Workshop, are all well and pooh-pooh might well have developed by impercept-known and appreciated in this country. The ible degrees into Greek and Latin, I thought it was time to state the case for the science of language-a statement of facts, shewing that the results of the science of language did not at present tally with the results of evolutionism, that words could no longer be derived directly from imitative and interjectional sounds, that between these sounds and the first beginnings of language, in the technical sense of the word, a barrier had been discovered, represented by what we call roots, and that, as far as we know, no attempt, not even the faintest, has ever been made by any animal, except man, to approach or to cross that barrier. I went one step further. I shewed that roots were with men the embodiments of general concepts, and that the only way in which man realised general concepts, was by means of those roots, and words derived from roots. and man. ... That there is in us an animal-ay, a bestial naturehas never been denied; to deny it would take away the very foundation of psychology and ethics. We cannot be reminded too often that all the materials of our knowledge we share with animals; that, like them, we begin with sensuous impressions, and then, like ourselves, and like ourselves only, to proceed to the general, the ideal, and the eternal. We cannot be reminded too Chips' form four volumes, the latest being published in 1875; they range over various subjects, but are chiefly on the Professor's favourite science of language, and are written in a style clear, forcible, and often picturesque. The following is a short extract from Lectures on the Science of Language: Spread of the Latin Language. There is a peculiar charm in watching the various changes of form and meaning in words passing down from the Ganges or the Tiber into the great ocean of modern speech. In the eighth century B.C. the Latin dialect was confined to a small territory: It was but one dialect out of many that were spoken all over Italy. But it grew-it became the language of Rome and of the Romans, it absorbed all the other dialects of Italy, the Umbrian, the Oscan, the Etruscan, the Celtic, and became by conquest the language of Central Italy, of Southern and Northern Italy. From thence it spread to Gaul, to Spain, to Germany, to Dacia on the Danube. It became the language of law and government in the civilised portions of Northern Asia, and it |