and credulity, when superstition and fable held despotic sway, and excluded every ray of science and philosophy.

Mankind have, in all ages, exhibited signs of brutality and fierceness, which are ever inconsistent with those sympathies and tender feelings of which their improved nature is capable. "Vitiis sine nemo nascitur, optimus ille est qui "minimis urgetur.'

The nicest musical ear, accustomed only to the sounds of simple melodies, cannot at once perceive the beauties, nor relish the combined, though just harmony, of artificial musical composition. To feel forcibly the power and energy of pleasurable sounds, requires habitual cultivation. Sounds which at first afford only a confused sense of blended or undistinguished harmony, or strike the ear with an agreeable concordance, will, in the progress of more familiar acquaintance, touch powerfully the strings of the heart, pour upon the mind a flood of joys, which elevate the soul, and convey a conscious intimation of a nature superior to the pursuits of terrestrial animals.

Congenial with these sensations are the feelings of sympathetic hearts in the communication of tender pleasures. The exercise of the benevolent affections ever give the purest delight; relief afforded to the mind afflicted with the woes of unmerited misfortune, is a sweet gratification. Man may be held, therefore, with ap

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"of Apollo at Delos, in the time of Herodotus, "were the most ancient known to the Greeks. "The hymns of Thamyris and Orpheus were ad"mired for their singular sweetness, even in the 'days of Plato; and the Thracians, Thamyris, Orpheus, Musæus, Eumolpus, with Olen the Lycian, were the acknowledged fathers of "Grecian poetry, and the first who attempted "to reclaim the Greeks from barbarity, and to "introduce that refinement of manners, taste, and "language, which, in subsequent ages, distinແ guished a Greek from a barbarian."*

Language affords the most authentic monument of the original connexion of nations. It is the principal indication of the consanguinity of races of men. It is clear, that the inhabitants of Greece spoke, before it was known by that name, a language, which the improved Greeks termed barbarous; a remnant of that barbarous language was retained down to the age of Herodotus, by that portion of the natives who had preserved themselves free from an admixture with strangers speaking a different language. "Concerning the barbarous hordes, who, in ear"liest times, occupied Greece under various names, Dryopes, Caucones, Æones, Leleges, Pelasgians, and others, the diligent and judi"cious Strabo seems to have been unable to "discern how far they were different people.

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* SULLIVAN'S Letters, vol. iv. p. 425.

"They appear to have been much intermixed, "but the Pelasgian name prevailed most on the “continent, and the Lelegian in the islands. "The Athenians and Arcadians, in whose country there had never, within the bounds of tra

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ditionary memorials, been any complete revo"lution of the population, continued always to

refer their origin, in part at least, to the Pelas"gian revolutions depriving the other Greeks of means to trace their ancestry so high, gave "them at the same time new eras from which

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to begin their account of themselves, in consequence of which the old fell the more readily "into oblivion. The Pelasgian name thus grew "obsolete at an early period, and the Greek nation

became distinguished into two hordes, called "Ionian and Eolian. Yet the distinction of "those hordes, whatever it originally was, be"came in the course of ages more than nominal, .66 since, though their settlements were intermixed, and their language fundamentally one, each 'people still preserved its peculiar dialect."

However much the language of the most ancient inhabitants of Greece became altered and improved by new settlers among them, it is not to be presumed, that the original barbarous language was totally extinguished; some vestiges would still remain as a monument of their original descent. If all the dialects of the Greek

* MITFORD'S Hist. of Greece, c. iii. sect. 1.

of Ireland; and that a great part of the Greek, which is not Latin, is also derived from the Gaelic language, and that a very considerable portion of both these languages, where they agree in sound and sense, is obviously deducible from the same source, we draw thence two conclusions: 1st, That the Gaelic language is so far the common parent of both; 2dly, That the Greek language brought into Italy by Grecian colonies, renewed, in its altered and more cultivated state, its acquaintance with its parent languages, the Pelasgic and Gaelic, as yet spoken in a more uncultivated state by the inhabitants of Italy.

We propose to submit, with all due deference to the learned, some remarks and observations, which we think entitle the Gaelic language to claim in some measure to be the parent stock of both the Greek and Latin languages. We propose also to offer some remarks to show, that the Gael of Scotland and Ireland are genuine descendants of the great Gaelic nation, whose language was Gaelic, and has been preserved in greatest purity by the descendants of the ancient inhabitants of Scotland and Ireland, who, if our deduction be well founded, are the progeny of the same race of people who first inhabited Greece and Italy, and who, immixed chiefly with the Pelasgians, became in after times, under the names of Greeks and Romans, so illustrious for their improvements in philosophy, arts and sciences, and for their conquests over many nations.

The science of cultivation of language is an object worthy the attention of a refined people. The study of language has occupied minds the most remarkable for ingenuity and acuteness. Such study is curious and amusing. Is it not, in a philosophical sense, instructive too, when it carries with it that spirit of research, which, in primitive roots and their combinations, serves to throw light upon the original situation of man in his earliest state of existence, to investigate the history of ideas, and to develop the operations of the human mind in the formation of the art by which ideas are communicated? . . .

In disquisitions of an etymological nature, much caution is to be observed. Fanciful imaginations have often run into such deviations from the natural combinations of the component parts of speech, as have given frequent occasion to throw into ridicule a science, in a just view not contemptible, whose object is to ascertain the formation of the words of a language, and deduce them from their radical primitives.

"The world is a great wilderness, wherein "mankind have wandered and jostled one ano"ther about from the creation; and it would be "difficult to point out the country which is at "this day in the hands of its first inhabitants; no original stock is perhaps any where to be traced."

In this view of things, the Greeks

* SULLIVAN's Letters.