plication of soil or manure, and the action of light, heat, air, and moisture. There has been a change of form, but no creation of substance; the seed has become a plant indeed, but it has increased in bulk at the expense of the earth in which it was planted, and of the elementary or gaseous bodies by which it was surrounded; or, in other words, a certain quantity of raw materials has assumed a new and beautiful form in the great and mysterious laboratory of Nature. And with respect to destruction, if we expose water to a heat of 212 degrees, we know that it is converted into steam, and that if it be exposed to the heat long enough, the whole of the water will disappear, and, in popular phraseology, be destroyed. But it has merely changed its form, which it will re-assume when it parts with its heat, as may be proved by receiving the steam in a close vessel, where, if its heat be still further abstracted, it will become ice. But in all these states we have only a substance which in its middle temperature is water, and which the extremes of heat and cold convert into vapour or ice. Perhaps the most adequate, or rather least imperfect idea we can form of creation, must be collected from generation, over which a veil of darkness rests in spite of the unwearied efforts and researches of physiology, and accordingly we find that many of the ancient philosophers talked about the generation of the world.

In Hebrew from Bar, a son, we have the verb Bara, to hew, form, produce, or create.

And in Niphal, to be born.

And in Syriac, from Bar, a son, Baro, he created.

In many of the preceding metaphors we may say that iron is the son (Bar) of darkness, or that darkness (i. e. that of the mine) produced (Bara) iron; that corn is the son (Bar) of the threshing floor, or that the threshing-floor produced (Bara) corn; that echo is the daughter of the mountain, or that the mountain produced echo; that speech is the daughter of the lip, or that the lip produced speech. In all these instances the transition from the noun substantive Bar, to the verb Bara, is so easy that it is almost insensible.

VIII. In this way, I conceive, in all languages Verbs were gradually formed from Nouns, and I have shown that, in the Shemitic class at least, the terminations of Verbs were formed by contractions from Personal Pronouns, themselves primarily Nouns Substantive also. After the invention and general use of the art of writing, however, it became a matter of convenience, not to say necessity, to be able to distinguish; at a glance, Nouns from Verbs, and for this purpose two different sets of Pronouns were connected with them; thus,—

H

Noun. Bar, a son

Verb.

The first set of Affixes are said to be Possessive, and the second, Personal Pronouns; but it is more than probable that I (my) is the final letter of Aothi, the last syllable of which, Thi, forms the termination of the first person of Verbs Noo, our, and Noo the termination of the first person plural of the Verb, we, are precisely the same, and Bari, my son, Barcha, thy son, might have signified, I created, thou createdst; in fact, as has already been remarked, Phomi, my mouth, in Hebrew, appears to be the etymology of Phemi, I speak, in Greek. In Coptic we have Jo, the head, a Noun Substantive, and with precisely the same letters, Jo, a Verb, to speak, or tell, almost all the organs of speech being placed in the head.

347

CHAP. XXXI.

ON PARTICLES.

I. IN every language, after having gone through the declinable parts of speech, Nouns Substantive and Adjective, Pronouns, Articles, Verbs and Participles, we come to the indeclinable, the Prepositions, Conjunctions, Adverbs, and Interjections, which are classed together under the general name of Particles.

I have long pitied the condition of these unfortunate and ill-used little people, and determined in my heart to attempt to do something for them. One would suppose that the Indian Menu, to whom the division of the community into castes has been attributed, had been the earliest grammarian, and that his example had been universally followed; for while Verbs and Participles may be said to represent the Braminical or Sacerdotal, Nouns Substantive and Adjective the Kshatriya or Military, and Pronouns and Articles the Vaisya or commercial class; the unfortunate Particles have been huddled together in the Sudra, or servile class, if they may not with more strict propriety be said to be Parias, or outcasts, who once had a caste but have lost it. To prove that they had one, that they never deserved to lose it, and to restore them to their birthright, is the object of this chapter.

Whenever I have contrasted the fortune of the Verb and the Noun, the Rema and the Onoma, the word and the name par excellence and emphatically of the Greek and Latin grammarians, with the degradation of the Particles, I have felt like Æneas at the commencement of his journey in the lower regions.

"Constitit Anchisâ satus, et vestigia pressit;

Multa putans, sortemque animo miseratus iniquam."

Lib. vi. 1. 331.

Amidst all the instances of ill treatment inflicted on the Particles, perhaps none equals that of Mr. Harris in his Hermes, as recapitulated by Horne Tooke, in his Diversions of Purley (vol. i. page 116.). Other, indeed all grammarians, have utterly denied their claims to be treated with any sort of respect or consideration, or, in fact, with common decency; but he has trifled with their hopes and fears with unexampled wantonness, excited expectations only to disappoint them, and raised the cup of bliss to their lips with one hand, merely to dash it to the ground with the other. He began by calling them "sounds significant" which must have filled them with joy, to be quickly succeeded by grief however, for he was pleased to add " devoid of signification;" but, lest they should utterly despair, he subjoined, "having yet some obscure kind of signification," and wound up the whole with an assertion so equivocal that it is extremely difficult to say whether it ought to be regarded as a compliment or an insult, "and serving to link together signification and no signification.”

It is by no means an easy matter to fix on any definite cause, why the particles from the very beginning of time should have been more cruelly treated than the Indian Parias, the Spartan Helots, the Thessalian Penestæ, the Irish by the English, the Poles by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, and the Africans both by Europe and America. I have sometimes thought that, as they never vary their appearance, they may be compared to persons who have only one suit of clothes; for poverty though not always despicable is always despised. To be sure, If, At, To, and In, are of very diminutive stature, and appear to be incompetent to take their own part, which may have induced some to take liberties with them, as there is a proverb which says, it is useless to attempt to help those who will not help themselves; but the same objection cannot be made to our nevertheless' and 'notwithstanding,' the French 'jusqu'àceque,' and above all the Italian conciossiacosache,' which is placed by Corticelli, one of the most accurate of their grammarians, in the list of Conjunctions. A regard to truth, however, obliges me to admit, that the Particles, by pressing it into their service, appear at first

sight to have acted with regard to it as gipsies do, who first steal children, and then disfigure them, lest they should be recognised and recovered by their natural parents, for Sia is palpably a Verb, and Cosa no less obviously a Noun. However, I am content to take this word, or rather combination of words, as a type of all the rest, and intend to prove that all the Particles were originally Nouns and Verbs, and that many of them in all languages, more especially the Oriental, are so still.

Horne Tooke says, From means merely beginning, and nothing else. It is simply the Anglo-Saxon and Gothic Noun Frum, beginning, origin, source, fountain, author.

It is worthy of remark that the Persic word Sar, the literal name of the head, signifies, also, top, principio, origin; and that Berashith, the first word in Genesis, may be analysed into B prefix in, Rosh, head, and Aith, time, literally in the head of time; or, giving Rosh its proper metaphorical meaning," in the beginning of time." There is not a shade of difference in the signification of the English word From, as applied either to place or time.

Epi, numerus (Coptic), a Noun Feminine.

Epi, Super (Greek), a Preposition.

In compositione significat super et sub, augmentum, et diminutionem ; but it always retains its primitive Egyptian meaning of number, with a subauditur of added to or taken from. The Egyptian word is written with eta; and if the Greek epi, super, were written with eta, and epi, sub, with epsilon, all ambiguity would be removed.

Ouei, distantia, longitudo. A Noun Masculine, Coptic. Item, longe fugere, abesse, distare.

Away (English), an Adverb. "We must away all night."-SHAKS. Henoufi, abundantia, Coptic. A Noun Masculine.

Enough (English), an Adverb.

This word is remarkable as exemplifying the tendency of all languages in their progress from rudeness to refinement to drop aspirates. Horne