ti-s, formed by inserting the particle ti between the third and fourth letters of the root Gens. Dens, a tooth, is another example of precisely the same kind, as it forms in the genitive Den-ti-s. By writing the Ti, Di, with a letter of the same organ, it is equally obvious in the Latin words Pes, Pe-di-s, a foot; and we find the Ti slightly changed in the Greek Odons, Odon-to-s, a tooth. Pay, the foot, is the 103rd Chinese root, or key. One cannot but feel strongly disposed, from these instances, to derive the Latin de, and the Italian di, from the Chinese Ti.

XI. The Dative is characterised by the particles Yu and Y, which precede the substantive, but are frequently omitted. Here again there is an analogy, though not so close, between the Chinese, and the Greek and Latin, as the Oriental Y is frequently rendered in the European languages by I, which forms the termination of many Greek and Latin datives, as Basileus, Basile-i, Rex, Reg-i, a king.

XII. The usual mark of the Accusative is that it follows the verb, some verbs however require it to precede them. Both the Vocative, and Ablative, like the genitive, are formed by the use of particles. The plural of nouns is formed by the addition of Men, or Teng after the words. The former suggests close analogies with the Greek, in the genitive and. dative formations of the personal pronouns ego and su, in the plural number.

XIII. In Chinese, Adjectives do not agree with their substantives, or in other words are invariable in their terminations, as in Persic and English. They generally, but not always, precede the noun. The comparative is formed by the addition of the words Keng-hao, better; and the superlative, sometimes by the employment of particles, and sometimes by doubling the positive with the addition of the word Ty. The latter mode is very like the Hebrew; as in the account of creation, in the first chapter of Genesis, we find tob, good, and tob tob, very good. It is remarkable that the plural of Chinese substantives is sometimes formed in the same way; as Jin, a man ; Jin Jin, men. In Chinese, as in Persic, the distinctions of sex are expressed by the addition

of appropriate words; as Nan Jin, a man; Nuu-Jin, a woman : in Persic, Sheeri-Ner, a lion; Sheeri-Made, a lioness.

XIV. The Personal Pronouns are Ngo, me; Ni or Ny, thee; Ta, him; and these are converted into plurals by the addition of Men, and into possessives by the addition of Ti, the formatives also, as we have seen, of the plurals and genitives of substantives, as Ngo ti, my; Ni ti, thy; Ta ti, his.

xv. All the conjugations of the Chinese Verbs are effected by means of auxiliaries, and they are very much in the habit of speaking in the third person, more especially when addressing superiors. Du Halde says, that, strictly speaking, they have no tenses but the present, the preterite, and the future; in this respect nearly agreeing with the Hebrew, Arabic, and whole family of Shemitic languages. The preterite is formed by the addition of the word Lego, and the future, of Yau, or Yao. The letter Y is the formative of the third person of the future in Hebrew and Arabic; and the Chinese Ta, he or him, appears to constitute the termination of the third person singular of the Latin verb, as Sum, es, est, Amo, amas, amat. The passive voice in Chinese is formed by adding the particle Pi.

XVI. Du Halde remarks that, although the Chinese language actually consists of so small a number of words, its apparent poverty is by no means inconsistent with real copiousness, as the same word is frequently not only noun and verb, but also preposition, adverb, and conjunction. In other parts of this work I have endeavoured to show the probability that all the words in every language were primarily formed from nouns substantive, and that in many instances they may be traced back to, and resolved into, them again. The division of language by grammarians into ten parts of speech, or sorts of words, is perfectly unobjectionable, perhaps desirable, for the sake of order, clearness, and facility of reference; but we must never forget that the arrangement is altogether artificial, and that many others might have been quite as good, or even better, as it is very much more matter of prescription than of reflection. But it has happened in language, as in many of the physical sciences, in which, having first made an artificial

classification solely for our own convenience, we have at length become surprised and disappointed at discovering that nature refused to bend to it, when the lesson conveyed, if we had been disposed properly to attend to it, was, not that nature was wrong, but that our mode of operating was not right; that our observations were narrow, our facts badly defined, our reasonings illogical, and that all our proceedings bore much stronger marks of our own essential feebleness and littleness, than of being adapted to the variety of her means, the grandeur of her scale, and the sublimity of her results.

53

CHAP. VI.

ON THE ANCIENT LANGUAGE OF EGYPT.- THE COPTIC AND SAHIDIC.

"But on the south a long majestic race

Of Egypt's priests the gilded niches grace,

Who measured earth, described the starry spheres,
And traced the long records of lunar years.
High on his car Sesostris struck my view,
Whom sceptred slaves in golden harness drew:
His hands a bow and pointed javelin hold;
His giant limbs are arm'd in chains of gold.
Between the statues obelisks were placed,
And the learn'd walls with hieroglyphics graced."

POPE'S Temple of Fame.

1. PERHAPS there is hardly any one subject calculated to throw so much light on every branch of philology, as a complete history of the formation of the Egyptian alphabet. Unfortunately, however, the whole matter is deeply involved in doubt and difficulty. Of the few facts which seem to be established, none are clearly and circumstantially narrated, nor are they susceptible of being arranged with much confidence in a strictly chronological order. Such as they are, however, I shall now proceed to lay them before my readers, assigning the first place to an authority, not indeed of very early date, but still of great weight and importance, the profound and philosophical Tacitus. He says: "The Egyptians were the first who had the ingenuity to express by outward signs the ideas passing in the mind. Under the form of animals they gave a body and a figure to sentiment. Their hieroglyphics were wrought in stone, and are to be seen at this day, the most venerable monuments of human memory. The invention of letters is also claimed by the Egyptians. According to their account, the Phoenicians found legible characters in use throughout Egypt, and being much employed in navigation, carried them into Greece; importers of the art, but not entitled to the glory of the invention. The history of the matter, as related by the Phoenicians, is, that

Cadmus, with a fleet from their country, passed into Greece and taught the art of writing to a rude and barbarous people. We are told by others, that Cecrops the Athenian, or Linus the Theban, or Palamedes the Argive, who flourished during the Trojan war, invented sixteen letters; the honour of adding to the number, and making a complete alphabet, is ascribed to different authors, and in particular to Simonides." (Murphy's Tacitus, Ann. book xi. c. 14.)

II. This elaborate passage which appears to be so full of information, really proves little more than our entire ignorance of the subject, and convinces us of nothing, except that nothing is certainly known. The invention of alphabetical characters is ascribed by some to Memnon the Egyptian, who lived fifteen years before the reign of Phoroneus in Greece, or B. c. 1822: and by Tacitus, as we have seen in the preceding paragraph, to Cecrops the Athenian, who is said to have conducted a colony from Sais into Attica about the year B. c. 1556; to Linus the Theban, who is supposed to have lived about 500 years before the foundation of Rome, or B. c. 1253; and to Palamedes the Argive, who flourished during the siege of Troy, B. C. 1184: while Josephus informs us that Homer, who, according to Herodotus, lived 400 years before himself, or in the ninth century before the Christian era, left no written works because there was no alphabet in existence in which to write them.

III. And it would appear as if circumstances of every kind had conspired to keep us in profound and perpetual ignorance. Egypt is, perhaps, more full of the remains of art than either Greece or Italy; and its architects planned and executed on a scale of colossal magnitude, of which the latter countries present few or no examples. Its tombs, its temples, and above all its pyramids, are so many quarries above ground; and yet, by a singular fatality, not a vestige of an inscription in alphabetical characters has ever been discovered on any of them. While the Thesaurus of Greek and Roman antiquities by Grævius and Gronovius occupies thirtynine folio volumes, I do not believe that so many lines, or