uncorrupted in its phonetic structure, the most faithful representative of the ideal type inherent in them all, should be the youngest of their number. But such is the character of the classical Arabic, whose earliest literary monuments are from fifteen to twenty centuries later than those of the Hebrew and Assyrian. There is reason, however, it should be remarked, to suspect that the Hebrew as we have it does not in all points truly represent the language of the earliest period of Hebrew history, that it has both partaken of the modernization of the popular tongue, and suffered some distortion in the hands of the grammarians from whom we receive it. The spoken vernaculars of the present day, while they exhibit something of the same character as the modern Indo-European dialects, in the abbreviation of words, the loss of inflectional forms, and the obscuration of etymological relations, yet do so in a much less degree. The modern Syriac of Orumiah has decidedly more of the aspect of a European analytic language than any other existing dialect of its family, and even more than, a few years ago, Semitic scholars were willing to believe possible. But its predecessor, the ancient Syriac, had been itself distinguished by like peculiarities among the contemporaneous and older dialects; having felt, perhaps, the modifying influence of the strange peoples and cultures by which Syria was shut in, invaded, and more than once subdued.
It may be hoped that wider and deeper study will succeed one day in casting additional light upon the difficulties of Semitic linguistic history. The dialect which is now in process of construction out of the recently discovered cuneiform monuments is claimed to possess some peculiar characteristics, yet it appears to be too decidedly accordant with the rest in its general structure to play other than a subordinate part, by farther illustrating that part of the course of development with which we are already more or less familiar. lt is confidently claimed, however, by some linguistic scholars (although as confidently denied by others), that the ancient tongue of Egypt, and a considerable group of the languages of northern Africa, have traces, still distinctly visible, of a far remoter connection with this family,
