by the evidence of their speech is totally unjustifiable; the utmost which can be asserted is that language affords certain indications, of doubtful value, which, taken along with certain other ethnological considerations, also of questionable pertinency, furnish ground for suspecting an ultimate relationship. The question, in short, is not yet ripe for settlement. Whether the better comprehension of the history of Semitic speech which further research may give will enable us to determine it with confidence, need not here be considered: while such a result is certainly not to be expected with confidence, it may perhaps be looked for with hope.
To discuss the Semitic character, and to show how in its striking features it accords with Semitic speech, would be a most interesting task, but lies aside from the proper course of our inquiries. Through the might of their religious ideas, this people have governed, and will continue to govern, the civilized world; but in other respects, in that gradual working-out of ethnic endowment and capacity which constitutes the history of a race, they have shown themselves decidedly inferior to the other great ruling family, and their forms of speech undeniably partake of this inferiority. The time is long past when reverence for the Hebrew Scriptures as the Book of books could carry with it the corollary that the Hebrew tongue was the most perfect and the oldest of all known languages, and even the mother of the rest: it is now fully recognized as merely one in a contracted and very peculiar group of sister dialects, crowded together in a corner of Asia and the adjacent parts of Africa, possessing striking excellences, but also marked with striking defects, and not yet proved genetically connected with any other existing group.
The family of languages to which we have next to direct our attention is one of much wider geographical range, and more varied linguistic character. As usually constructed, it covers with its branches the whole northern portion of the eastern continent, through both Europe and Asia, together with the greater part of central Asia, and portions of Asiatic and European territory lying still further south. It is
