ficiencies by self-prompted study, and especially to those self—denying men who, under circumstances of no small difficulty, are or have been devoting themselves to the work of collecting and giving to the world original materials. The Smithsonian Institution has recently taken upon itself the office of encouraging, guiding, and giving effect to the labours of collectors, under special advantages derived from its relation to the Government, with laudable zeal, and with the best promise of valuable results. No department of inquiry, certainly, within the circle of the historical sciences, has a stronger claim upon the attention of such a national institution; and it becomes all Americans to countenance and aid its efforts by every means in their power.
Before closing this cursory and imperfect survey of the varieties of human language, we have to glance at one or two dialects or groups of dialects which have hitherto resisted all attempts at classification. Most noteworthy among these is the Basque, spoken in a little district of the Pyrenees, on both sides of the border between France and Spain, enveloping the angle of the Bay of Biscay, between Bayonne and Balbao. The Basques are well identified as descended from the primitive Iberian population which is supposed to have filled the Spanish peninsula before the intrusion of the Celts: their stubborn and persistent character and the inaccessibility of their mountain retreats have enabled their native idiom successfully to resist the assimilating influences exercised by successive Celtic, Roman, and Gothic conquest and domination. It stands, so far as is yet known, alone among the languages of mankind; kindred has been sought and even claimed for it in every direction, but to no good purpose. It is, then, naturally enough conjectured to be a sole surviving remnant of the speech of an aboriginal race, peopling some part of Europe before the immigration of the Indo-European tribes, perhaps before that of the Scythian; and the possibility that it may be so invests it with an unusual degree of interest. Its structure is exceedingly peculiar, intricate, and difficult of analysis. As we have already had occasion to notice, it possesses much more striking analogies with the aboriginal languages of
23
