the nations speaking Aryan languages were of the same race. Then we have to add to these and the like assumptions the long-standing habit of regarding all the nations of the west as of eastern origin. But within recent years the ruthless hand of critical inquiry has begun to sweep away these cobwebs, and Sanskrit, which will doubtless enjoy the reputation of always being a highly important and instructive language, has so far lost its exaggerated weight that Professor Sayce begins his Preface (dating in November, 1884) to the third edition of his 'Principles of Comparative Philology' with the following remarkable words: 'Since the publication of the second edition of my work in 1875, a revolution has taken place in the Comparative Philology of the Indo-European languages. Sanskrit has been dethroned from the high place it once occupied as the special representative of the Aryan Parent-Speech, and it has been recognized that primitive sounds and forms have, on the whole, been more faithfully preserved in the languages of Europe than in those of India.' The ethnologist, waking up likewise from the delusion which he had allowed his too impetuous brother, the student of language, to infect him with, finds that it is out of the question to suppose the various peoples speaking Aryan languages to be of the same race. It then remains that we should regard the original Aryans as having spread their language and institutions among other races by conquest, and that the various nations of the world speaking Aryan languages are not all equally Aryan in point of blood: so the question arises, what Aryan nation or nations most closely resemble the original stock of that name? It is argued with great probability, that it
