been rotten to the core already? or were the Gauls increased in numbers and warlike skill during the centuries that elapsed between Cæsar and Valens, so much as to change them at once from fugitives to invaders? But this rottenness can proceed only from within, it grows only out of the wearing and friction of many internal sects and factions whose condition has become incongruous, and through whose dissonance distrust and civil outrage have grown into a custom. Society must be considered as a complicated machine, whose various springs and escapements it is necessary to know thoroughly before we can be said to understand the construction. Now Dr. Taylor treats of it as a uniform whole, and therefore the title of his work, as the " Natural History of Society," is a misnomer; at least it is so in its first word: for a general history of society, indeed, we may consent to accept it, though somewhat of the meagerest; but that is excusable, considering the narrowness of his limits, reduced also to still more confined dimensions by the introduction of a variety of subjects, anecdotical and episodical, sufficiently entertaining in themselves, but not altogether necessary to his argument. However, we will not quarrel with his volumes for what we do not find there; but confess that they are pleasant and instructive; written in a spirit more liberal than we expected or hoped; and calculated, we imagine, to prove highly interesting to the "general reader"—that class which all authors are naturally most desirous to please; and to obtain whose approval Mr. Taylor has, as we have hinted, in our apprehension, made rather too large sacrifices.

In the construction of his argument, too, we think that Dr. Taylor's division of his subject is decidedly erroneous and unphilosophical; inasmuch as he has divided his chapters on civilization locally, instead of generically; by nations, not by species-treating separately of the Egyptian, the Grecian, the Roman civilization; following the easy, trite path of former, so-called, historians; whereas the scientific course would have been to describe civilization through its instruments and by its symbols; chronicling its advances as occasioned by the influence, and pictured in the changes of language, religion, politics, and art. What should we say of a Buffon who should set about describing the peculiarities of the genus felis, for example, by giving a description of the varieties of the animal to be found in Europe, and then of those in Asia, and then in America? and how clumsy and ridiculous should we think a natural history composed entirely after that fashion! It is a most inartificial arrangement to draw your line of demarcation between the subjects of the Pharaohs, and the descendants of the Pelasgi, and the inhabitants of Etruria; as if the phases of society were specifically distinct for each of these; thus making the division depend upon an accident-not upon any intrinsic quality. The subject thus becomes fragmentary-the reasoning inconclusive; and that deep and final truth which ought to be the inheritance from the past, and the light for the future, becomes altogether lost in hopeless, inextricable confusion. And then for what end is your history written?

Of the history of society divided as we have inculcated, one of the most interesting chapters will be that which contains the history of languages, oral, pictorial, and written; and no other of the possessions and

attainments of nations will mark more clearly the state of civilization they have reached, their characteristics, and even their private history. As Cuvier could discover from a single tooth the genus and habits of the animal to which it belonged, so the character and comprehensiveness of a language will tell, with great accuracy, that of the people who speak it. We should even prefer a grammar to a gibbet, as the surest and most certain token of a refined state of society: the simple conjugation of the verb TUTTO, with its double aorist and paulo-post-futurum, would prove sufficiently that the Greeks had reached a high point of mental cultivation. Indeed the language may, in some measure, be said to form, or at least modify, the character of a nation; it is to this very complexity and refinement of their dialect that we must attribute, in a great degree, the tendency to that inconclusive, verbal logic which distinguishes the Socratic philosophy. Aristotle, even, is often contented with a jingle of syllables, when he should have sought for a scientific demonstration.

Again; who can look through a page of Johnson's Dictionary without recognizing the heterogeneous descent of the English nation in the words which their language has naturalized from half-a-dozen foreign tongues, and which compose a dialect of such copiousness and strength? Who cannot trace the operation of language even in the political history of the world, when the division of the eastern and western empires was made, in reality, from this cause long before the time of Constantine; and where those limits which France has always claimed as her "natural boundaries" are marked out, not so much by nature's hand, in the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, as by the universal form of speech?

The changes, also, which language undergoes in long course of time, without absolutely losing its identity, possess considerable significance, as they exhibit the changes in the manners of its possessors. The present Italian, with its " liquid lapse" and poetry of prettinesses, as much deserves its name "bastard Latin," when compared with the noble diction of Cicero, as the modern Italians deserve their epithet of "degenerate." The French have altered also, after their degree, becoming more refined and more effeminate: what similar change has passed over their language may be seen by comparing a chapter of Rabelais with one of George Sand. There has appeared a translation of Goethe into French: it may be imagined into what unintelligible paraphrases the transcendentalisms of the Faust are obliged to be rendered, when even the cognate and far more intellectual vocabulary of the English tongue is so avowedly insufficient.

For the origin of language, Dr. Taylor refers to an immediate agency of the Divinity; as, according to his supposition, there are some of the elements of civilization-and speech is one of these-which must necessarily have been imparted to man, as he could never have attained them by his unassisted effort.

A certain amount of knowledge, or, if we may use such an expression, a stock of civilization, is not less necessary to man for the development of his capacity for improvement and his other social duties, than

flowers are to the bee, or mulberry leaves to the silk-worm. Had he been started on earth perfectly ignorant, ignorant he would forever have remained. We have seen that no savage nation ever emerged from barbarism by its own unaided exertions; and that the natural tendency of tribes in such a condition is to grow worse instead of better. Civilization could not have been an invention, for the inventive faculty proceeds from something already known. Vol. I. page 309.

The author might have included writing, cookery, or the steam-engine, as well as speech; for each of these would appear equally impossible for mankind to invent if we knew nothing of the history of their invention. Without supposing, with Monboddo, that man's first step towards civilization was to rub away his tail, we may yet conclude, that if only the power of articulation and memory were given, that of speech would speedily follow; since we see animals converse according as their limited faculties of recollection and vocalization permit; and the comprehensiveness of language itself increases according to the demands of man's necessities, or the expansion of his ideas.

It is also manifest that language, when formed, must speedily become changed and multiplied by the natural process of variation as it came to be possessed by races of different habits and modes of thought; and this with especial rapidity where the art of writing does not exist to form an enduring model for words and sounds. Hence arises the vast multitude of dialects in barbarous countries, and their rapid alterations while remaining unwritten. Martyn, the missionary, says, that in some districts of Hindostan, the language changes every four "koss," or leagues: the Abbe Clavigero found thirty-five dialects in Mexico, and more than fifty in Maragnon; and argued, indeed, from this multiplicity, that the country must have been peopled by more than one wanderer from Babel. But this very history of Babel is now generally considered as not to be interpreted literally; and its "confusion of tongues" as intended to signify rather a disagreement of opinion and purpose among its builders than a mere change of speech; their purpose being to erect a temple and establish a hierarchy of a worship that should embrace the whole earth, and even "reach unto heaven."

The miracle would, indeed, have been if language had been preserved unchanged and uniform; as this must have required complete uniformity of thought and perfection of memory among the inhabitants of the earth. We have heard of kings, of Persia and elsewhere, who have thought to discover the original language of men by sending children into desert islands with dumb attendants, to grow up and form their speech by mere natural effort. The result has been somewhat dubious; the authorities varying in the accounts of the produced language, some declaring it to be right Hebrew; others, an unknown tongue. Doubtless it was this last; for it appears certain, both that in every case where two or three are gathered together they will invent a language of some kind to communicate with; and also, that in no two cases would this language be the same. For we find in common instances, where many individuals have VOL. III.-No. I.

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to speak on the same subject-eye-witnesses, for instance, of the same event which they have all to narrate, and whose narration shall not exceed a dozen sentences-no two, out of fifty, shall, if unprompted, form their story into the same phrase; and this when the matter of discourse is fixed for all, and when all have been accustomed to train their ideas and construction of language after the same fashion. How much greater, then, must be the variety when there is nothing fixed or resembling!

Upon the origin of written language many controversies have been urged, but none satisfactorily settled; though it seems probable that it had its rise in a gradual improvement from pictorial representation; which became first hieroglyphic and then symbolic, till the figured pictures grew, with long use, more simple in construction-only a few strokes, whose signification habit had rendered completely intelligible, being retained and more comprehensive in meaning; from merely objectographic becoming idea-graphic, either by the combination of pictures or some relation of the subjects of sense, and those of intellect. For instance, the word "lamentation" is expressed in the Egyptian hieroglyphic by the figure of a dog's head; the idea of howling at once suggesting that of grief, which in those days was more loud than deep. The Chinese characters which compose the verb " to run," signify separately "to wrap the feet," the necessary preliminary of a race when men were commonly unshod; also, the word "calamity" is formed of "house" and "tin," a union of ideas evidently made by a people whose advanced state of the arts had enabled them to construct dwellings of considerable size and importance.

But we must remark that the improvement from a hieroglyph to an alphabet, from depicted to phonetic writing, could never be the invention of one nation, since, when once they had become accustomed to a mode of writing which appealed to the eye and the imagination, they would hardly understand, much less invent, another so far less significant. Every improvement of the art which would make it more comprehensive, would make it also more complicated, and the signs becoming constantly more numerous would render less and less possible the change to a system where the primary marks are at once few and unmeaning. In addition to this, the whole function of the scribe, the whole power of recording and interpreting, would soon be monopolized by a class, the priesthood, who would exert all the influence of religion to preserve the mystery in its ancient revenues, and would denounce as heretical any attempt at innovation. As proof of this stands the fact, that the Egyptian hieroglyphics, which began at a time so remote that the historian scarcely ventures to assign the date of their commencement, and which lasted, as an art, till far into the Roman empire-we find the names of Caligula and Commodus among their inscriptions-never made the slightest advance towards an alphabetic character. The Chinese likewise, from their long existence as a civilized people, but one secluded from all intercourse with other nations, have preserved the hieroglyphic system; and their character-we cannot call it an alphabet-presents that system in its highest state of perfection. It has lost, almost entirely, its pictorial properties,

but still speaks to the eye; and is intelligible, as written, where the words would not be intelligible as spoken, the oral dialect having changed; and constructs the roots, or types, of its vocabulary from some sensible ideas, or relation of ideas, and not, as in western dictionaries, from some syllabic conformation.

When, however, the learning and arts of one country, Egypt for instance, come to be transferred to another, many changes and modifications, and some improvements, take place; among these, by a very natural process, the hieroglyphic symbols of writing would become converted into an alphabet. For the stranger, unaccustomed to the interpretation of these symbols, and with different habits of life and thought, finds them unmeaning and complicated; and then, quite regardless of the original picture, whose traces are already almost undiscoverable, he trusts to convey his meaning by the mere conjunction of a few signs, chosen, perhaps at random, from those he finds before him. The Greek alphabet appears in this manner to have been not so much brought as derived from Egypt by Cadmus; and about the same time the Hebrews, sojourning in that country, also invented theirs at least such appears a reasonable deduction; since the art of writing, which Moses certainly possessed, has given no evidence of existence in the time of Joseph.

The language thus formed from the hieroglyphics would necessarily partake of the pictorial character of its original. In fact, the earlier forms of speech, both oral and written, are highly imaginative and graphic, with many synonymes and multiplied paraphrases, but with few generic designations or precise terms; being both redundant and deficient, but well adapted for the hyperbolical, obscurely-sublime language of poetry. In the narratives of events described by hieroglyphic paintings, there are often found many of those allegories and figurative passages which form the charm of the ancient poets. Dr. Taylor gives a specimen of the historical painting of the Americans, in a pictorial narrative of an expedition undertaken by the French against an Iroquois tribe, which we extract.

The narrative is written symbolically in ten lines, figured as follows:

The first line contains the arms of France, surmounted by a hatchet; and near are eighteen symbols of decades. The hatchet, or tomahawk, being the Indian symbol of war, as the calumet is of peace, this signifies "a hundred and eighty Frenchmen undertook some warlike expedition."

The second line contains a mountain, with a bird springing from its summit, and a stag with a moon on its back. The mountain was the cognizance of Montreal, and the bird signifies departure. So that this line reads: "They departed from Montreal in the first quarter of the stag month, corresponding to our July."

The third line, a canoe with twenty-one huts; that is, "they went by water, landing every night to rest; and were twenty-one days on the journey."

The fourth line a foot, with seven huts or wigwams; intimating "they then marched seven days."

The fifth line, a hand and three wigwams, over one of which are two pendent branches, and a figure of the sun. This means they had come