ground, and endeavour to come to its rescue by a kind of metaphysical mysticism; and, lastly, those who, holding in other respects very different views, would apply to philosophy the rigour of scientific methods and found it on the observation and study of facts. Thus we have before us a spiritualist, a mystic, and a scientific school. Amongst the spiritualists, the two names best known at present are those of MM. Caro and Janet. M. A. Lemoine, a psychologist of great merit, is lately dead; M. J. Simon long since gave up philosophy to turn his attention to social questions and to politics; as for M. Lévêque, a professor high in the estimation of the ladies, he exhibits himself in his last book, Les Harmonies providentielles (F. Didot), rather as a preacher of religion and morals than as a philosopher. Lastly, M. Franck, who has just been re-editing his Dictionnaire des Sciences philosophiques, represents the less liberal side of M. Cousin, and has not thought fit to accord a place in his dictionary either to the German philosophers who succeeded Hegel, or to the contemporary English school.

MM. Caro and Janet are men of larger minds. The former is, however, a man of letters rather than a philosopher. As a brilliant professor and a distinguished writer he was admitted to the French Academy, an honour he well deserved; his best book, La Philosophie de Goethe, is almost wholly a work of literary criticism, and he seems to incline more and more towards giving up philosophy in favour of literature, or of an eloquent advocacy of morals. M. Janet, on the other hand, is a genuine philosopher, a philosopher from taste, I might almost say froin duty. He is himself so strongly convinced of the truth of what he believes and teaches that he brings to his teaching that enthusiasm and modesty which are the result of deep convictions. He is not an original thinker, nor does he invent new theories or new systems, but he is an accurate historian, a shrewd critic, and a dialectician of the first order. He has never shrunk from following his adversaries to fight them on their own ground. When he saw the importance the natural sciences were acquiring in the study of philosophy, he set himself zealously to work to study them, and wrote his excellent little discussions, Le Matérialisme contemporain, La Crise philosophique, Le Cerveau et la Pensée (Germer-Baillière). The subject he has chosen this winter for his course at the Sorbonne is "La Psychologie anglaise contemporaine."

M. Janet has earned the respect and esteem even of his adversaries for his impartiality and earnestness of purpose. There are beside him a few young philosophers who take a similar lineM. Joly, the author of a very good book on L'Instinct (Thorin); M. Compayre, the author of a thesis on Hume (Thorin)-but, generally speaking, it is not under the banner of classical spiritualism, but in the ranks of the small school grouped round M. Ravaisson, that we find the most distinguished young philosophers ranged. M. Ravaisson does not on first acquaintance look like a philosopher destined to be the founder of a school. He is, above all things, an artist of fine discernment, a good violin player, and skilled in the painting of china; disdainful, too, not only of popularity but even of publicity. Twice only has given public expression to his views the first time in an Introduction à la Métaphysique d' Aristote, of which only one volume has appeared up to the present moment; and a second time in the concluding pages of a report on the study of philosophy in France, written on the occasion of the Great Exhibition of 1867. Without pretending fully to explain these views, I will here merely state that while the spiritualist school distinguishes clearly between God, whom it regards as pure and free spirit; nature, which it looks upon as subject to laws of necessity imposed on it by God; and man, half matter and half spirit, in whom liberty and necessity find a battle-ground; while it directs its principal attention to the idea of an efficient cause, the mystical school on the contrary

school of M. Cousin. In his fine book, De l'Intelli-
gence (Hachette) he endeavours to explain the
formation of all our ideas and even of our
reason, from the very moment, obscure as it
is, of their origin, in our sensorial and cerebral
system. This work will be followed and sup-
plemented by a second volume on La Volonté.
It were to be wished that physiologists would
study this book De l'Intelligence very carefully
with a view of verifying by their own experiences
the theories and inductions of M. Taine. Though
much younger and less original than M. Taine,
M. Ribot devotes himself more exclusively to
philosophy, and has contributed more than anyone
else to the spread of the ideas of English psycho-
logists in France. By his work La Psychologie
anglaise (Ladrange and Germer-Baillière), he made
them known before their books were translated.
M. Ribot has recently been attacked with great
severity in your pages by Mr. Galton with re-
ference to his book De l'Hérédité (Germer-Bail-
lière). The book is certainly not without de-
fects, and M. Ribot will very shortly publish a
new edition, revised and considerably modified.
But he has the merit of having been the first in
France to treat the question in a comprehensive
and impartial manner, and to put forward some
new views which are not without value.
Galton accuses him of plagiarism; I trust the
public will read the book before they endorse this
accusation. So groundless is it, that it is due to
M. Ribot's book that Mr. Galton's name is at the
present day known in France. I felt it incum-
bent on me to undertake the defence of M.
Ribot in this matter, because he is a con-
scientious modest worker, who is incapable of
trying to put himself forward at the expense of
another. He came to Paris to study physiology
and medicine, and is engaged in preparing a work
on the German psychologists for the press, similar
to that which he has written on the English
psychologists. Two portions of it have already
appeared in the Revue Scientifique, one on
"La
Mesure des Sensations," the other on "Wundt."
He has also lately published a treatise on Schopen-
hauer (Germer-Baillière).

Mr.

clings above all to the idea of final causes, and looks
upon all beings as controlled in their development
by the mysterious attraction of their ideal
form. God, like the immutable motive force of
Aristotle, attracts to himself the whole world of
nature, which in all its various degrees aspires to
an ideal superior to itself, and so escapes entirely
the fatal and necessary laws which are alleged to
exist. This school, the tendency of which I have
thus roughly delineated, affects somewhat of a
contempt for science and facts; it delights in
pure metaphysics, discourses unceasingly of love,
of attraction, of the ideal, till the question now
and then suggests itself whether these are poets
or philosophers with whom we have to deal. At
the Ecole Normale it reigns supreme just now in
the persons of two of its most eminent representa-
tives-M. Lachelier, who till now has published
only one book, De l'Induction, a work that is
remarkable for power and concentration of thought,
but he has given courses of lectures at the Ecole
Normale on psychology, aesthetics, and the
history of ancient philosophy, which I hope
are not to remain sealed up in the note-
books of his pupils, but will before long
appear in the shape of published volumes. M.
Fouillée, who, with a mind, it is true, less precise
than M. Lachelier, is nevertheless a very able
writer, produced a great sensation with his book
on La Liberté et le Déterminisme (Germer-Baillière).
He has just published a History of Philosophy
(Delagrave), in which, with most ingenious zeal,
he discovers the elements of the doctrine of the
new school existing in all former systems. Lastly,
M. Boutroux, who is a writer of great ability, in
his Essai sur la Contingence des Lois de la Nature,
upholds similar theories with certain modifications
in some points. The qualities common to all the
philosophers of this school are great loftiness
of ideas and sentiments, boldness of thought, and
that contempt for received ideas which character-
ises all the mystics; their defects are an excess of
metaphysical abstraction, and in spite of their
pretensions to and efforts after mathematical
pre-
cision, a vagueness of thought, or, in one word,
obscurity. If these teachers are to be considered
as its representatives, the spiritualist school seems
to be quitting the ground of facts, of science and
psychology, ground where it finds it difficult to
defend itself, and to be taking refuge in the clouds.
Very widely opposed to this is the school I
called the scientific school. Strictly speaking, it
cannot be called a school at all: it consists of
workers who, either separately or in small knots,
are endeavouring to found philosophical specula-
tions on facts of experience, and not to diverge
from the methods that are admitted by the positive
sciences. Among them, no doubt, the first place
ought to belong to the Positivists and their organ,
La Philosophie Positive, a review published under
the direction of MM. Littré and Wyrouboff, were
it not for the superstitious attachment they cherish
for the teaching of Auguste Comte, which renders
their philosophical labours absolutely fruitless.
Up to the present moment, with the exception of
M. Littré's articles, interesting as they always are,
and of the more specially scientific researches of
MM. Onimus and Wyrouboff, we have seen
nothing very original proceed from their number.
There is another influence which will become
more fruitful, and which grows more important
every day, the influence of the English psycholo-
gists, Stuart Mill, Bain, and Herbert Spencer.
Their works have all been translated, and are read
with avidity. I have no doubt that in a few
years we shall see the fortunate results arising
from the fact that English philosophy is now innumerable blunders in M. G. de Chénier's edition.
fashionable in France. M. Taine belongs in He even shows that M. de Chénier has misread
every way to this party, and his philosophical the lines he has appended in facsimile. He
writings are the more interesting because his self-points out and corrects biographical errors made
development was carried on not under the direc-
tion of those English thinkers, but side by side
with them and contemporaneously. By his witty
sallies in his Philosophes français au XIXe Siècle
he had formerly struck a terrible blow at the

In speaking of the school of scientific philosophy, I ought not to omit some mention of those writers who treat questions of physiological and natural science in their relation to philosophy as M. Luis does in his important treatise, L'Action réflexe (J. B. Baillière), but in so doing we should be leaving the domain of philosophy to enter on that of science more properly so called.

Beside those philosophers who can be at once classed as belonging to this or that party, there are others who stand aloof from all. As for instance MM. Charpentier and Liard, who specially devote themselves to mathematical questions in philosophy; and lastly M. Renan, whose ideas defy analysis and definition, but whose writings possess all the charm of beautiful verse.

I will add to this letter, which is, perhaps, of a rather technical order, some of the latest literary news. In December, 1874, I called attention to the appearance of the poetical works of André Chénier, published from the original manuscripts by his nephew, M. Gabriel de Chénier. M. Becq de Fouquière, who had published in 1864 and 1872 two editions of A. Chénier, together with most excellent commentaries, has just issued an interesting work called Documents Nouveaux sur André Chénier et Examen Critique de la nouvelle édition de ses Euvres (Charpentier). Aided solely by a fine critical perception and literary knowledge of a very varied kind, he has rectified

by M. de Chénier, and proves from the documents that if André Chénier was guillotined it was solely on account of his implication in the socalled prison conspiracy. He adds some very valuable notes on the friends of A. Chénier.

The literary correspondence of Proudhon and that of Lamartine continue to appear. Each of

the series has reached five volumes. The last volume of Lamartine's letters (Furne) is most interesting. It comprises the period of Jocelyn and the Chûte d'un Ange and the poet's entrance into political life, and closes with the year 1842. The littlenesses that marked his character in youth gradually disappear and give place to a genuine enthusiasm for political and social progress, to which he then wished to consecrate his life, and to religious sentiments independent henceforward of all dogma, but deep and true in themselves. M. Maxime Du Camp has just completed his great work, Paris, sa Vie, ses Organes (6 vols., Hachette). He describes minutely all the varied machinery of that immense and manifold organism which we call a great city, its posts, its hospitals, its sewers, etc. Not only is the book an administrative and statistical treatise; it is a moral, psychological and historical study. Those who wish to understand France, her revolutions, and the part Paris plays in them, should read M. Du Camp's book.

SELECTED BOOKS.

G. MONOD.

CURTIUS, G. Studien zur griechischen u. lateinischen Gram-
matik. 7. Bd. 2. Hft. Leipzig: Hirzel. 6 M.
ELLIS, A. J. On Early English Pronunciation, with especial
reference to Shakspere and Chaucer. Part IV. Trübner.
10s.
FORSCHUNGEN, morgenländische, v. H. Derenbourg, H. Ethé,
O. Loth, A. Müller, F. Philippi, B. Stade, H. Thorbecke.
Leipzig: Brockhaus. 12 M.

FREUDENTHAL, J. Hellenistische Studien. 1. u. 2. Hft.: Alex-
ander Polyhistor u. die v. ihm erhaltenen Reste judäischer
u. samaritan. Geschichtswerke. Breslau: Skutsch. 6 M.
GEORGII Cyprii declamatio e codice Leidensi edita. Jena:
Neuenhahn. 40 Pf.
LENORMANT, F. Choix de Textes cunéiformes inédits ou in-
complétement publiés jusqu'à ce jour. 3. fasc. Paris :
Maisonneuve.

which follows the consonant in Sindhi, and the
plural, Jatán, ends with a marked nasal.
In the Grammar, which occupies forty-one
I divided this rude race of quasi-Bedawin
pages,
into four great tribes, namely:-

"1. The Panjabi Jat, who is neither a Moslem nor a Hindú. He first appears in Indian history as a

equally high origin? As Játaki, the dialect peculiar nomad, alternately cultivator, shepherd, and robber.

one of the ruling classes in Sindh. It was probably
for this reason that the Tohfut el Kirám (a well-
known book of annals) made them of kindred origin
with the Belochis, who now repudiate such an idea
with disdain. The Jat's account of his own descent,
gives to Ukayl, the companion of Mohammed, the
honour of being his progenitor; but what class of
Moslem people, however vile, does not claim some
to the race, proves, it must have come from the Pan-
jáb, and the outlying districts, such as Ubho or
Baladasht, Jhang-Siyál, Multán, etc., dependent upon
the great Country of the Five Rivers. Driven by war or
famine from their own lands, these nomads migrated
southwards to Sebi and the hills around it. They are
supposed to have entered Sindh a little before the
accession of the Kalhorá princes, and shortly after-
wards to have risen to distinction by their superior
courage and personal strength. At present they have
lost all that distinguished them, and of their multitude
of Jágírdárs, Zemindárs, and Sardárs, now not a
single descendant possesses anything like wealth or
rank. Their principal settlements are in the pro-
vinces of Kakrálo, Játi Chediyo, Maniyár, Phuláji,
and Johi. They are generally agriculturists or
camel-breeders, and they appear to be a quiet inoffen-
sive race.
In the eastern parts of Central Asia, the
name 'Jat' is synonymous with thief or scoundrel.
"The Sindhi Jats have many different karams or
clans; the principal of which are the following:
Babbur, Bháti, Jiskáni, Jiyá, Kalaru, Magási, Mir-
jat. Parhiyár, Sanjaráni, Siyál and Solángi."
In the notes to these passages (p. 411), I
added:-
:-

66

-

'Jat", or, written as it is pronounced, Dyat",' has three significations: 1, the name of a tribe (the Jats); 2, a Sindhi, as opposed to a Beloch-in this sense an insulting expression-so the Belochis and Brahnis of the hills call the Sindhi language 'Júthki;' 3, a word of reproach, a barbarian,' as in the expression do-dasto Jat"' (lit. a two-handed Jat), an utter savage.'"

I continued:

"It appears probable, from the appearance and other peculiarities of the race that the Jats are connected by consanguinity with the Gipsies. Of 130 words used by the Syrian Gipsies, no less than 104 belong to the Indo-Persian class of language. The rest may either be the remains of one of the barbarous tongues spoken by the original mountaineers who inhabit the tract between the Indus and Eastern Persia, or the invention of a subsequent age when their diffusion amongst hostile tribes rendered a 'thieves' language' necessary. The numerals are almost all pure Persian. There are two words 'kuri' (a house) and psik' (a cat), probably corrupted from the Pushtu (Afghan) kor' and 'pishu.' Two other words are Sindhi mánna' formáni,' bread, and 'húi' for 'hú,' he. As might be expected from a tribe inhabiting Syria, Arabic and Turkish terms occasionally occur, but they form no part of the groundwork of the language."

It was my fortune to wander far and wide about the valley of the Indus, and to make personal ac

ROTH, R. Der Atharvaveda in Kaschmir. Tübingen: Fues. quaintance with many, if not all, of the wild tribes.

1 M. 20 Pf.

CORRESPONDENCE.

THE INDIAN AFFINITIES OF THE GIPSIES.

these words:

I saw much of the Jats, lodged in their huts and tents, and studied the camel under their tuition. They are the best "vets" and breeders known to that part of the East. My kind friend, Colonel Walter Scott, of the Bombay Engineers, had a Jat In the ACADEMY of February 27, 1875, I read in his service, and the rough old man's peculiarities afforded us abundant amusement. Thus I was able to publish in January, 1849, with the Bombay branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, a "Grammar of the Játakí (locally called) Belochkí Dialect;" the author of the famous "Dabistan" applies the term "Jat tongue" to the language in which Nának Shah (the apostle of the Sikhs) composed his Grauth and other works. In the Panjab "Jatki bát" (Jat tongue) is synonymous with "Ganwár ki boli" (peasants' jargon) of Hindostan.

"Professor de Goeje, of Leyden, has printed some interesting Contributions to the History of the Gipsies. He accepts the view propounded by Pott, as early as 1853, that the Gipsies are closely related to the Indian

Jatt (a name which the Arab historians transform into Zott). Dr. Trumpp has already pointed out the close resemblance between the European Gipsies

and the Jatt of the banks of the Indus."

I venture to hope that you will permit me to show the part taken by myself in this question. Sindh and the Races that Inhabit the Valley of the Indus (London: Allen, 1851), written between 1845 and 1849, thus treats of the plain-peoples (pp. 246-7):

--

"The Jat, or, as others write the word, Jath, Juth, and Jutt, was in the time of the Kalhorá dynasty

I wrote the word Játaki with two italics; the first denoting the peculiar Sindhi sound, a mixof "J" and " T," and the second being the familiar cerebral of Sanskrit and Prakrit-still lingering to a certain extent in our modern English. The tribal name is Jat", with the short terminal vowel

Many became Sikhs, and did great benefit to that faith by contending zealously against Moslem bigotry, and, as this was their sole occupation for many years, they gradually became more and more warlike, and were at one time as fighting a caste as any in India.

They have been supposed to be descendants from a very ancient race, the Getae (misprinted in p. 85 'Goths').

"2. The Jat of the Hazárah country, Jhang-Siyál, Kach (Kutch) Gandawa and Sindh generally, where they may number 250.000 out of a total of 1,000,000. He is generally a Moslem, and is supposed to have emigrated from the north during, or shortly after, the Kalhorá reign. In those days the Belochis were all but unknown in Sindh, and the aristocracy of the land, the Amirs, Jágirdárs, and opulent Zemindars, were all either Sindhis or Jats. About Peshawur the word Jat' is synonymous with Zemindár,' and as in Sindhi it is occasionally used as a term of reproach.

"3. A class of Belochis who spell their name with the Arabic, not the Sindhi J.' In Sindh they inhabit the province of Játi, and other parts to the south-east. The head of the tribe is entitled 'Malik' (master), e.g., Malik Hammál Jat.

"4. A wandering tribe, many of whom are partially settled at Candahár, Herát, Meshhed, and other cities in Western Asia; they are notorious thieves, and are held to be particularly low in the scale of creation. They are found in Mekrân and Eastern Persia, and they occasionally travel as far as Maskat, Sindh, and even Central India. No good account of this section has as yet appeared."

All four tribes are looked upon as aborigines, which only means that their predecessors are unknown. They are not wholly analphabetic: they write in the Nastalík, and sometimes in the Nashki character. In the preface to the Grammar I quote six books known to them, including a translation of Háfiz; one of them was shown to me in the Gurumukhi (Sikh) character. Their songs and miscellaneous poetry may be classed under five heads, viz., the "Rikhtah" of Hindostan, the Ghazal of Arabic and Persian, “ Dohrá” or couplets usually sung to music, "Tappa" or short compositions of three, four, or five verses, mostly amatory and sung by the mírásí (minstrel); and

66

Bayt," an indefinite number of couplets. The latter frequently begin the lines with the letters of the alphabet in regular succession; this trick of composition is much admired, and probably the more so because the themes are, to speak mildly, vigorously erotic.

The first band of Jats was deported by the
Arwám (Rúmí or Byzantine Greeks) in 855. The
great conqueror whom Europe has apparently de-
termined to call by his Shieh, or Persian nick-
name Tamerlane (=Taymúr i lang, or limping
Taymúr), swept through the land in A.D.1398-1400,
and his horde must have caused a wide scatter-
ing of the weaker tribes. About this time, too,
the Gipsies are known to have entered Europe,
like their Keltic congeners of a far earlier date,
via Persia and Asia Minor. They called themselves,
as all know, Egyptians, "Gitanos," " Egyptiens,”
and our Gypsy, or Gipsy, is simply "Kubti," pro-
nounced in Egypt "Gubti," a Copt. They invented
a superstitious legend to account for their emi-
gration from the banks of the Nile, possibly
suggested by the racial name Jatání, the adjectival
form of the plural. The modern Arabic name of
the nomads, still preserved in Egypt and Syria,
is "Ghajar." Allow me to join issue with Pro-
fessor de Goeje, who would explain "Zigeuner"

("Zingano," the older Italian form of "Zingaro"
by "Shikárí," a hunter, which he writes "Sjikari,
or by "Tsjengán," the Persian plural (?) of Tsenj,
a musician or dancer (Chang,
a harp ?).
appears to me a simple corruption of the Persian
Zang, in Arabic "Zanj," a negro, a dark man.

These ideas occurred to me and were printed before 1849, at a time when the Orientalists of Europe had agreed to identify the Gipsies with the "Nath," a scattered trans-Indine tribe of mimes and musicians, utterly unaccustomed to horse dealing and cattle breeding-I may add poultry-plundering. And the conviction still holds its ground, only lately my erudite correspondent Dr. J. B. Davis reminded me of it.

Of course the humble linguistic labours of an explorer can hardly be familiar to the professionally learned world, but I cherish a hope that you will aid me, despite the length of this letter, in resurrecting my buried and forgotten work.

RICHARD F. BURTON, F.R.G.S.

SPENSER'S LAST LINES.

3 St. George's Square: March 20, 1875.

A lady at Bedford, No. 16* in the audience at my lectures on Elizabethan Literature in that town, has called my attention to a most interesting point in Spenser's Faery Queene that no biographer of his has yet noticed, so far as I have examined.

It is this, that the latter stanza of the two which constitute the fragment of Çanto viii. of Book vii., may well be, and most probably is, the last lines that Spenser wrote, on, or in view of, his sad deathbed in King Street, Westminster; so well do the lines breathe in words the wish, the prayer that he, after the last change in his life, the burning of his Irish home and one of his children, must have uttered :

Then gin I thinke on that which Nature sayd,

Of that same time when no more Change shall be, But stedfast rest of all things, firmely stayd

[pon the pillows of Eternity,

That is contrayr to Mutabilitie:

For all that moveth, doth in Change delight:

But thenceforth, all shall rest eternally

With Him that is the God of Sabaoth hight:
0! that great Sabaoth God, grant me that Sabaoth's
sight!"

The singular appropriateness of these lines as Spenser's last, will, I believe, be gladly acknowledged by all students and lovers of him; and they will feel grateful, with me, to the Bedford lady who adds this memory of prayer and peacefulness of spirit to the poet's sad end.

The same lady suggests that the last line of Canto vi. Bk. vii." which too-too true that lands indwellers since have found "-may also have been written after, and in allusion to, the plunder of Spenser's house, or castle, at Kilcolman, in October, 1598; but robbery and spoil of the kind were too frequent in his time in Ireland to allow the point to be pressed; and Spenser names "Woods and all that goodly Chase" only, as abounding "with Wolves and Thieves." These words would not apply to the plunder and burning of Spenser's castle by men only. F. J. FURNIVALL.

THE WORD 66 FYE-MARTEN.”

Skipton, Yorkshire.

This word has been lately the object of some research, and much discussion among the critics of the earlier drama. No satisfactory explanation of its meaning has, however, yet been proposed. It

occurs in a MS. date 1582, Feb. 22: "We went

to the theater to se a scurvie play set owt al by One virgin, which ther proved a fye marten without voice, so that we stayd not the matter." Now, of "martens" proper there are in England two kinds, the beech-marten and the pine-marten (Martes fagi and Martes abietis). The Martes fagi or fagina was in French called fau or faine. Faine in English became foine, and foine-marten was in Yorkshire corrupted into foul-mart or foumart. This name was then transferred to the polecat as the foul-marten, the marten itself being called the

*Miss Marshall, of Kimbolton Road, as I have

since found.

sweet-marten, and these latter terms are in common
use at this day. So much for faine. What would
fau be represented by in English? In other words,
what would fagi become in our language?

We have seen that fagina became foine or faine.
We should expect fagi then to become faye or
foye. Let us compare a few other words in
which the g, under French influence, disappears.
Alligare becomes allye or alie; denegare becomes
denay or denie; exfrigare becomes affray; ossi-
fraga becomes orfray; renegare becomes renay.
Forms in aye and ye or ie then equally repre-
sent the contraction that ensues on adopting a
word from Latin through French, and omitting the
g between two vowels; so that martes fagi would
be either fye-marten or faye-marten. That the
pronunciation in either case would be that of our
word fie is proved in Mr. Ellis's great work on
Pronunciation. As to the meaning of the word,
anyone who has noticed the way in which fitchew,'
polecat, &c., are used by Shakspere, will have no
difficulty in seeing the antithesis to one virgin
in the passage quoted above. Fie may take an
under-sense corresponding to foul, as it still has

in Suffolk.

66

F. G. FLEAY.

The EDITOR will be glad if the Secretaries of Insti-
tutions, and other persons concerned, will lend
their aid in making this Calendar as complete as
possible.

APPOINTMENTS
SATURDAY, March 27, 3 p.m.
3.45 p.m.
8 p.m.

FOR NEXT WEEK.
Crystal Palace Concert.
Royal Botanic.
First night of Rose Michel at the
Gaiety Theatre.
Royal Albert Hall: Messiah.

MONDAY, March 29, 3 p.m. Royal Albert Hall: Grand National

Concert.
Actuaries.
First night of French plays at the
Opéra Comique.

sustained protest against this kind of gratuitous generalisations, which are fascinating and tempting to our philologists, and for evident reasons, as will be seen from the following words of Mr. Sayce, p. 64:—

"One of the first assumptions of the glottologist, either openly avowed, or unconsciously implied, is, that a scientific investigation of the Aryan family alone will give a full and complete solution of all the problems of the science of language, helped out perhaps by a few illustrations from non-Aryan dialects. The causes of such an assumption lie upon the surface. Not only did Comparative Philology begin with the Aryan family; not only are its students members for the most part of that family, and best and primarily acquainted with some one or more of its dialects; not only does the historical position of Europe give to this group of languages an immediate and practical interest; but still more, it is here that the facts of language are most numerous, and its vicissitudes most accurately known, from the oldest hymns of the Rig-Veda down to the newspaper of to-day. When the great discovery of the affinities of this group dawned upon Schlegel and Bopp, and the commonest inflections of grammar were traced from dialect to dialect, and from century to century, it was impossible not to believe that what held good of the Aryan would hold equally good of all other tongues."

A little further on the reason appears why Semitic scholars have not lately distinguished themselves in a similar fashion; and that is, mainly, the fact that the Semitic family of languages is at once both too small and too compact, and that its branches do not differ more among themselves than do the Romance languages in Europe; so that until its Sanskrit has been found, as it may yet be in the Old Egyptian or the subSemitic idioms of Africa, we cannot, we are den: Opening Night (Guillaume told, get back beyond a parent speech which is philologically late, and which fails to offer that facility for comparison which is needed by the young glottologist. Glottologist, I may remark in passing, the author uses Signor Salvini as Othello, at Drury advisedly instead of student of comparative

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SCIENCE.

The Principles of Comparative Philology. By
A. H. Sayce, Fellow and Tutor of Queen's
College, Oxford. (London: Trübner &
Co., 1874.)

MR. SAYCE stands in no need of being intro-
duced to the readers of the ACADEMY, as they
are already perfectly familiar with his name
as one borne by a scholar who ranks second
to none in the gallant band of investigators
who have lately been doing so much to
bring to the light of day the ancient records
of Assyria, and to unearth the philological
treasures of Accad. Hence, perhaps, some
might imagine that the present work is,
above all things, the utterance of a specialist;
but so far is that from being the case, that
its entire tone might be said to be distinctly
anti-specialistic and corrective of the habits
of the students of the Japhetic languages,
who must plead guilty to being occasionally
too prone to project on language generally
the laws and tendencies which those they
study have made them familiar with. In
fact, the whole book may be regarded as a

* Othello iv. 1. 150; Merry Wives iv. 1. 30.

philology; for at the end of his first
chapter he tells us that, in the remaining
ones, he avails himself of the term glot-
tology as synonymous with, and far pre-
ward and somewhat pedantic circumlocu-
ferable to, comparative philology-an awk-

tion to which German scholars, with their
Sprachforschung and Sprachforscher, could not
nowadays think of being confined. So it is
to be hoped that Mr. Sayce will be followed
by others in his adoption of the terms glot-
No
tology, glottologist, and glottological.
better authority need be cited than Ascoli's
brilliant but hitherto incomplete Corsi di
Glottologia.

Unawares I have already plunged in medias res, and in order to give a more intelli

gible account of the work I must now reauthor's own account of it in the introductrace my steps with a view to consult the tion, where we find that the substance of the first eight chapters was originally delivered as lectures at Oxford in the early part of 1873, and that the ninth and last chapter regarded as strictly an appendix to the first. was a subsequent addition which may be The work, as a whole, is rather critical than constructive, and the theories it criticises

are summarised as follows:-(1) The belief that the Aryan languages are the standard of all others, and that the generalisations

vol. iv. p. 214), is an account of the investigations of M. Rosetti on the electrical currents produced by the Holtz machine, and published in the Atti del R. Istituto Veneto, vol. iii. 1874. The following are some of M. Rosetti's conclusions:machine is very nearly proportional to the velocity The strength of a current produced by a Holtz of rotation of the disc, provided the hygrometric state of the atmosphere remains constant.

The ratio of the velocity of rotation to the strength of the current increases with the humidity.

The effective work spent in each second is exactly proportional to the strength of the current; the ratio of the work spent to the strength of the current diminishes as the humidity increases. If the motion of the disc be maintained by a rotation apparatus, and if the weight which is necessary to turn the disc with a certain velocity when the machine is charged be called the total moving weight, the weight necessary to turn the disc when inactive the partial moving weight, and the difference between the total weight and the partial weight the effective moving weight, it is observed that the effective moving weight remains constant, whatReg-whatever be the intensity of the current. The ever be the magnitude of the total weight, i.e., effective moving weight is greater as the air is more dry.