40Q Atlas Ethnographique du Globe. 



are traced the geographical limits in which the languages 

 which are classed therein are spoken ; and a rapid sketch is 

 given of the phj^sical geography, the history, the manners 

 and the moral condition of the people comprehended in the 

 ethnographical region under notice. It is, we believe, the 

 first attempt of the kind to view the people of the globe in 

 regard to their divisions by language, and presents, as it could 

 not fail to do, many new and remarkable views, recommended 

 by general elegance of style, and occasionally enlivened by 

 vivid and brilliant representations. We might cite, as ex- 

 amples, the introduction to the languages of India, to the 

 Basque and Celtic families ; the sketches of the Greco-Latin, 

 Germanic, and Slavonic nations ; and those which precede 

 the classification of the languages of the Orinoco-Amazon, 

 the Alleghani, and of the Great Lakes. We had marked 

 for insertion, the introduction to the family of Germanic 

 languages, but we approach the limits of our space, and can 

 only, therefore, refer such of our readers as may have access 

 to the work to the commencement of the 13th Table, as a 

 good specimen of the manner in which this portion of the work 

 is executed. 



Our duty as critics obliges us to remark that there are 

 some parts of M. Balbi's classification of languages in which 

 we cannot fully coincide. His general division of the Ger- 

 manic languages, for example, differs from the system fol- 

 lowed by the German writers themselves ; a system justified 

 by the analogies existing in the different idioms comprised in 

 that family. The Gothic of Ulphilas, or the Alesogothic, 

 appears to us to have more analogy with the ancient high 

 German, than with the three modern idioms of Scandinavia, 

 the Norwegian, the Danish and the Swedish, and should be 

 classed accordingly. Being, moreover, the most ancient of 

 the German languages, it is the more important that the 

 example of the German philologists should be followed, who 

 all agree in placing it at the head. It is true that M. 

 Balbi himself is not responsible for this classification, having 

 followed, in this particular, the opinion of the late M. Malte- 

 Brun, by whom he was specially directed in regard tothe 

 languages of that group. Writing at Paris, he could not 

 have there found a better guide ; and we should willingly 

 concede our difference of opinion, could he give to that 

 classification, to which we object, the support of the evidence 

 which M. Malte-Brun proposed to bring forward, in respect 

 to the people of Scandinavia. In the present state of the 

 question, however, and until M. Rask shall make known 

 those arguments which may be urged on the behalf of the 



