20 JOHN READE ON LANGUAGE AND CONQUEST. 
ten nor are its traditions unfelt. Now that the age of railway construction has begun in 
a region where labour is so cheap, ere long the millions of China may be at the gates of 
Europe as they have already reached the Golden Gate of America, and, when they begin to 
swarm in force, who shall keep them back? Under new conditions the story of Attila may 
be repeated and, for good or ill, Europe and Asia as well as Asia and America, may be brought 
into industrial rivalry. Before such an inroad the tents of Shem and Japheth’s enlarged 
borders could not long hold out. And that this effusion from over-crowded China must 
eventually take place is as certain as that a vessel filled beyond its capacity must over- 
flow. In what way the event will modify the races and the civilization of the future it is 
not easy to say, but if we regard it as even remotely possible, it surely ought to induce the 
scholars and savantsand statesmen of the Aryan West to study, more than they have hitherto 
done, the history, the language and the capabilities of that vast host of humanity of whose 
destined invasion the pioneers are already at our doors. 
In considering the conquests of the other Allophylian tongues of Asia, we have to 
deal with triumphs based on forcible intrusion rather than on moral sway. Some of them 
have, however, been no strangers to a literary culture of a comparatively high rank. But, 
except in rare instances of self-abnegation, where scholars, “with nothing to tempt them 
but the love of truth, have turned aside from the Hesperian Gardens of Aryan Philology 
into the apparently barren fields of Allophylian research,” as yet little has been done 
towards the formation of a just estimate of their importance. When Dr. Leyden, assisted 
by William Erskine, translated from the Jaghatai Turki the “ Memoirs of Mohammed 
Baber,” Lord Jeffrey wrote that the strongest impression which the perusal of the work 
left on the mind, besides that of the boundlessness of authentic history, was that of the 
uselessness of all history that did not relate to our own fraternity of nations. That opinion 
still largely prevails. It has required all the learning, eloquence and enthusiasm of Max 
Miiller, and now and then a little pardonable exaggeration, to persuade his adoptive 
compatriots that the treasures of even Sanscrit literature are really worth examination. 
The languages of Corea, Japan, * Burmah and Siam, are cognate to the Chinese, though 
differing from it in important respects. The Pali, a sacred dialect, is interesting from its 
affinities to Sanscrit, as well as Chinese. The Prakrit of the Jainas and the Javanese 
Kawi are also sacred daughters of the Sanscrit. A struggle for the mastery is now going on 
among the languages of the two great Indian peninsulas. Some have already retired 
baffled from the unequal contest, while others are undergoing metamorphosis from their 
contact with European tongues. + The researches of Von Hammer, Europæus, Vambéry, 
and other writers, have shown that the Turanian or Altayan group is not unworthy of 
careful and respectful study. The language of the Osmanli Turks is described as soft, 
harmonious and flexible, and its rules of grammar are simple and rational. It is, indeed, 

* The literature of Japan is copious, dealing with history, poetry, drama, theology, ethics, science, art, industry 
and etiquette. Elaborate commentaries have been composed by the men of letters on the most important classics, 
and treatises on grammar and philology are numerous. The Chrysanthemum, a montly magazine, published at 
Yokohama, “for Japan and the far East”, is edited with much ability and supplies English readers with valuable 
information as to the life, literature and general progress of the Empire. The agent in Canada is the Rey. W. H. 
Withrow, D.D., Toronto. 
f According to a recent census, the following languages are spoken in British Burmah: Burmese, Karen, 
Tulu, Shan, Chinese, Bengali, Hindustani, Tulugu, Tamil, English, Danish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian 
Portuguese and Swedish. 
