39 
ancient Berber of Northern Africa, the modern Coptic descendant of 
that old Egyptian tongue which, partly monosyllabic, in part dissllyabic, 
elutinative by simple repetition of syllables, and inflected by reason 
of vowel change and intensification, seems as if it combined characters 
which subsequently became differentiated and highly specialised in 
the chief linguistic types of the world. 
The great Aryan group is divided into ten families. First comes 
the Aryan or Sanskritic, the mother of the modern Aryan languages of 
India and of Romany or gipsy, of which there are no less than thirteen 
dialectal varieties. Next the Iranian family, comprising Persian, 
Afghan and Kurdish. Third ranks the Armenian, intermediate 
between the Asiatic and the European branches. Fourth, the Greek. 
The fifth family comprises only the Albanian language. Sixth comes 
the important Italic family, believed to the nearest allied to the 
Celtic, or seventh family, including the Celtic tongue spoken by the 
Galatians of St. Paul’s Epistles, the Gaelic, the Irish, Scotch, and 
Manx, and the Southern group of Welsh, Cornish, and Armorican. 
The great Teutonic family, or East and West German, comes next. 
The Eastern includes the Gothic, Scandinavian, Swedish, Danish, 
Norse, and Icelandic or old Danish, the oldest member of it. The 
Western Germanic includes Frisian, English, Saxon or Low German 
Frankish and Dutch, and the Upper German dialects. The Baltic 
family is ninth, and comprises old Prussian, extinct for 300 years, the 
Lettish and the Lithuanian. Last comes the Slavonic family, inclu- 
ding Russian, Bulgarian, Servian, Croatian, Slavonic, Czechish or 
Bohemian, and Polish. Some of these natural families are more 
closely related to each other than others. They are all descended 
side by side from one primitive parent Aryan language as yet 
unknown to us, and to which Sanskrit was formerly considered to 
hear the nearest aftinity. Of late, however, the Baltic family, 
comprising the extinct old Prussian, Lithuanian, and Lettish, has been 
elaimed as nearest allied in its simple structure to the parent Aryan 
speech. There is a strong and growing tendeucy to look on North 
Europe as the original home of the Aryans, whence the various tribes 
may have migrated southwards, following the courses of the great 
rivers and reaching India Jast. The Aryans certainly came from a cold 
country, because there is a Sanskrit word for winter himd, Latin hiems, 
French fiver. Those equivalent for snow,—Sanskrit nyavd, Latin 
nivés, French niege ; and the Zend for ice #sz or usw, O. H. G. is, German 
eis, E., ice,—prove less, as the effects of ice or snow might be felt in the 
mountainous regions of a warm land. They were an agricultural 
people, whose very name Aryans comes from drya, “to plough, to stir 
up,” Latin arare,—hence our “arable”-and the Celtic arathar. They 
domesticated cattle, which constituted their wealth—paysu; old 
Prussian peku; Gothic fathu, feoh—our “fee”; and Latin pecus, 
p tunia, and English “ pecuniary.” They called their daughters duhitar 
or Milkmaids, Gothic daughtar ; O. H. G. tohtdér, and Lithuanian dukté. 
Our Aryan ancestors were acquainted with silver, or the white stone, 
and gold, or the yellow stone, and made weapons of bone, of stone, and 
of wood ; the Sanskrit name for wood dru means spear also. They 
spun, woved, dyed, baked, cooked, and brewed as well, if Max Miiller's 
identification of the soma, glorified as libations to the gods in the 
