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" Tiie most perfect of all languages must be that, which 

 " -is, at once, the most complete, the most sonorous, the 

 " -most varied in its modes of expression, and the most 

 " regular in its arrangement; which has most of compound 

 " words, whose prosody best expresses the sIoav or impe- 

 " tuous emotions of the mind; and whose sounds are most 

 " musical. The Greek possesses all these advantages: it 

 '' has not the rudeness of the Latin; of which so many 

 " ivvords end in nm, ur, us. It has all the pomp of the 

 " Spanish, and all the sweetness of the Italian; and, by 

 " its long and short syllables, it is superior, in musical 

 •^ expression, to all living languages; so that, even disfi- 

 " gm-ed.as it is, at this day, in Greece, it may still be re- 

 " garded as the most beautiful language in the universe." 



Now, if we compare the degree of excellence, whicli 

 this langCiage attained, in the earUest ages after the Flood, 

 with the state of civilization of those who spoke it in those 

 ages, we shall find the utmost disproportion betwixt them; 

 the invej-se of what happened in any other age or country. 

 Homer wrote 940 years before the Christian tera, when 

 Greece was far from being thoroughly civilized; yet, in 

 him, it is acknowledged, the Greek language appears, as 

 polished and refined as in Sophocles, Euripides, or even 

 Demosthenes, who wrote in the most civilized periods. 

 And, if we pietc^ higher into antiquity, Ave find Linus, 

 who lived 1500 years before Christ, and 300 years before 

 the Trojan war, and his disciple, the first Orpheus, both 

 so much admired, that the former, in subsequent ages, 



was 



