Ixxvi 



Note I. Page li. 



" If, indeed," says Mr. Pickering, in his review of Dr. Jarvis's Discourse, " our 

 only motive in the study of languages were to repay ourselves by the stores of 

 learning locked up in them, we should be poorly rewarded for the labor of inves- 

 tigating the Indian dialects ; but if we wish to study human speech as a science, 

 just as we do other sciences, by ascertaining all the facts or phenomena, and pro- 

 ceeding to generalize and class those facts for the purpose of advancing human 

 knowledge ; in short, if what is called philosophical grammar is of any use what- 

 ever, then it is indispensable to the philologist of comprehensive views to possess a 

 knowledge of as many facts or phenomena of language as possible ; and these 

 neglected dialects of our own continent certainly do ofler to the philosophical in- 

 quirer some of the most curious and interesting facts of any languages with which 

 we are acquainted." 



" Until within a few years past," he observes, in his memoir on a uniform or- 

 thography for the Indian languages of North America, " these neglected dialects, 

 like the devoted race of men who have spoken them for so many ages, and who 

 have been stripped of almost every fragment of their paternal inheritance except 

 their language, have incurred only the contempt of the people of Europe and their 

 descendants on this continent ; all of whom, with less justice than is commonly 

 supposed, have proudly boasted of their own more cultivated languages as well as 

 more civilized manners." 



" Mr. Du Ponceau," says Mr. Pickering, in his review of the Dissertation on the 

 Nature and Character of the Chinese System of Writing, " was the first writer 

 who took a comprehensive view of the languages of the whole continent, and es- 

 tablished the general conclusion, that the American dialects, from one extremity 

 of the continent to the other (with perhaps some exceptions), form a distinct class 

 or family ; which, from their highly compounded character, he has happily desig- 

 nated by the term polysynthetic. Now these complex American dialects are at 

 one extremity of the series or chain of human languages ; while at the other we 

 find the very simple and inartificial language of China ; these two extremes, when 

 contrasted with each other, presenting this extraordinary phenomenon, that the 

 savage tribes of the New World, though destitute of all literature and even of writ- 

 ten languages, are found to be in possession of highly complex and artificial forms 

 of speech, — which would seem to be the result of cultivation, — while in the Old 



