1864. } The Science of Language. 721 
have originated in some way; either the sound of the object or the 
expression of the subject must have been the earliest utterance. It is 
quite possible that the actual name for a horse, or any other natural 
object as we at present describe it by its name, may have originated in 
some particular quality which has been considered striking; but how 
has that quality received its name? The Lithuanian aszva (mare), 
Latin equus, Greek inros (= txxos), and the old Saxon ehu, may all 
have originated in the root ag; but whence this root with its significa- 
tion of swiftness and sharpness? Must it not have arisen from an 
imitation of the sound of rapid motion; a swift cutting of the air 
in sunder; a hiss? We do not wish, and we are not able if we 
wished it, to “undo all the work that has been done by Bopp, Hum- 
boldt, Grimm, and others (including not least Max Miller himself), for 
fifty years,” but we think that no one who enters so thoroughly into the 
subject of tracing language to its origin can with regard to the ono- 
matopceic or imsonic source of roots “remain entirely neutral.” 
We next proceed to a discussion of the alphabet. After our own | 
language we usually suppose that the alphabet is the thing we know 
best of all our acquirements. How much there is still to learn even 
on this subject is best seen from the work under review. We cannot 
pretend to give an abstract of the author’s remarks on this subject, inas- 
much as it would require the plates with which he illustrates his text 
to make the matter plain to our readers. Suffice it to say that he 
relates the divisions and accounts of letters given by writers of various 
nations and periods, explains the formation of different sounds as 
revealed by the laryngoscope (a small looking-glass which enables the 
experimenter to look down the throat of the patient whilst he speaks), 
depicts the physiology of pronunciation, and shows how easily one 
class of sounds may be merged into another. On the exceeding intri- 
cacy of this subject he has a passage which we must quote as a speci- 
men of the style and diversity of acquirements of the learned author :— 
“ After thus taking to pieces the instrument, the tubes and reeds of 
the human voice, let us now see how that instrument is played by us in 
speaking or in singing. Familiar and simple as singing or music in general 
seems to be, it is, if we analyze it, one of the most wonderful phenomena. 
What we hear when listening to a chorus or a symphony is a commotion 
of elastic air, of which the wildest sea would give a very inadequate image. 
The lowest tone which the ear perceives is due to about 30 vibrations 
in one second, the highest to about 4,000. Consider then what happens 
in a Presto, when thousands of voices and of instruments are simultaneous] 
producing waves of air, each wave crossing the other, not only like the 
surface waves of the water, but like spherical bodies, and, as it would 
seem, without any perceptible disturbance. Consider that each tone is 
accompanied by secondary tones, each instrument has its peculiar timbre, 
due to secondary vibrations ; and lastly, let us remember that all this cross- 
fire of waves, all this whirlpool of sound, is moderated by laws which 
determine what we call harmony, and by certain traditions or habits 
which determine what we call melody, both these elements being absent 
in the songs of birds ; that all this must be reflected like a microscopic 
photograph on the two small organs of hearing, and these excite not only 
perception, but perception followed by a new feeling even more mysterious, 
which we call either pleasure or pain, and it will be clear that we are sur- 
