R68 



LANGREL LANGUAGE. 



Indian Fables and Tales newly translated, \\itli a 

 preliminary iii~cuur-e, mid notes on the relit; ion, 

 manners, luid literature of the Hindoos ; and also the 

 second volume of l>i- Mantchou Dictionary. He was 

 >.'. nominated keeper of the Oriental MSS. in 

 the royal library; and, in 1793 he belonged to a tem- 

 porary c.'iumis-iun of arts, attached to the committee 

 nf public instruction. After the revolution in July, 

 he In-cauie keeper of the literary dep6t, estab- 

 li-!ictl in the old convent of the Capuchins, rue St. 

 Honore. To his steal and influence were owing the 

 creation and organization of a particular school for 

 the Oriental living languages, in which he was pro- 

 fessor of Persian. He wrote notes for a new edition 

 of the Travels of Pallas, translated by Lapeyronie, 

 which he published in 1795 (8 vols., 8vo, with an 

 atlas). He was also the author of valuable additions 

 to the travels of Thunberg, Norden, &c. After the 

 executive directory had suppressed the temporary 

 commission of arts, and dispersed, in various estab- 

 lishments, the objects which had been collected at 

 the Capuchin convent, M. Langles devoted himself 

 entirely to the duties of his professorship, and to those 

 which devolved on him as conservator of the Oriental 

 MSS. in the national library. On the formation of 

 the institute, he became a member, and belonged 

 to the commission of literature, to which he presented 

 ninny memoirs and notices of manuscripts. He also 

 assisted in many periodical works. In 1796, in con- 

 junction with MM. Daunou and Baudin des Arden- 

 nes, he made an abortive attempt to re-establish the 

 Journal des Savons ; and the Magazin ency dope digue 

 contains a great number of notices and dissertations 

 from the pen of M. Langles. He died in Jan., 1824. 

 He had formed a noble collection of books, manu- 

 scripts, engravings, &c. ; and his house was the 

 general resort of travellers, cognoscenti, and students. 



LANGREL, or LANGRAGE; a particular kind 

 of shot, formed of bolts, nails, and other pieces of 

 iron, tied together, and forming a sort of cylinder, 

 which corresponds with the bore of the cannon from 

 which it is discharged, in order to wound or carry 

 away the masts, or tear the sails and rigging of the 

 adversary. It is seldom used but by privateers or 

 merchantmen. 



LANGTON, STEPHEN ; a cardinal, and archbishop 

 of Canterbury, in the reign of John, whose disputes 

 with the papal see originated in his rejection or this 

 prelate's appointment. By birth, Langton was an 

 Englishman, but he received his education in the 

 French metropolis. In the university of that city, 

 he had risen gradually, through various subordinate 

 offices, to the chancellorship, when, on going to 

 Rome, the learning and abilities which had hitherto 

 facilitated his advancement raised him so high in the 

 favour of Innocent III., that the pontiff, in 1207, not 

 only elevated him to the purple, but presented him 

 to the vacant primacy of England, respecting the dis- 

 posal of which the king was then at variance with 

 the monks of Canterbury. John refused to confirm 

 the nomination, seized on the temporalities of the see, 

 and ordered the monks to depart the kingdom. A 

 sentence of excommunication upon himself and his 

 whole realm was the consequence; nor was it 

 removed till the weak monarch, alarmed by the war- 

 like preparations of France, and the general disaffec- 

 tion of his subjects, gave up every point in dispute, 

 and reconciled himself to the church. Langton took 

 sion of his diocese in 1213, and was a strenuous 



rfender of the privileges of the English church. The 



Division of the chapters of the Bible in verses is 



attributed to him. De la Rue mentions him among 



i Anfjo-Nonnan poets of the thirteenth century. 



LANGUAGE. This word, originally derived 

 from the Latin lingua (tongue), in its most general 



sense, menus the faculty which God lias given to men 

 of communicating their perceptions and ideas to one 

 another, by means of articulate sounds. Metaphori- 

 cally, its signification is extended to every other mode 

 by which ideas may be made to pass from mind to 

 mind. Thus we say, the " language of the eyes," 

 the " language of signs," the " language of birds and 

 beasts." Even silence, by a bold metaphor, has been 

 assimilated to language by one of the most elegant 

 British poets : 



" Come then, expressive silence, muse his praise." 



THOMSON. 



In an analogous sense, philologists call the communi- 

 cation of ideas by writing, written language, in con- 

 tradistinction to language properly so called, which 

 they denominate spoken language. It is certain that 

 ideas may be communicated by signs, representative 

 of sounds, which word representative must not, how- 

 ever, be taken literally, because there is no point of 

 contact between the sense of seeing and that of hear- 

 ing ; all that can be said is, that, by tacit convention, 

 certain visible signs are made to awaken in the mind 

 the idea of certain audible sounds, which sounds, by 

 another tacit agreement, awaken the ideas of physical 

 objects or of moral perceptions. Thus the eye oper- 

 ates on the mind through the medium of the ear ; but 

 the process is so rapid, that it is not perceived at the 

 time, and writing may be said even to be a quicker 

 mode of communication than speech, for the eye can 

 run over, and the mind comprehend, the sense of a 

 page of a printed book, in a much shorter space of 

 time than the words which it contains can be articu- 

 lated. Still the passage of ideas from the eye to the 

 mind is not immediate ; the spoken words are inter- 

 posed between, but the immortal mind of man, that 

 knows neither time nor space, does not perceive them 

 in its rapid flight ; and by this we may form a faint 

 idea of what the operations of the soul will be, when 

 freed from the shackles of our perishable frames. 



The same principle applies equally to those modes 

 of writing which philologists have denominated ideo- 

 graphic, by which it would seem to be implied, that 

 ideas are immediately transmitted through the eye to 

 the mind. Among those is classed the Chinese. But 

 it is well known that every one of the numerous char- 

 acters of which that writing consists, awakens in the 

 mind the idea of a syllable, which it is meant to 

 represent ; and that syllable, in speech, represents a 

 spoken word or part of a word. Thus, in this 

 instance, the ear (the mental ear) is also an inter- 

 mediate agent between the eye and the mind. (See the 

 article Chinese Language, Writing, and Literature; 

 see also a letter from Peter S. Duponceau, Esq., of 

 Philadelphia, to captain Basil Hall, in the London 

 Philosophical Magazine for Jan., 1829, where this 

 question is discussed at large.) The same may be 

 said of the Egyptian hieroglyphics. For a long time, 

 it was believed that every one of those signs was the 

 representative of an idea, until the researches of the 

 younger Champollion afforded the most complete 

 proof of their having been chiefly used as alphabeti- 

 cal characters, although their forms indicate a differ- 

 ent destination. It would seem that it was originally 

 intended to employ them to represent ideas, not 

 abstractedly, but through words or sentences of the 

 spoken idiom ; for wherever a language exists, and 

 all nations have spoken before they wrote, ideas can 

 only occur to the mind in the shapes given to them 

 by the peculiar structure and grammatical forms of 

 that language. That might easily have been done 

 to a certain extent. There was no difficulty in 

 devising signs to awaken in the mind the idea of the 

 sun, the moon, a tree, a house, or other object, per- 

 ceptible by the sense of sight : physical and even 

 moral qualities might be expressed metaphorically. 



