136 CORRESPONDENCE. 



human race, and as a source of indispensable materials for science, 

 the investigation of these aboriginal languages has the strongest 

 claims to our attention ; and if the value attached to this, as well 

 as other branches of science, may be in any degree estimated by 

 the high rank of the men who have been engaged in its pursuit, it 

 is certainly the fact, that, at the present day, the general study of 

 languages, or comparative philology, has enlisted talents of the first 

 order throughout Europe. It is a remarkable fact, but not gene- 

 rally known, that the first great impulse to this study was given 

 by that extraordinary sovereign, the empress Catharine the Great, 

 of Russia, who, herself, took pains to make out a vocabulary of 

 two hundred words, to be sent to various parts of the world, in 

 order to obtain the corresponding words in different languages. 

 With this view, she made application to President Washington for 

 specimens of the Indian languages of North America; which were 

 accordingly furnished, by his direction. 



From that period to the present, the science of comparative 

 philology has been pursued with increasing ardour and success, 

 particularly in the investigation of the unwritten languages of the 

 savage or uncultivated nations ; for it is now found, to the surprise 

 of the learned, who had formed their theories of speech from the 

 Greek, Latin, and a few other cultivated dialects, that the long 

 neglected languages of the uncivilized portion of the human race 

 present very many extraordinary phenomena (if we may so call 

 them) in the structure of human speech, which will compel scien- 

 tific inquirers to re-examine and reform the theories, that have 

 been formed upon too limited a view of this extensive subject. 



At the present enlightened period of the world, the basis of all 

 scientific inquiry is the collection and arrangement of facts, or the 

 process of induction, as it is often called, after some philosophers 

 of antiquity; and, unless this method is applied to the languages, 

 as well as to the physical structure of the human race, the faculty 

 of speech, which is the peculiar and most remarkable characteristic 



