108 HISTORY OP THE PHYSICAL 



that through intelligence from the Indian trading stations 

 of the Banians, they had a large share in occasioning the 

 bold enterprise of Vasco de Gama. The wide predomi- 

 nance of particular languages, though unfortunately it pre- 

 pared the early destruction of the displaced idioms, has 

 contributed beneficially to bring mankind together; re- 

 sembling in this, one of the effects which have followed the 

 extension of Christianity, and which has also been produced 

 by the spread of Buddhism. 



Languages, compared with each other, and considered as 

 objects of the natural history of the human mind, being di- 

 vided into families according to the analogy of their internal 

 structure, have become, (and it is one of the most brilliant 

 results of modern studies in the last sixty or seventy 

 years), a rich source of historical knowledge. Products of 

 the mental power, they lead us back, by the fundamental 

 characters of their organisation, to an obscure and other- 

 wise unknown distance. The comparative study of lan- 

 guages shews how races of nations, now separated by wide 

 regions, are related to each other, and have proceeded from 

 a common seat ; it discloses the direction and the path of 

 ancient migrations ; in tracing out epochs of development, 

 it recognises in the more or less altered characters of the 

 language, in the permanency of certain forms, or in the 

 already advanced departure from them, which portion of the 

 race has preserved a language nearest to that of their former 

 common dwelling-place. The long chain of the Indo- 

 Germanic languages, from the Ganges to the Iberian extre- 

 mity of Europe, and from Sicily to the North Cape, furnishes 

 a large field for investigations of this nature into the first 

 or most ancient conditions of language. The same histori- 



