THE ETRUSCAN QUESTION. 101 



forms of Basque, Caucasian, Yeniseian, Japanese, Corean, Iroquois, 

 Chocktaw, and Aztec, they are one in vocabulary, and constitute with 

 many other membeisa linguistic family of no small importance. The 

 parent speech belongs to Syria. West of Syria, in Asia Minor, Italy, 

 Spain, and Britain, the inscriptions yield Basque." We think we 

 have shown how far Prof. Campbell is competent to speak of this. 

 He continues : " East of Syria, in India, Siberia and on this conti- 

 nent, the Japanese at first, and afterwai'ds the Aztec, are the languages 

 set forth." And again : " The threefold Tyrseni, Tnscer, Naharcer, 

 Japu-scer, carry us back to Mesopotamia, the land of Nairi or Nahir- 

 ina, and to the region of Khupuscai, as well as forward to Navarre 

 and Guipuscoa. The former even takes us to this continent, where 

 the Aztecs or Citin also called themselves Nahuatl or Navetl. Who 

 the Tuscer were it is harder to say, for the final er is a termination ; 

 otherwise the great Basque name Euskara would at once suggest itself 

 in such a form as the Dioscui'ias of Colchis, now Iskurieh, near which 

 Chapsoixkes or modern Khupuscians and eastern G-uipuscoans dwelt." 

 It is hard to characterize this. It is simply philology run mad. 

 Euskai-a and Dioscurias connected ! Prof Campbell knows Greek, 

 and should know that the cities which bore the name of Dioscurias, 

 and of which there were several, received that name because they 

 honoured as their tutelar Deities, the twin sons of Leda, Castor and 

 Pollux, the Dioskouroi. 



Perhaps the leading error into which Prof Campbell falls is the' 

 constant application of the laws which govern the Aryan languages 

 to the Turanian also. Grimm's laws, of the variations of consonants 

 in the Aryan languages, do not hold good in the Turanian. But 

 even in Aryan languages, it is always dangerous to conclude that 

 words which assimilate in sound, or that have the same class of con- 

 sonants, are connected, and much less may such assimilation be trusted 

 in the Turanian languages. Rask, Schott, Cap'tr^n, Bemusat, and 

 Boetlingk, — in fact all who have written on the Turanian languages, 

 are very particular in guarding us against depending on the similarity 

 in sound. But they also tell us that it is absurd to expect the exist- 

 ence of the same words running through the Turanian languages as 

 they do in the Aryan. The Turanian languages have not been 

 thoroughly classified, and the difficulty lies not only in the variation 

 of grammatical forms, but quite as much in the vocabulaiy. Speak- 

 ing generally, the Turanian nations have had no literature to fix 



