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study to that of the significance of personal names, comparative 

 Philology must always occupy the highest place. Comparative 

 Philology, which exhibits to us the great families of languages, and 

 shows to us their mutual relations ; and comparative Philology, in 

 regard at least to the languages of ancient and modern Europe, 

 has already done a great deal for us. It has shown how that all 

 the important languages of Europe have had one common paren- 

 tage — that they are brothers, and sisters, and cousins, and relations 

 of all kinds. It has traced not only the chief languages of Europe 

 to one common parent, but the languages of ancient Persia, and of 

 ancient and of much of modern India, to the same great stem. 

 And this family, embracing the chief languages of Europe on the 

 one hand, and of India on the other, is known by the name of the 

 Indo-European family. So, however much we talk of the superio- 

 rity of Saxon over Celt, or of Celt over Saxon ; however much we 

 may insist on the pre-eminence of the. Gothic over Slavonic, or 

 over Indian races; we must remember, that they are still like the 

 languages which they employ — of one parentage — of one blood in 

 the last analysis. The Indo-European family of languages 

 embraces the Sanskrit, or ancient language of India, and its 

 modern derivatives ; the ancient Greek and Latin (and their modern 

 representatives, the Romaic, the Italian, Spanish, French, &c), 

 the Slavonic, Gothic, Celtic, Zend, and Lithuanian. Well, then, these 

 various families of languages, all belonging to the same common 

 stock, indicate the various families into which the parent race has 

 been divided. They show that certain varying circumstances, 

 such as climate, geographical position, the nature of the soil, and 

 many other external influences, have been at work for centuries, in 

 modifying the tongue and disposition of these blood relations, and 

 in making them almost as different from each other in character as 

 they are in language. For, the same influences which modify 

 speech, tend also to modify the general character — the tone of 

 thought as well as the expression of thought. And thus people 

 who originally spoke the one language, and were in general of one 

 disposition, have become, by being placed under different physical 

 circumstances, very different in speech, and very different in 



