126 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN' INSTITUTE. 



character of the sj^eech. We may well be grateful to an idiom which 

 has preserved the world-famous torrent of Niagara from the too 

 possible designation of '' Tompkins' Falls." The wealth of fornis and 

 the power of expression in the language liave impressed every student. 

 Two hundred and fifty years ago, the scholarly Jesuit, Brebeuf, com. 

 pared it to the Greek, and found it in some respects superior. In our own 

 day, this opinion lias been reinforced by an authority of the greatest 

 weight. Professor Max Miiller, who learned the language from a 

 Mohawk undergraduate at Oxford, — now an esteemed physician in 

 Canada, — has written of it in terms of singular force. To his mind, 

 he declares, the structure of the language " is quite sufficient evidence 

 that those who worked out such a work of art were powerful reasoners 

 anil accurate classifiers." Powerful reasoners and accurate classifiers ! 

 To ajipreciate the full strength of these expressions, we must consider 

 whether they could be properly applied to the framers of the great 

 classical tongues of the old world, the Aryan and the Semitic ; and 

 we must honestly decide that they could not. The irrational and 

 confused gender system of the Aryan, and the imperfect tense system 

 of the Semitic stock, must exclude them from the comparison. It is 

 a noteworthy fact that the two foremost philologists of Europe and 

 America, both devoted students and admirers of the Aryan speech, 

 have compared this speech in its highest development with the lead- 

 ing American tongues, and that both, though differing widely in 

 their lin-nistic theoi'ies on other points, have pronounced in the 

 strongest terms their opinion of the structural superiority of these 

 American languages. 



It will perhaps be asked why, if the American language and their 

 framers were of tliis superior character, tJie results achiev-ed by the 

 latter have been so small. How did it happen that the Algonkins, 

 the Iroquois, and the Sahaptins remained barbarians of the Stone 

 Age, while the Aryan nations attained the highest pitch of civiliza- 

 tion. The question is a fair and pertinent one. The answer is found 

 in a single word, — opportunity. We recognize the prime importance 

 of occasion and surroundings to an indiAadual, but ai'e apt to foi-get 

 that they are equally essential to a race. We admit that Milton, 

 condemned by fate to ignorance and penury, would probably have 

 remained "mute and inglorious." If the American civil war had not 



