244 Original Articles. [April, 



sonified, still with a grand underlying belief in* one controlling Deity, 

 God of gods and Lord of lords. 



Such were the Aryans, as far as we can picture them to ourselves 

 from the remains of their language. In such a sketch as this, how- 

 ever, we must guard ourselves against two sources of error : the one, 

 that the absence of words representing ideas necessarily implies the 

 absence of the idea ; the other, that the presence of the same word in 

 distinct branches necessarily implies the knowledge of the thing repre- 

 sented in the race before these branches were separated. In the 

 former case it must happen occasionally that amid the phonetic 

 attrition of ages, sounds have altered or become obsolete, so that but 

 one tongue has retained any trace of the original denomination. Be- 

 sides we have every reason to believe that in ancient tongues there 

 were many words distinguished by shades of meaning no longer recog- 

 nized, as in the case of the list of terms to designate the carving of 

 various birds and animals as given by Lady Juliana Berners, most of 

 which terms, though in use in the Fifteenth Century, have now become 

 extinct. In various dialects one of these expressions might be used to 

 designate the whole ; in another, another. We should, in both these 

 cases, have no basis for comparison, and though we could not be sure 

 that the idea existed, we should have no right to say that it had not 

 existed. On the other hand, where the word does occur in different 

 languages we must ever guard against the possible introduction of the 

 word into the one language from the other. Thus, in the Keltic and 

 English (both Anglo-Saxon and Romance) there are many words which 

 ardent Keltic scholars would fain claim as the inheritance of their 

 favom'ite race, bestowed by them upon the intruders on their land, 

 whilst Teutonic philologers, disdaining the elder race, sweep all into 

 their own net. Too substantial a fabric, then, must not be built upon 

 such doubtful foundations until we spread a wider surface to support 

 the superincumbent mass. Here Archaeology comes in, and together 

 with tradition, scraps of History, and other relics of a forgotten world, 

 helps us to shore up a tolerably substantial framework under which to 

 collect, arrange, and turn to account the knowledge we may glean from 

 all these quarters. 



Of the Age of the Dispersion we know at present scarcely any- 

 thing. A scattering of the nations must have taken place, because 

 they were once united, and we now find them separated. We may 

 imagine that hunger, the love of adventure, or the curse of Babel, 

 drove them forth. Too narrow a country, a desire to see what was 

 beyond their own happy valley, disagreement and misunderstanding 

 with their neighbours, are all motive powers, potent in those days as 

 they have been since. At some future stage in the history of science, 

 it may be possible to trace to a certain extent their wanderings, now en- 

 tirely shut out from our ken. All we know as yet is, that the ancestors 

 of Greek and Eoman remained united after they had broken off from 

 the original stock ; that the Keltic wave preceded the Teutonic over 

 Gaul, Britain, portions of Spain, and Italy, whence it sent forth 



* Max Miiller's 'Lectures,' 2nd series, lect. 10. 



