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guage of barbarous nations only, seem to 

 be the wrecks of languages, once rich, 

 flexible, and belonging to a more cultivat- 

 ed state. We shall not enter into the dis- 

 cussion, whether the primitive condition of 

 the human race was rude and brutalized, 

 or whether the savage hordes are descended 

 from nations, whose intellectual faculties, 

 and the languages which reflect those fa- 

 culties, were equally developed ; we shall 

 only observe, that the little which we know 

 of the history of the Americans tends to 

 prove, that the tribes, whose migrations 

 have been directed from the north to the 

 south, while yet dwelling near the polar 

 regions, used various idioms which we find 

 at present under the torrid zone. From 

 this we may by analogy conclude, that 

 the ramification, or rather, to use a term 

 independent of every system, the multipli- 

 city of languages is a very ancient pheno- 

 menon. Perhaps those, which we call Ame- 

 rican, belong no more to America than the 



