Recent Progress of Ethnology. 77 



depend on his acquaintance with Semitic vocables to fix the 

 fluctuating cuneiform powers." 



The recovery of a long-lost language like the Babylonian 

 is, of itself, a matter of deep interest, but the consequences 

 of that recovery, in enabling us to read the numerous in- 

 scriptions containing ancient records of Babylonian history, 

 and enabling us also to trace the philological relationships 

 of that language, are consequences of great interest and 

 value to us as ethnologists. It appears that the Babylonian 

 is a Semitic language, and that Biblical Hebrew and Chaldee 

 are the two languages greatly used by Col. Rawlinson to 

 illustrate it. I take this opportunity to refer you to a re- 

 markable passage in the Divinity Lectures of the Rev. W. 

 Digby, Dean of Clonfert. I quote from a copy printed in 

 Dublin in 1787. In Lecture V. the Dean is engaged in 

 shewing that the confusion at Babel was not of language in 

 its ordinary sense, but about religion. 



" That the whole earth was of one religion, and that the 

 true one, immediately after the flood ; when but eight per- 

 sons were left alive, is not to be disputed. That there was 

 also but one language then spoken ; and that a variety of 

 languages did not immediately take place upon the confu- 

 sion at Babel, but was the slow, gradual, and natural effect 

 of the dispersion, is fairly to be collected from the book of 

 Scripture. Nay, more, that but one language was spoken 

 for several ages after, will, I think, appear from the follow- 

 ing circumstances. 



" It is allowed on all hands, that Canaan, the son of Ham, 

 spoke the same language with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 

 It appears further, that Nimrod, who was grandson to Ham, 

 spake the same language with Asher, the son of Shem : the 

 former in Babylon, the latter at Nineveh.'' 



The Dean carries on his argument to shew that one lan- 

 guage only was spoken up to the time that Joseph was 

 carried into Egypt. And he argues that this universal 

 language was the Mosaic Hebrew. I have quoted the Dean 

 not to follow his argument in detail, upon which, on the 

 present occasion, I pass no opinion, but to shew that some 

 ground exists why we, as modern philologists, might have 



