18 
but as the Danish and the German, the Chah 
dean and the Arabic, the Greek and the 
Latin. In proportion as we penetrate into 
the labyrinth of American idioms, we dis- 
cover, that several are susceptible of being 
classed by families, while a still greater 
number remain insulated, like the Biscayan 
among European, and the Japanese among 
Asiatic languages. This separation may, 
however, be only apparent ; for we may 
presume that the languages, which seem to 
admit of no ethnographical classification, 
have some affinity, either with other lan- 
guages which have been for a long time 
extinct, or with the idioms of nations which 
have never yet been visited by travellers. 
The greater part of the American lan- 
guages, even such as have the same differ- 
ence with each other as the languages of 
Gerraannic origin, the Celtic and the Scla- 
vonian, bear a certain analogy in the whole 
of their organization : for instance, in the 
complication of grammatical forms, in the 
modification of the verb according to the 
