INFLEXION OF VERBS. 
327 
plication of tenses: two Presents, four Preterites, three 
Futures. This multiplicity characterises the rudest Ameri- 
can languages. Astarloa 'reckons, in like manner, in the 
grammatical system of the Biscayan, two hundred and six 
forms, of the verb. Those languages, the principal tendency 
of which is inflexion, are to the common observer less interest- 
ing than those which seem formed by aggregation. In the 
first, the elements of which words arc composed, and which 
are generally reduced to a few letters, are no longer recog- 
nisable: these elements, when isolated, exhibit no meaning; 
the whole is assimilated and mingled together. The Ameri- 
can languages, on the contrary, are like complicated machines, 
the wheels of which are exposed to view. The mechanism of 
their construction is visible. Wo seem to ho present at their 
formation, and wc should pronounce them to be of very- 
recent origin, did we not recollect that the human min'd 
steadily follows an impulse once given ; that nations enlarge, 
improve, and repair the grammatical edifice of their lan- 
guages, according to a plan already determined ; finally, that 
there are countries, whose languages, institutions, and arts, 
nave remained unchanged, we might almost say stereotyped, 
during the lapse of ages. 
The highest degree of intellectual development has been 
hitherto found among the nations of the Indian and Pelasgic 
branch. The languages formed principally by aggregation 
seem themselves to oppose obstacles to the improvement of 
the mind. They are devoid of that rapid movement, that 
interior life, to which the inflexion of the root is favourable, 
and which impart such charms to works of imagination. 
Bet us not, however, forget, that a people celebrated in 
remote antiquity, a people from xvhom the Greeks them- 
selves borrowed knowledge, had perhaps a language, the 
construction of . which recals involuntarily that of the lan- 
guages of America. What a structure of little monosyllabic 
and dissyllabic forms is. added to the verb and to the sub- 
stantive, in the Coptic language ! The semi-barbarous 
i hayma and Tamanae have tolerably short abstract words 
> express grandeur, envy, and lightness, cheictwate, noite, 
and uonde ; but in Coptic, the word malice,* metrepherpetou, 
* See, on the incontestable identity of the ancient Egyptian and Coptic, 
and on the particular system of synthesis of the latter language, the in- 
