ON ETHNOLOGY. 
261 
the elaborate and accurate works on Sanscrit etymology i>y A. W. von 
bchlegel, Bopp, Burnouf, Lassen, Pott, Benfcy, Wilhelm von Humboldt, 
Lepsius, Hofer and others. All these men followed out the tracing of the dif¬ 
ferent branches of languages connected with the Sanscrit. The unscientific 
expression of “eastern languages'' ceased among the learned. The circle 
nf Indo-Gernianic languages, as they were called, was gradually extended 
to the Lithuanian, the Slavonic, and finally, by the combined and inde¬ 
pendent r^earches of Dr. Prichard, Bopp, and Dr. Meyer, to all the lan¬ 
guages of Celtic origin. Classical philology was not the last to benefit 
by this great discovery: the grammatical fonns and roots of Greek and 
Latin began to be considered under this new light by eminent Greek and 
Latin scholars. Suck a combmatiou of linguistic researches with true and 
deep philology is of tlie highest importance for tl»o success of ethnologic 
researches. It is the only safeguard against unscientific intrusions into ethno¬ 
logy. Linguists, if only occupied with classifying languages, are easily led to 
a very superficial comj)aris<in of incomplete und crude materials. The pbi- 
lolc^ical treatment of such languages as have a literature and literary docu- 
wents of different periods, is be-^t mlapted to keep more linguists in the path 
of rational criticism, whenever they may be tempted to decide too rashly on 
idioms of savages and unexplored tongues, known only by incomplete and un¬ 
digested vocabularies, or even only by accidental lists of some hundred words. 
In the same manner, such a philological exercise of liuguistic criticism is of the 
greatest imjiortancc to the traveller who intends to communicate knowledge 
respecting the languages of savage and illiterate tribes. George Kosen, the 
worthy biolher of the late lamented Professor of the London University Col¬ 
lege. ami Richard Lcpsius. were able, to ask the natives of Caucasus and of 
the Upper Kile many more questious than ortlinary travoliers, when learning 
from the lips of the natives the Ossetic, the Nubian, and Meroilic languages. 
Lepsius’ analysis of these tivo collateral languages of the Egyptian will, it is 
to be hoped, soon appear. Rosen’s lately published grammar of the Ossetic 
bnpage may be cited as an excellent specimen of the result of auch philo¬ 
logical inquiries on tht' spot. 
This consideration will lead us to appreciate the immonsn importance of 
tbfi critical, philological, and historical treatment of one whole branch of the 
Indo-Gerraanic languages, and that the branch most amply developed and 
mast richly stored with literary docninentw, as well as best known to our¬ 
selves—I mean Jacob Grimm’s Teutonic Grammar. In that astonishing 
work a whole family of languages has for the first time found an expositor, 
and ii it were a historiographer, placed mi the summit of the comparative lin¬ 
guistic analysts of our age. Grimm’s researches and discoveries have there¬ 
fore exerciserl, and will long continue to exorcise, a decisive iutiuenee on 
nil not merely superficial and elementary imiuirics into the organic laws of 
»ny ^ven language. Grimm’s Teutonic Grammar, comprehending the 
Scandinavian as well as the German languages in all their ramifications, re¬ 
duces each of them to Its most ancieitt forms, and follows it dow'u from that 
point through the whole course of its developments. It founds itself princi- 
|*ally on au almost uninterrupted series of documents through fifteen hundred 
years of German literature, from UlHlaa to Goethe. By its method and its 
ri-siilts this colossal work forms not only an epoch in the history of Germanic 
philology, but of ethnologic philology in general. For we have now a 
standard, according to which every other research must be tested, and all 
linguistic information measured, in order to judge of its approximation to 
accuracy and comjileteness. Grimm has adopttrd many of the elements of 
the grammatical theory which we owe to the scientific knowledge of the 
