fiercely as she spoke. "I wish you a very good evening then-" said Lord William; and with an ironical bow he left the room. And the departing wheels of his carriage and four were soon heard.'

The child dies, and the mother is driven to the very verge of insanity, when her fit of desperation is arrested by the sudden reappearance of Charles, just returned from the Continent, whither he had proceeded as travelling tutor to a nobleman. But he arrives too late to avert the catastrophe. Great were her agonies, grievous the struggles of expiring nature. But they were over. And in the arms of this true and faithful friend she sunk to rest, April 21st, 1832.'

We bear willing testimony to the taste and skill with which all the scenes of mere feeling are executed. But to form an impartial estimate of the merits and demerits of the work, it is necessary to bear constantly in mind the avowed purpose for which it is composed; namely, to prove that a moral barrier exists between the higher and middle classes, which it is the extreme of rashness to cross, on account of a radical opposition in habits, sentiments, taste, and feelings, rendering domestic happiness all but impossible for such as may venture on the step. It will be readily admitted, we presume, that this is an extremely dangerous and invidious doctrine to promulgate in the existing state of society; and its injurious effects are not likely to be diminished by the circumstance of its being insinuated through the medium of an affecting story, instead of being openly advanced and defended as an axiom. In the latter case we might encounter proof by proof, and argument by argument; but, as matters stand, both proof and argument are superseded by the calm, unhesitating assumption throughout, that the middle class can never coalesce with the higher class by reason of its folly and its vice. Lady William Melville is made wretched by the capriciousness, selfishness, heartlessness, and (we may fairly add) brutality of her lord. But would a wife taken from the ranks of the aristocracy, with the average amount of good and bad qualities, have been happy with him? would she have complacently agreed to the neglect of her family, the separation from her husband, the desertion of her child? would she have laughed to hear of his passion for a prima donna, or, necessarily and as a thing of course, have consented to treat domestic affection as a prejudice, and religious duty as a bore? The author of A Country Vicarage' is bound to reply in the affirmative, or the story is devoid of meaning, and the intended inference at an end. Yet can any assumption or assertion be more ludicrously false? or can it be a matter of doubt to any one who has had an opportunity of comparing the different classes of society, that the scions of our

noble

noble houses are as likely to be good, pure, gentle, and affectionate, as any vicar's, surgeon's, or attorney's daughters in the land. Our authoress must, we repeat, have lived at a distance from the world she ventures to satirize, if she needs to be told distinctly that women of quality are as strict as others in the observance of those domestic duties for which their own personal attention is required, and as regular in their attendance at church; that they do not abandon their children to the tender mercies of such nurses as Mrs. Wily, nor leave them to die upon the road in order that they themselves may arrive in time for a drawing-room; that it is by no means an ordinary occurrence for a noble pair to separate at the end of their first season till the following spring; and that most noble ladies would actually be shocked to hear of their husbands' infidelity. Equally unfounded is the hypothesis that Lord William Melville is a fair specimen of a class-in other words, that the natural and necessary effect of wealth and rank is to indurate the heart, and that young men of birth and fortune are vain, profligate, and unfeeling, devoted to selfish gratifications, and unfitted, by the habitual indulgence of their caprices, for the enjoyment of domestic happiness or perseverance in any of the more elevated pursuits.

It must be admitted (says Isaac Tomkins) that there is a very great, a very real charm in these (the higher) circles of society. The elegance of manners which there prevails is perfect; the taste which reigns over all is complete; the tone of conversation is highly agreeable-infinitely below that of France indeed-but still most fascinating.' The present author, adopting the hint, describes the conversation of Lord William's dinner-table as ́that delightful union of wit, knowledge, and high-breeding, of lively sally and brief racy remark, of ease without familiarity and fine manners without pretension, which is to be found in perfection in such assemblages, and in such assemblages alone.' These admissions are much more important than the writers probably conceived when making them. Good conversation implies varied and extended knowledge, combined with a high degree of intellectual cultivation; good manners imply the general desire to please, and delicacy of perception to discover what may be pleasing or displeasing to others, without which a man may be conventionally, but not thoroughly, well bred. Neither conversation nor manners, therefore, can ever be perfectly good amongst a vain, frivolous, ignorant, selfish, unfeeling set of persons, like those of whom Mr. Tomkins asserts, and the author of A Country Vicarage' assumes, aristocratic society to be principally made up. Nor are they good in a section of the higher class, which we here think it necessary to particularize, as we cannot help thinking

that

that it is they, and they only, who have brought down such a torrent of opprobrium on the mass. We allude to the self-elected leaders of what is called the fashionable world and their followers, -a set of weak, trifling, and often profligate people, by no means eminent for birth, wealth, or personal accomplishment, who, by dint of mere assumption, and by persuading a few men and women of real influence and high station to co-operate with them, have contrived to acquire a formidable description of influence in society, which seldom offers an effective resistance to a well-organized system of exclusiveness. The rise of Almack's may serve to illustrate the mode in which this sort of empire was consolidated. A few pretty woman, not in the highest rank of the nobility, met at Devonshire House to practise quadrilles, then recently imported from the continent. The establishment of a subscription-ball was suggested, to which none but the very élite were to be admissible; the subscription to be low, with the view of checking the obtrusive vulgarity of wealth. The fancy took, and when it transpired that the patronesses had actually refused a most estimable English Duchess, all London became mad to be admitted; exclusion was universally regarded as a positive loss of caste, and no arts of solicitation were left untried to avert so horrible a catastrophe. The wives and daughters of the oldest provincial gentry, with pedigrees traced up to the Heptarchy, have been seen humbling themselves by the lowest acts of degradation to soften the obdurate autocratesses; and we fear it is no exaggeration to say, that more than one parvenu has been known to barter his vote in parliament, and more than one parvenue her honour, for a ball-ticket. The prestige has gradually abated, and the institution is now tottering to its fall; but its origin is worth recording, as a ludicrous phenomenon in the progress of society.

ART. IV. - The Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations proved by a comparison of their Dialects with the Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, and Teutonic Languages. By James Cowles Prichard, M.D., F.R.S., &c. Oxford. Svo. 1831.

THE

HE Cimmerians, says Homer,* dwell at the extremity of the ocean, enveloped in clouds and utter darkness. Some of this darkness appears to have clung to all tribes bearing the name, whether related to each other or not. Were the ancient Cimmerians Celts?-were the Cimbri of kindred race?-do the modern Cymry derive their pedigree, and consequently, their name and

* Odyssey, 1, xi, verses 13-15.

language,

language, from the same source? These questions have been boldly answered in the affirmative; and the supporters of this hypothesis have expended a good deal of learning and ingenuity in tracing the march of the Cimmerii from the Euxine to the British channel-almost as minutely as Xenophon describes the advance and retreat of the Ten Thousand. We do not mean to say that the theory itself is either false or improbable; but we doubt whether any satisfactory evidence has been brought to prove it. Hitherto the matter rests on a few plausible conjectures and a similarity of names-a most fallacious argument in all cases. We know that our neighbours and fellow subjects, the modern Cymry, are distinct from ourselves, both in race and language; but as to their origin and early history, they are still, like their namesakes of old, Μέρι καὶ νεφέλη κεκαλυμμένοι—and likely to remain so.

Various attempts have been made to throw light upon the primordia of the people, by means of their language, which, excepting perhaps the Basque, appears to be the most ancient, the most singularly constructed, and the most true to its original form, of all European tongues. Most of those attempts have signally failed, owing to the erroneous principle on which they were undertaken. It was argued that, as the Celts came from the east, they must have spoken an Oriental language; consequently one more or less related to Hebrew-the most ancient of Oriental tongues; a complete non sequitur! It must be admitted that a few remarkable coincidences have been pointed out, but the majority of alleged resemblances are altogether visionary. It is very possible that the Celts may have picked up a few* Semitic words in their progress through Asia, especially from the East Aramean, or Chaldee, which has interchanged many vocables with Old Persian, and perhaps with other adjoining dialects; but it would be as easy to trace the bulk of the Celtic languages to Formosa or Madagascar, as to the land of Canaan.

These matters are, however, better understood than they were a century ago. It has been discovered that there are eastern languages of venerable antiquity, totally distinct from Hebrew, but bearing the closest affinity to the principal European tongues. It is now as certain that Greek, Gothic, and Slavonic are the descendants of some ancient dialect nearly related to Sanscrit, as that Portuguese is derived from Latin. The affinity of Celtic to this great family has been doubted, and even flatly denied. Co

* Two coincidences are worth pointing out, on account of the extensive diffusion of the terms. Syriac No (gābino), a ridge or summit; Welsh, cefn, a ridge, whence Gebenna mons-hod. les Cevennes; Chevin, or Shevin, a steep rocky ridge in Wharfdale. Syriac, (turo) mons.; Welsh, tor, a protuberance; twr, a heap or pile. Compare Mount Taurus, in Asia-die Tauren, i. e., the higher Alps in the Tyrol, and the numerous tors in Derbyshire and the West of England. G lonel

VOL. LVII, NO. CXIII.

lonel Vans Kennedy, in his elaborate Researches into the Origin and Affinity of the principal Languages of Asia and Europe,' goes so far as to affirm that the British or Celtic language has no connexion with the languages of the East, either in words or phrases, or the construction of sentences, or the pronunciation of letters.' This positive declaration, from a man of undoubted information and research, might seem decisive of the question. But when we find that he denies, in equally positive terms, the affinity between Sanscrit and Persian, which Sir William Jones and Professor Bopp have made as clear as the noon-day sun, we may be permitted to suspect that he has, in both cases, pronounced his verdict rather too hastily; and that Celtic may, in forensic language, be fairly entitled to a new trial. Dr. Prichard has undertaken its cause, and, as we think, with considerable success. He has not indeed exhausted the subject; nor has he dwelt upon the remarkable difference between Celtic and the languages more obviously related to Sanscrit, so much as he fairly might have done. But he has, to a certain extent, proved his point, and is entitled to the merit of being the first who has investigated the origin of the Celtic tongues in a rational and scientific manner. If we are not mistaken, one part of his researches throws a new and most important light on the formation of language. This we shall advert to more fully in the sequel, especially as the author himself does not seem fully aware of the consequences deducible from his state

ments.

The main strength of the Doctor's case seems to lie in the analogy which he has established between the numerals, the names of persons, and degrees of kindred, and of the most ordinary natural objects, in the Celtic dialects, and in the class of languages with which he compares them. Words of this description are of remote antiquity, and commonly of indigenous growth; since we cannot suppose that any people endued with the faculty of language could be long without them. Yet the coincidences between the two classes are too numerous and too striking to be the effect of accident; and, as Dr. Prichard well observes, the Celtic cognates appear under a peculiarity of form, which is the surest test of genuineness. For example: it is indisputable that the Sanscrit swasurah (father-in-law), Russian svekor, German schwager, Latin socer*, Greek exupos, and Welsh chwegrun, are of common origin, and equally so that they are, in no instance, borrowed words, but formed, independently of each other, from the same primeval term, according to the genius and organic peculiarities of the respective tongues. Many of the adjectives and

*Terence's Hecyra, compared with socrus, is an obvious instance of the difference between an imported and a vernacular word.

common