monuments of Egypt by a similar means, whilst we have a tolerable remnant of the Coptic in our hands, is inconceivable. Such a thing has not been done since the Chevalier Palin discovered that many of the Egyptian MSS. were nothing more than the originals of the Psalms of David expressed in ideagraphic characters, similar to those of the ancient Chinese. It will strike our readers that Mr. Forster, before venturing upon an application of his theory, should have made himself acquainted with the labours of his predecessors, and that he should have paid some attention to the fragments which we possess of the ancient language of Egypt. He, however, seems to have entirely neglected this portion of his task. It is true that he quotes the names of Young, Akerblad, and Champollion; but he nowhere speaks of Klaproth, Kosegarten, Seyffarth, Goulianoff, Rosellini, Birch, Brugsch, Leemans, and a hundred others; and we hear nothing of the Coptic language, and those who have written upon it, except that the said language is "merely a corrupt medley of Greek and Arabic upon a substratum of the old Arabic or Egyptian." This is absolutely false. No doubt the Coptic, as we at present possess it, is full of Greek and Arabic words; but if Mr. Forster had the slightest knowledge of its structure, and of that of any Semitic tongue, he would have seen that there is not the remotest connexion between the structure of the old Egyptian, as it has come down to us, and that of any of the Semitic family of languages.

The reverend decypherer seems to be utterly unaware of the well-known classification of languages into families, and that philologists have found some difficulty in ranging certain tongues under recognised heads; the Coptic, Armenian, and Basque being among the number. But when he talks of the "old Arabic or Egyptian" as one, we confess that we are lost in amazement at such immense ignorance.

We have not space here to enter into the discussion as to how far the hieroglyphics, especially the enchorial or demotic, are alphabetical in their nature; but we must protest against Mr. Forster's assertion, that, "with respect to the nature of the enchorial characters on the Rosetta stone, Young and Champollion were alike in error, and that Akerblad alone was right; for that eminent Swede lived maintaining, and died affirming, that the enchorial characters of Egypt were purely alphabetical." In the first place, Akerblad was not a Swede, but a Dane. He was one of the first who endeavoured to analyse the enchorial inscription on the pillar of Rosetta; and he, together with the illustrious orientalist Silvestre de Sacy, and Dr. Young, started with

the idea that the enchorial character was purely alphabetic. De Sacy soon abandoned the task of interpretation; and Dr. Young modified his opinion as to the alphabetic nature of the Rosetta inscription, when he found that it was impossible to read it into Coptic on that hypothesis. Akerblad, however, clung to his original notion, and endeavoured to turn some lines of the inscription of Rosetta into Coptic, literatim, but failed signally. Mr. Forster, whilst maintaining the accuracy of Akerblad's view, reads the enchorial writing into Arabic, so called, and ignores the Coptic language altogether, and then says that Åkerblad alone was right.

But we must give specimens of Mr. Forster's mode of rendering the hieroglyphics. There is a certain group of enchorial letters which Dr. Young read Zminis, and conjectured that it might mean Octavius, from the Coptic yeнn "eight." In his "Rudiments of an Egyptian Dictionary," the learned Doctor has presented four facsimiles of this group, taken from different papyri, and, though evidently identical, varying slightly from each other. Mr. Forster takes two of these, places them side by side, and then, by means of his own alphabet, reads them into his own Arabic; thus, Tsaman Tsaesar, Octavius Cæsar!!! The characters of the latter word, however, can only be approached to the name of Cæsar so nearly as Thazar. The first letter being Th, (by the Persians and Turks, however, pronounced S,) the second a z, and the third an r. But there is no doubt that the C in Cæsar was pronounced hard, and the Arabs always write it correctly

, Kísar or Kaisar. The word should be transcribed Thámin, if it be intended to mean word Pschent-which occurs in the Greek "eighth." The interpretation of the Egyptian portion of the Rosetta inscription thus, XENT, and, from the context, means a crown or regal head-dress-is amusing. As usual, Mr. Forster "consulted Golius." There being no P in finds Bishnat, "milii genus," a kind of millet: Arabic, he looks for Pschent under B, and this, as Mr. Forster aptly remarks, was interpreting the ignotum per ignotius. And he adds, I might have given up the point, had I not previously decyphered the enchorial equivalent for Pschent, viz. E, cwhar rârâ, “a shining jewel,” and found, on consulting Johnson, Millet defined by Miller "an oval shining seed." This definition led me to turn to the corresponding hieroglyphic, which I found rightly undermarked by Young as the Pschent or “insigne," when the truth, and the true form, simultaneously disclosed themselves; the Pschent proving to the ensign of plenty in the shape of "an oval shining be neither crown, nor head-dress, but a royal ornament, grain of millet, with its stamina and antheræ developed."

This is too much. Bishnat has about as much

analogy with Pschent as plum-cake with plumbago: moreover, there is hardly a shadow of doubt that the initial P is the Coptic masculine article; and Gawhar or Góhar (and not ewhar) "a jewel," is a Persian word, and not

Arabic.

One more extract, and we have done.

THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE.

Immediately upon ascertaining the species of the tree, I observed to the left of the name raman, in the horizontal inscription over it, a cluster of three bellshaped flowers; whose appearance being new to me, I asked a friend who happened to come in at the time, what flower they might be designed to represent. They are the flowers of the pomegranate tree," was the immediate answer. "They are exactly of this form, and hang thus in clusters of two or three bells." The proof was at once doubled, and by an independent testimony. Proceeding now with the examination, I discovered, in the second perpendicular column to the right of the picture of the Fall, as I could now safely pronounce it to be, the word raman, pomegranate, at the top, with a second cluster of three pomegranate flowers beside it, and two balls, one of them streaked, obviously representing the fruit, and a third cluster of three pomegranate flowers underneath. The surety now became trebly sure. But I was disappointed by the occurrence of an intermediate word and hieroglyphic, which seemed altogether to break the continuity of the sense. The word was or, mar or marmar: the hieroglyphic, a couchant dog or jackal. Marmar (like our English murmur) I knew signified angry; and might mean here growling or snarling, which would answer for the dog. It also, I was aware, signified marble: but this was nothing to the purpose. The dog, interposed between the pomegranate flowers, seemed quite to break the connection of the story depicted, whatever it might be. After pausing on the difficulty for a moment, it occurred to me to try whether, marmar (a word, I was aware, having few senses) might possibly bear some sense which, from not having occasion for it, I had overlooked. I opened Golius at the word, and to my astonishment reads marmar, Multi succi malum punicum, A juicy pomegranate. The mystery was at once cleared up: the growling jackal, instead of a break in the sense, was the determinative of the root

in its primary sense, Iratus fuit; its proper sense here being a juicy pomegranate. Upon shewing the phenomenon subsequently to an accomplished Orientalist, his remark was, "What precious senses Golins has preserved in his lexicon! I can assure you, you might read sixty Arabic authors through without once meeting the word in that sense."

We quite agree with Mr. Forster's accomplished friend, who evidently belongs to that class of men who are familiarly called dry dogs.

Thus, Mr. Forster, who is ignorant of Arabic, its idiom, its grammar, nay, even its alphabet-who knows no more of it than a little boy knows of Greek, when, after his first lesson in the alphabet, he has his diatesseron and his Donnegan put into his hand-this utterly uninformed and unmistakeably ignorant Mr. Forster actually undertakes, from his intimate knowledge of the genius of the Arabic, to reproduce an aboriginal Arabic, long since

lost to all other except his critical pen. What would our readers-who are perhaps accustomed to smile as they hear Irishmen and Americans declare that they alone speak English-what would they think if they heard a Frenchman, whom they knew to be incapable of asking his way from Oxford-street to the Bank, solemnly undertaking to prove, by means of the inscriptions he read at the corners of the streets, that all our received notions of the language of Chaucer are wrong; and that Chaucer wrote an entirely different English, whereof he (the Frenchman) had, by his intimate knowledge of the English language, obtained the key? An English muffin-boy would laugh at our Frenchman; but, doubtless, some of his own countrymen, knowing even less of English than he does, would admire him as a prodigy of learning. So, perhaps, will crowds of the gaping vulgar look upon the unknown characters wherewith Mr. Forster has besmeared his pages, and wonder gravely that one small head can carry all that Mr. Forster knows. In the cause of learning and of morality (we do not say of Christianity, because that which is divine is incapable of being sullied by human dross) we think it necessary to say, in the ears of these ignorant extatics, that they do right to do worship to this "most learned Pundit;" for in him they do reverence to ignorance in the concrete, and they bow before an idol kindred to themselves: they receive, with respectful awe, strange stories of the languages of the East from the lips of a man who might write all he really knows of Oriental literature in a clear character, and with decent margin, upon the nails of his ten fingers.

Mr.Pococke is another smatterer with a theory. His is a thick volume, whereof the intention is, to prove that the Greeks were emigrants from India, and that their mythology is but a perversion of historic facts. The Centaurs were not mythical: they were nothing more than Kandhaurs, or emigrants from Kandahar, (which last word is derived from two roots, the one signifying a country, and the other being identical with "the far-famed Hurrah of our native country, and the warcry of our forefather the Rajpoot of Britain, for he was long the denizen of this island, and his shout was Haro! Haro!") Did Mr. Pococke ever hear of the old Norman laws, and of the clamor de Haro? If not, we recommend him a trip to Jersey, where he will find the old Norman invocation still in full force. But this by the way. The Lapitha were not mythical, but a real people of Thibet, who, it seems, call themselves L'hopatai. The Athenians were not, as they themselves boasted, indigenous auroxoves-sprung from their own very earth-Autochthons: they were, as Mr.

Pococke is quite sure, Attacthans; that is, people of Attac-land: and what land does the reader suppose Attac-land was? Not barren Attica, famed for horses, heroes, and demagogues. Attac-land was a little province near Cabul, and the real aboriginal Athenians were the white-robed, scantily-clad, Asiatics, who lately shot down our countrymen in the Khyber pass. The Attic symbol of a grasshopper was not, as Aristophanes certainly thought, originally intended to express their indigenous descent. Mr. Pococke at once

explodes so vulgar an error.

This ingenious people, who compared themselves to Tettiges, or grasshoppers, could they have referred to the original cradle of their race, would have discovered that, while the northern section of their tribe dwelt on the Attac, adjoining the magnificent valley of Cashmir, with whose princes their tribe was connected by policy and domestic alliances, and whose lineage long ruled over the brilliant Athenians, by far the greater part of that primitive community, whose descendants raised the glory of the Attic flag above all the maritime powers of Hellas, dwelt in a position eminently befitting their subsequent naval renown. They were the "people of Tatta," or "Tettaikes."

So of all the other Grecian states. They all came from the northern parts of India, and the mythology of the polished Grecks was but the distorted traditions of distant Indian tribes.

We thus at once arrive at a satisfactory solution of the fable of Castor and Pollux, when we are told that Castwar and Balik were the people of Cashmir and the people of Balk, and that both sprang from Ladakh, or Leda. Mr. Pococke does not explain the swan, yet he was a necessary party to the completion of the fable.

Dean Swift had investigated this same myth before Mr. Pococke brought his powerful intellect to bear upon it. "Leda," says that great etymologist-we mean the Dean-"was the mother of Castor and Pollux, whom Jupiter embracing in the shape of a swan, she laid a couple of eggs, and was therefore called Laid a, or Leda." Without pledging ourselves to go to the stake for either theory, we confess that of the two we prefer that of the dignitary of our Church.

We are glad at least to have some point whereon we can agree. The marvellousness and the correctness of the preservation of this ancient language are doubtless quite upon a par. There is one thing, however, still more marvellous, and that is its entire loss by the Greeks. The Indians who stayed at home have retained it so uncorrupted that Mr. Pococke can write history by its syllables at a distance of four or five thousand years: the Indians who came away, and became Greeks, lost it so entirely, that at the end of one thousand years there was not a word of it left in their language. Perhaps, however, at the end

of another thousand years, we English shall be talking the exact vernacular of the time of Chaucer, and the citizens of the United States will be conversing only in pure Mohawk.

Thanks to Mr. Pococke's fortunate discovery, that gentleman is no longer puzzled with "myths;" and he can, and has done so, draw a map of the exact route which the early Grecians adopted in their passage from the old Attac to the new. It is as clear and welldefined as the way from Old York to New York.

Phil-ippos was not a lover of horses, as the usual Greek derivation imports, but the Bhilipos, or Bhil-Prince. It seems unaccountably to have escaped Mr. Pococke's observation, that, in addition to our obligation in the matter are indebted for an of our "Hurrah," we endearing diminutive in our own mother tongue to the same august source. For the familiar abbreviation of William we have direct authority in the historic fact that "these same Bhils-that is the Bhil-Brahmins-planted the oracle of Hamman in the deserts of Africa, and founded there the city of the Bhils."

Mr. Pococke is silent as to the name of Alexander, although he stands up stoutly for the Macedonian's right to the title of Jupiter Ammon. Might we hint to our learned author that he could easily supply this deficiency, by recourse to that little tract upon the antiquity of the English tongue from which we have already quoted? He will find therein a derivation of Alexander quite as natural as that he has assigned for the name of Alexan

der's father.

When the Greeks wrote Kakos they fancied they meant a bad man. They really but repeated the Brahminic for Cow-killer "Goghos."* That the Spartans were named after "Sopur," a small town in Cashmir, and were thence called S'poortans, we could hear with equanimity, although we may not go so far as to say with Mr. Pococke, that "the plain fact is evident;" but we may be permitted, perhaps, in the interest of Lycurgus, Leonidas, and Agis, to protest against the statement, that as "Lacadai-men' they formed a perpetual

We would not rashly accuse so learned an author of plagiarism, but we have found a passage in "the Antiquity of the English tongue so very parallel to this, that we cannot forbear quoting it. The very reverend etymologist discourses thus: "Achilles was the most valiant of Grecians. This hero was of a restless, unquiet nature, never giving himself any repose either in peace or war; and therefore, as Guy of Warwick was called a KILL-COW, and another terrible man a Kill-devil, so this general was called A-KILL-EASE, or destroyer of ease, and at length, by corruption, Achilles." If this is not as good a case for Warwickshire as Mr. Pococke makes for Affghanistan, we renounce all claim to skill in etymology.

subject of banter to their more polished neighbours of the south." Whenever we may in future times be startled with Swift's derivation of the name of Mars, or be tempted to dissent from his etymology of Ajax, we shall think of the Lacadai-men of Mr. Pococke, and humble ourselves before the Dean.

As to the Romans, our author is clear that they came from Oude. Rama was the patriarch of the children of the sun, while Bud'ha was the great head of the lunatic worshippers. The disciples of Rama became the Romani of Italy, just as the more northern tribe of Toorooschi became Etruscans, and the Hooschis became Oscans.

Seeing that the word Mahomet is written and pronounced differently in ten English equivalents, and that every English traveller in the East thinks his originality will be doubted unless he bring back a new spelling for Arabic, Coptic, Persian, or Hindú expletives, one might have expected to find even so bold an explorer as Mr. Pococke treading cautiously over such treacherous and shifty ground, and speaking with some reservation of air-drawn resemblances to unwritten dialects, which he supposes might have been spoken in an age so distant as to have faded into fable when Herodotus wrote. Not at all he gives you the latitude and longitude of Tartarus, and is ready to set out thither to-morrow. He scorns the imputation that he is indebted to Indo-classical affinities, and he smiles at the idea of his being aided by etymology. No; all that Mr. Pococke writes is "HISTORY-history as marvellously as it is correctly preserved," What Muir, and Grote, and Thelwall, and ten thousand others have abandoned in despair, Pococke explains at once-not by an hypothesis, not by a probable argument, but simply by recounting its history. Mr. Pococke should go out to Nimroud, and help Colonel Rawlinson. That enterprising conjecturer is getting into some discredit just now by his great versatility in correcting his translations when they happen to turn out to be obviously absurd. The Colonel, after making a present of a very handsome inscription to Sardanapalus, has recently rather churlishly taken it away from that monarch, and gives it to Jehu. Now if Mr. Pococke is half the man we take him to be, he will commit no such faults of indecision. Having learnt a little Cherookee, he will probably find out that that intelligent tribe place their arrow-heads in a different position, according as their intention may be to fight or to run away, to shoot, or to clean out their pipes with them. He will discover, also,

the Cherookce equivalents for those intentions, whence it will immediately follow, that arrowheads, in particular positions, express particular corresponding meanings. The rest will be easy. The only difficulty will be, that as, in Mr. Pococke's present volume, it is left doubtful, at least to the reader, whether the Peruvians were descended from the Affghans, or the Affghans from the Peruvians, so, from his arrowhead interpretations, a doubt may arise whether Sardanapalus was a Cherookee, or the Cherookees were descendants of Sardanapalus.

Mr. Grote, as we might well expect, is, in the eyes of Mr. Pococke, an exceedingly slow person. His assertions "rest," says Mr. P., "on that feeling which, thirty years since, would have classed the railway locomotive, and its glowing eye of night, with the eye of the Cyclops." "The case," our author adds, "may be stated as follows:-THE PICTURE IS INDIAN, THE CURTAIN IS GRECIAN, AND THAT CURTAIN is NOW WITHDRAWN."

If truth, like widows, were best wooed by impudence, Mr. Pococke would be the man to win her.

It may be thought that we have dwelt too long on a book so palpably absurd; but the Vallancey school of etymologists seems to be coming into vogue again, and we deem it our bounden duty to lose no opportunity of exposing it. Not long since, a M. Gibelin published in Pondicherry a comparative view of the laws of the Hindús, of Athens, and of Rome, so completely disfigured by fantastic derivations from the Sanskrit, that an otherwise valuable book becomes actually painful in the perusal. He employs the same means as Mr. Pococke, but arrives at somewhat different results, e. g. the Centaurs are Kentura "homme et cheval;" Sparta and the Spartans, Sparddha, Sparddhata, "les rivaux, les émules;" the Oscans, Osha, "les guerriers du feu ;" and Rome-what do our readers think to be the origin of the word Rome? Let us hear Gibelin Pandita. "Il ne faut pas oublier, enfin, que le nom de Rome, vient également du Sanscrit Roma, eau, parce qu'elle était bâtie aux bords du Tibre; d'ou Romulus lui même tira son nom, Roma-la, qui donne l'eau, à cause de l'asile qu'il avait ouvert."

But enough, and more than enough, of such nonsense. The etymologies of Pococke and Gibelin may go down to the waste-paper basket hand in hand. Still, however, we must claim for our countryman the palm of impudence. The Frenchman, with singular modesty, did not dedicate his lucubrations to Eugène Burnouf.

THE higher society advances in civilization the more artificial does its state become. This is so obvious an aphorism, that few will be prepared to question its truth. Still there can be no valid reason why a corollary on the above proposition should be equally susceptible of demonstration. It is, that the character of all the various articles by which life is sustained is rendered more and more artificial in proportion to the increased civilization and demands of the community. It would almost seem as though an infinite number of evil influences were ever at work amongst us, engaged in the earnest endeavour to turn to a pernicious purpose each new discovery in art, or in perverting the utility of every gift of Nature or of Science to man. Were it not for the grave consequences that hence ensue, the subject upon which we are about to touch would not have occupied our attention, inasmuch as it comes not necessarily within our ordinary scope. We are simply impelled to adopt our present course from a desire to award a tribute of merit, to give extended publicity, to the exertions of an able contemporary, and to awaken the public to a sense of the danger they incur from the infamous machinations of those in whose integrity they have hitherto been accustomed to confide.

The revelations, indeed, that have of late been made, and that are daily being dragged reluctantly to light, unquestionably disclose so widely extended a system of fraud, so organized a conspiracy against the health and lives of our fellow-subjects, that we should be wanting in an essential duty did we hesitate to denounce in the loudest terms of reprobation the iniquities to which we allude. Without further preface, then, we may state, that some months ago the "Lancet" appointed a body of scientific gentlemen, entitled an "Analytical Sanitary Commission," who were deputed to examine with the test-tube and the microscope numerous specimens of all liquid or solid articles vended for

human food.

Boards of Health and Sewer Commissioners already presided over mephitic gases, graveolent drains, fœtid streams, and all the varied supplies of impure water that are doled to the unhappy Londoner; but as yet, with the single exception of an officer appointed to examine and condemn meat and fish unfit for sale, no check whatever existed to limit the amount of disease and death engendered by the systematic and general adulteration of almost every article of food or drink. The thanks of the country

*Lancet, 1851-52. The Analytical Sanitary Commission.

are therefore due to those who, unaided from the public purse, and notwithstanding the hostility they incurred, have chivalrously stepped forward, bravely and disinterestedly, to do battle against the secret foes of the public.

Armed with those unerring powers and guided by that light which enable us to track the devious footsteps of crime, whatever guise it may assume, no ingenuity could baffle, no duplicity elude, their scrutiny.

At the same time that we applaud the "Lancet" for its labours, we cannot conceal our disgust at the enormous amount of immorality, and the utter lack of principle, disclosed among what are conventionally termed the "respecta ble" middle classes." Our readers will share with us these sentiments of indignation when they learn to what an extent their health has been assailed, and what irreparable injuries their constitutions, in too many instances, must have sustained.

They will almost be disposed to conclude that the bulk of the metropolitan retail tradesmen who deal in such goods as we have adverted to, are little better than a set of unprincipled rogues, utterly regardless of the frightful mischief they occasion to others, so long as they increase their own nefarious gains.

Scarcely prepared for the astounding disclosures of the "Lancet," we have ourselves taken the trouble to follow up those researches, in too many cases, we regret to say, with almost identical results; while in others we have been enabled to establish even still stronger cases against divers bakers, grocers, and publicans. So universal, indeed, is the depravity of these trades, that society would probably sustain no loss were the majority of them to undergo immediate expatriation. And yet it is from materials such as these that parochial officers are formed and common juries selected. Need we wonder any longer at the iniquities constantly perpetrated by both these denominations of

officials?