IV.

ONCE or twice a year we are startled by the publication of books and pamphlets recommending the adoption of some universal language. In these periodical addresses to an ungrateful world, nations are admonished to agree upon a common idiom, which shall be spoken from pole to. pole, and be equally intelligible in London, Berlin, and Timbuctoo. The grand reform once effected, nations, we are assured by the confident authors, will be speedily connected by the ties of universal brotherhood. As they will perfectly comprehend eachother, they will find it easy to appreciate their mutual qualities, and settle their lingering feuds. The progress of knowledge, too, will be infinitely promoted by there being only one literature equally accessible to all. As to trade, it is clear that it must take an altogether new departure so soon as the red crocodile-hunter on the banks of the Amazon can be daily advised by his correspondent in Cheapside as to the exact article wanted in the market.

To accelerate the realisation of these glowing prophecies, the advocates of linguistic unity either propose the extension of some existing idiom to all

the various races of the universe, or else are good enough to invent for the common benefit a new tongue, more simple, and therefore more perfect in their estimation, than any they know. I remember reading a Servian pamphlet several years ago, in which the desired simplicity was actually sought to be attained by reducing every word to a number, and declining and conjugating by appended numerals. No Chinese memory would have been equal to the formidable task of retaining the signification of these cyphered hieroglyphics. If it takes a mandarin ten years to learn to read and to write the literary idiom of his land, twenty must have been consumed in the acquisition of the Servian pasigraphy which was to have developed international relations. So we may congratulate ourselves upon its not having been adopted, except by the inventor.

Supposing, however, the innovation could be carried through, its possible effects should not be overrated. They would be infinitely less than their advocates fancy. Pasigraphs and pasilalists are wont to start on the supposition that all languages express the same ideas, and that the only discrepancy between them consists in that they embody their otherwise identical notions in different sounds. The English word 'friend' and the Russian word 'priyátel,' for instance, are assumed to mean exactly the same thing; their difference being sur

mised to be limited to the fact that the one is sounded 'friend,' the other 'priyátel.' Yet nothing could be more erroneous than this hypothesis.

Words mean what nations put into them, and the thoughts of nations differing upon most subjects, the significations of their words equally clash. The Russian conception of friendship' varying from the English, the word 'priyátel,' though it may be the closest approach to the English 'friend' the Russian dictionary supplies, should not be mistaken as being identical with the term which it is of necessity used to render. Names of ordinary objects excepted, it is the same with most words of the dictionary. As a rule, every language lends to every idea a particular shade, a special nuance, which constitutes the national peculiarity of its verbal representative, and causes it to diverge from similar notions in other tongues. The greater the importance a language attaches to an idea, the more carefully, the more specifically will it mould the signification of the words conveying the same; the more indifferent a notion appears, the more general, the more vague will be its expression.

The introduction of universal language, therefore, would be far from ensuring uniformity of thought. Although the sounds might be the same, meanings would be speedily varied according to the idiosyncrasies of the individual races. Many words would be dropped by many races, not being needed

or understood by them; nearly all other vocables would have to undergo more or less marked changes of signification before they could convey what each single people might think fit to put into them. It is, perhaps, not too much to say that mutual unintelligibility would be actually augmented by the success of the pasilaletic scheme. When all nations use the same dictionary, but each in a different sense, misunderstandings are more likely to arise than under existing arrangements, when discrepancy of meaning is marked by diversity of words.

There is, however, no fear that existing languages will speedily die out. Though languages are certainly diminishing in number, the survivors gain additional strength from swallowing up the inheritance of the defunct. The weaker die out; the stronger add to the number of their subjects by conquering the orphaned vassals of those that are dead and gone. For the present, then, the knowledge of the national diversity of significations is still facilitated by the palpable disparity of vocables.

In acquiring Russian and Polish more particularly, the strange, though not at all unharmonious, sounds lead us to expect novel ideas. The anticipation is certainly not disappointed by the analysis of significations. The dissection of a few Slavic words bearing upon the notion of freedom will, I hope, prove that the prevailing difference of national