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system which his precursor applied to the ancient ones alone, but he has been repaid with complete success.

66

Lydie, ou les Marriages Manqués, Conte Moral."-Lydia, or Marriage Disappointments, a moral tale, by Madame J. SIMONS CONDEILLE, author of Catherine, ou la Belle Fermiere. Paris, 2 vols. 12mo.

Lydia de St. Hilaire, was young and charming, and a mother who idolised her, bad, of course, completely spoiled her. On her first leaving the domestic asylum where a fond parent resided, she repaired to the Castle of Mordeck, inhabited by her aunt. This lady had assembled around her a select society, and the young Alphonso de Bellegarde became amorous of our heroine, at the very first sight of her! The relations charmed with the prospect of a match so suitable for both parties, in every point of view, already began to arrange every thing for the intended marriage, when Adhemar de Mulsam, took offence at what was about to be done. This personage, we are told, was net in love with Lydia; no, he loved himself too well for this, and, as the fair author observes with some humour, such an event would have been considered by him as an infidelity! But he was incited by the glory of achieving so great a conquest, and interest perhaps, in addition to this, made him resolve to recur to all the seductive arts in his power.

An absence of eight days, on the part of Alphonso, left sufficient time for Adhemar, to make some progress in the affections of Lydia; billets, sighs, feigned absence of mind, were all employed by turns. He thus, at length, found means

to draw her into a solitary place, on purpose to give to their interview, all the appearance of an assignation: he, in short, seized this opportunity to ruin her reputation, and accident was not a little favourable to his projects, by sending old Bellegarde and his son thither, in consequence of her screams, after which they immediately took their departure.

She

But an unhappy event unmasked Adhemar in the midst of his triumphs, for a fire having consumed the castle of Mordyk, and together with it a large portion of the fortune of Lydia, he fled from the scene of ruin like a coward, and a paltroon. The life of Lydia was on this occasion saved by Valmont, the friend of her father, a man at once amia ble, virtuous, and rich; and who cultivated painting from his love of the art. Gratitude attached her to him, who had consecrated his fortune to repair the losses of her parent; but her character, which was both imperious and irregular, soon invited new misfortunes. thought that the eagerness of her new lover to obtain her hand, was nothing more than an anticipated air of authority, and soon broke off the negociation for a marriage. Soon after this, M. de Préval, a gentleman whom she believed to love her, and in favour of whom she deigned to pronounce, declined the connexion, and Lydia now ready to die in conse quence of an illness occasioned by chagrin, lost all her beauty. On this in her turn, she adores Valmont, who, on the other hand, refuses to espouse her, and tells her that he will content himself with remaining the most zealous of her friends.

N.B. The total Interruption of Communication with GERMANY, renders it im practicable to continue, for the present, our Retrospect of German Literature.

GENERAL

art itself, is the sole end and aim of my labours, I shall conclude with remarking, that it is a great misfortune when an ir resistible bias towards novelty, produces an estrangement from true philosophy, which can alone restrain any science within its just and proper limits."

"Mithridate, ou Histoire de Science Generale des Langues," &c. Mithridates, or a History of the General Science of Languages, with the Lord's Prayer, in nearly five hundred different idioms. The author, J. C. ADELUNG; the editor, Doctor JEAN SEVERIN VATER, professor in, and librarian to, the University of Halle. Berlin, 1 vol. in 8vo. Part II.

moir on the Sclavonic idiom, from the Abbé Dobrowsky; another on the Sclavonic-Germanic idiom by the late M. Henning, and a third for the Hungarian, by professor Remi.

In Asia, there are no fewer than one hundred and sixty languages, or principal dialects, while the present volume assigns only about fifty to all Europe, without comprehending the Turkish, which is considered as an eastern tongue. These fifth idioms are all supposed to be sprung from six, viz.

1. The Baske.
2. The Celtic.
3. The German.

4. The Greek or Thracian.
5. The Sclavonian.
And 6. The Finnick.

There are two languages, however, which the editor has been unable to class, viz. those of the Albanians and Epirots, the origin of which is not well known.

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A general knowledge of languages is supposed to comprehend the examination of the origin and nature of all the known idioms, together with their classification, the history, and criticisin, of their written characters, their lexicons, and their grammars. This science, which is calculated to throw great light on the annals As to the Hungarian, it is pronounced of the human race, is not to be found in to be composed of the Finnick, Sclavoany of our Encyclopædias, and has nian, Tartar, Turkish, German, Wogoul, scarcely begun to be cultivated at all, in Wotiac, Tchouwasse, Ostiac, Permic, its collective capacity. Of the writers Sirjanic, Mordouanic, Tcheremisse, Peron the continent, Signor Hewaz, a Spa- sian, and Arabian, languages. Scaliger, niard, was the first who obtained any in his "Diatriba de linguis Europæis,' laurels in this career, and he was prc- reckons up eleven mother languages in ceded by Count de Gebelin, who did not Europe, which are five more than Messrs. acquire any reputation on the occasion. Adelung and Vater are here disposed to After these followed the Germans, who allow of; he however counts the Turkish have given a name to the study, (Allge- as one, and also includes the Latin, meine Sprachenkunde,) and possess what Irish, and Erse, as so many others, is termed a linguistical journal. M. which at present, the Latin is considered Adelung, in contemplation of the great to be a branch of the Greek, and benc fits to he derived from such a source, the Erse and Irish pass generally for began his Mithridates; M. Vater has remnants of the Celtic, more or less continued it, while M. de Murr has pub mixed. lished the prospectus of a Library of Languages, which is eagerly looked for by the learned.

The first volume of Adelung's works treats of the languages of Asia, particulaily the Chinese, to which he has dedicated much time and attention. On his death, professor Vater, one of the most celebrated philologists of Europe, and already advantageously known by his excellent Arabian, Hebrew, and Russian, grammars, as well as by a manual of general grammar, and a German translation of the grammar of M. Silvestre de Lacy, and undertook the continuation, and has now published the second volnine, which is consecrated to the languages of Europe. He tells us in his Preface, that he has strictly followed the plan, the method, and the ideas, of his predecessor, who had obtained a meDIONTHLY MAG. No. 215,

All the six principal languages of Europe, alluded to above, came successively from Asia, with the various tribes who spoke them. The descendants of these, at this day, constitute the com mon population of that portion of the world, and the fifty idioms are nothing more than the remains of the six original languages. All of these idioms possess common roots, which sometimes manifest those mixtures arising out of wars, conquests, alliances, different kinds of commerce, and sometimes the Asiatic origin of nations, who have once spoken, or do now speak, the idioms in question.

The first people known in Europe were the Iberians or Cantabrians, who established themselves in the south of Gaul, in a portion of Italy, and parti cularly in a portion of the two Spains. The Basque, which is a mixture of Latin 4T

and

and German, contains the remains of the Iberian language. Immediately after the Iberians, appeared the Celts, a nation in all probability more numerous, which occupied the right bank of the Danube, the north of Italy, Gaul, the British Isles, and a portion of Spain. From their language have sprung the two Celtic dialects, still spoken at this very day, the first in Ireland, and the second in the mountains of Scotland. Adelung seizes this opportunity to give a catalogue of the real Celtic words, and dedicates no fewer than thirty eight pages to his enquiries into the originality of the poems of Ossian, which he pronounces to be very modern. He next treats of the Welch and Cornish tongues, and of the Bas-Breton, which he considers as merely two dialects of the same language. These he does not think, strictly speaking, to have been Celtic; they are, according to him, two remarkable remnants of the Belgic, or Kimri, an idiom which he considers as a mixture of the Celtic and German, surcharged with Latin.

Next after the Celts, come the Germans, more especially in the north of Europe; then, in the south, the Thracians, fathers of the Greeks; finally, in the east and the north, the Slavi; these, together with the Fins, appear to have been the last who arrived in that portion of the world, where France and Russia are now the chief dominant powers. Of the German language, three principal dialects remain:-1. The teutonic, subdivided into the superior, interior, and middle. Out of the mixture of the three, the second of which possesses five different branches, in the time of Luther and his first disciples, arose a common idiom called High German, because the superior or upper dominates; this is doubt less a rich idiom, but not intirely fixed, although very much cultivated in the north of Europe, and greatly perfected during the latter moiety of the last century.

2. The Germanic-Scandinavian, which has four branches, the Danish, the Norwegian, the Icelandic, and the Swedish.

And 3. The English, a prodigious mixture, in which the German predomi

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will continue to be cultivated so long as the human race shall be preserved from barbarity and destruction.”

Adelung shows that the Thracian language prevailed both in Asia-Minor and Europe, in the east and the south. He makes the ancient Greek and its various dialects, to spring from it, and finally the modern Greek of our own times. From the Greek and a Celtic dialect, bat chiefly from the Greek alone, proceeded the Latin; and from the Latin, whether pure or corrupted, proceeded the Italian, the Spanish, and the Portuguese. The French, according to him, is a mixture of the Celtic, German, &c. " but has hecame, by its elegance and clearness, by its celebrated works in eloquence and poetry, as well as by its original books in all sciences, still more than, by the mi. litary prowess, and superior policy of the nation, the universal language of modern Europe."

The eastern Sclavonie produced the Russian, the Illyrian, the Croatian, &c. The Western Sclavonic has four branches, the Polish, Bohemian, Servian, and Nor thern Windic. The Walachian also comes from the Sclavonic, but is greatly mixed with bad Latin; next comes the Finnick language, which is mother of the Findlandish, the Laponic, the Esthonian, and the Livonian. These, with the Hun garian and the Albaneses, are the idioms treated of in the second volume of Mithridates, and the whole will be rendered complete by means of a third, which is now in the press. This is to contain researches into the languages of Africa as well as of America, and M. de Murr, of Wirtemburgh, and M. de Humboldt, have both furnished the continuator with their assistance upon this occasion.

MISCELLANEOUS.

"Europe en Petit."-Europe in Miniature: being a collection of medals of the middle ages, and appertaining to all parts of Europe; by the proprietor JEAN JEOFFERY LIPSIUS, inspector of the Gallery of Antiquities appertaining to his majesty the king of Saxony.

The editor has declined to follow the system of Medai, and those who take him for their model, but adopted that followed by Eckhel, in his Catalogue of the Cabinet of Medals at Vienna, as well as in his Doctrina Nummorum Veterum; that is to say, the geographical order. Lipsius bas doubtless encountered a va riety of difficulties in the classification of modern medals, in conformity to a

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system which his precursor applied to the ancient ones alone, but he has been repaid with complete success.

"Lydie, ou les Marriages Manqués, Conte Moral."—Lydia, or Marriage Disappointments, a moral tale, by Madame J. SIMONS CONDEILLE, author of Catherine, ou la Belle Fermiere. Paris, 2 vols. 12mo.

Lydia de St. Hilaire, was young and charming, and a mother who idolised her, bad, of course, completely spoiled her. On her first leaving the domestic asylum where a fond parent resided, she repaired to the Castle of Mordeck, inhabited by her aunt. This lady had assembled around her a select society, and the young Alphonso de Bellegarde became amorous of our heroine, at the very first sight of her! The relations charmed with the prospect of a match so suitable for both parties, in every point of view, already began to arrange every thing for the intended marriage, when Adhemar de Mulsam, took offence at what was about to be done. This personage, we are told, was not in love with Lydia; no, he loved himself too well for this, and, as the fair author observes with some humour, such an event would have been considered by him as an infidelity! But he was incited by the glory of achieving so great a conquest, and interest perhaps, in addition to this, made him resolve to recur to all the seductive arts in his power.

An absence of eight days, on the part of Alphonso, left sufficient time for Adhemar, to make some progress in the affections of Lydia; billets, sighs, feigned absence of mind, were all employed by turns. He thus, at length, found means

to draw her into a solitary place, on
purpose to give to their interview, all the
appearance of an assignation: -he, in
short, seized this opportunity to ruin her
reputation, and accident was not a little
favourable to his projects, by sending
old Bellegarde and his son thither, in
consequence of her screams, after which
they immediately took their departure.

She

But an unhappy event unmasked Adhemar in the midst of his triumphs, for a fire having consumed the castle of Mordyk, and together with it a large portion of the fortune of Lydia, he fled from the scene of ruin like a coward, and a paltroon. The life of Lydia was on this occasion saved by Valmont, the friend of her father, a man at once amiable, virtuous, and rich; and who cultivated painting from his love of the art. Gratitude attached her to him, who had consecrated his fortune to repair the losses of her parent; but her character, which was both imperious and irregular, soon invited new misfortunes. thought that the eagerness of her new lover to obtain her hand, was nothing more than an anticipated air of authority, and soon broke off the negociation for a marriage. Soon after this, M. de Préval, a gentleman whom she believed to love her, and in favour of whom she deigned to pronounce, declined the connexion, and Lydia now ready to die in conse quence of an illness occasioned by chug rin, lost all her beauty. On this in her turn, she adores Valmont, who, on the other hand, refuses to espouse her, and tells her that he will content himself with remaining the most zealous of her friends.

N.B. The total Interruption of Communication with GERMANY, renders it im practicable to continue, for the present, our Retrospect of German Literature.

GENERAL

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