while he considers the Semitic languages as standing on the same line with the Sanskritic, in consequence of their decided tendency towards the system of inflexional forms.

We must now allow M. Bunsen to describe in his own terms the existing phase of philological research; to which we will subjoin his account of the latest results arising from the application of his principles to the meagre fragments, which are all that have hitherto been revealed, of the Etruscan tongue:

Whatever,' he says, 'has been successfully achieved in behalf of linguistic science, has been obtained by the critical method of philological analysis. While valuing all materials for what they are worth, I do not think that crude glossaries of languages not understood are proper materials for comparative ethnology; and I consider all conjectures and systems built upon such materials, as below scientific consideration. It is also, I think, now more generally acknowledged, and, indeed, proved by incontestable facts, that all critical philological results must remain incomplete until they become historical. All philology must end in history; but the historical results of those linguistic researches are infinitely greater than many learned historians imagine. If we examine the last of these inquiries, we shall find that those only which belong to what may be termed centrical ethnology, based upon comparative philology, have furnished any conclusive result. Almost all languages of nations which have a history and a literature, have been linguistically traced to Central Asia; and the only natural method which can ensure real progress, appears to be to increase this stock, by confronting progressively isolated phenomena with the now historical centre. But this must be done methodically. Whenever in Asia, in Europe, in Africa, or elsewhere, we find family groups of languages, we must, first of all, try to define the respective position of each member, or relation to the other portions of the same family. We shall then have to ascertain methodically the relative position of the different families. This relative position is a double one. First, that of the members among each other. Thus we shall gradually obtain African, American and Polynesian groups, organically arranged, and prepared for being elevated into the sphere of universal history. To find the proper place for each group in the history of tongues, is the second aim of this comparative examination. In order to obtain the desired results for both purposes, a twofold critical operation is required. First, a grammatical analysis of every single language, based upon native composition and speech. The second operation will be, to gather round a common centre all such languages as, by their grammar and construction, undeniably belong to oue and the same family, and to endeavour to discover which of its branches exhibits the idiom in its greatest purity and perfection. The most ancient and best preserved must be placed at the head, as the representative of the family in the history of mankind. It is only when we have reached this point, that we may knock at the door of universal history, and demand admission for the hitherto isolated family into the historical stock.'-Vol. i. pp. 61-63.

In the second chapter, the last results of the Italic researches, as far as they affect the Etruscan problem, are given in the following terms:

'Niebuhr's historical criticism had put an end to a host of groundless ad unscientific conjectures and dreams respecting the languages of primi

tive Italy, and cleared the ground for solid linguistic research. For, as linguistic research is blind without philology, so is philology without history. Niebuhr's general tendency in language was distinction; and what he found to be essentially heterogeneous was likely to appear to him autochthonic, and original from the beginning. This was the case with the Etruscan. Disgusted with the unscrupulous and rambling method of Lanzi and his followers, who had ransacked the Greek dictionary, and drawn largely upon their own imaginations, and the credulity of their readers, in order to make the Etruscan language what its alphabet evidently is, an archaic form of the Hellenic, Niebuhr maintained that the Etruscan was a purely barbarous language; that it is wholly distinct from the other more or less Latinising tongues of Italy Proper, of the Apennines, and even of the Alps; that the ruling nations of Etruria came from the North; and that the roots of the language must be looked for in Rætia. This verdict of Niebuhr, so far from being shaken, is confirmed by all the serious and connected philological or historical researches which have been since instituted on the subject.

'It was, of course, this language which attracted, from the first appearance of Niebuhr's "Roman History," the united efforts of philologers and linguists. Ottfried Müller, in his truly learned work, "Die Etrusker," (1828), gave the first critical outlines of the grammar, as well as of the alphabet. In the lectures delivered by me at the Archæological Institute at Rome, I advanced the theory I still maintain, that the Etruscan bears strong marks of being a mixed language, from the circumstance of such grammatical forms as have been ascertained being evidently analogous to what we know of Indo-Germanic flexions; whereas the greater part of the words which occur in the inscriptions prove most provokingly heterogeneous. On the other hand, the Tyrrhenic glosses in Hesychius (if they be of any value), and the inscription found in 1836 at Agylla, under the ruins of Etruscan Cære, and illustrated by Lepsius, contain words much more akin to the Græco-Latin stock. I do not think that the abundance of vowels can be accounted for by the assumption that this, and some similar inscriptions, represent a more ancient period. Until we possess bilinguar inscriptions of some extent, we shall be unable to interpret them; but we cannot be mistaken as to their sounding less barbarous, or more like Greek or Latin, than the others. If, then, we have in the Etruscan a Græco-Latinising grammar, and a mixed vocabulary, and apply to these phenomena the general theory of mixed language, it does not follow that the barbarous lexicographical elements are entirely un-Indo-Germanic; for Celtic, though decidedly barbarous, still forms a part of that family. But it does follow, from the analogy of all we know, that the groundwork of the language is indicated by the grammar, the indestructible badge of near kinship; and that, in its origin, the Etruscan was much more akin to Greek and Latin, and the other Italic languages, than that element, which forms in the monuments, (that of Agylla and some smaller ones excepted,) the predominant part of the vocabulary. A mixed language of this kind would be the natural consequence of a non-Italic tribe having taken possession of Tyrrhenia, or the Mediterranean part of Central Italy, subdued the Italic indigenous population, and finally adopted their language, as the Norman conquerors did that of the Saxons, or the Arabs that of Persia. The coincidence of this result of an independent linguistic research, with Niebuhr's demonstration of the Northern (Rætian) origin of the Etruscans, attested by inscriptions found in an uninterrupted line, from that Alpine land and the Tyrol down to Tarquinii, appeared to me remarkable; the two researches seem mutually to confirm each other. The intrinsic nature of the language, as we find it in the monuments, leads also to the conclusion that the Greek words were a foreign element, received, but ▾ NO. LXXXVI.-N.S.

H H

understood. Making every allowance for a different system of vocalisation, such changes as

Pultuke from Polynikes, Akhmiem from Agamemnʊn,

are unmistakeably barbarous, and betray an absolute ignorance of the elements of which the Greek name is composed.

Thus atrium may have been inorganically formed from pov. But as to haruspex, which is also said to be an Etruscan word, we shall see below 1 that it is thoroughly Latin, and has its Indo-Germanic root; it may, for all that, have been Etruscan, but it is not a corruption of iepooкÓTOS. Both also may have been words of the conquered Helleno-Italic population of Etruria. Indeed, vorsus, " a square of one hundred feet," is quoted as being both Tuscan and Umbrian; and it is admitted that the Umbrians originally occupied Tyrrhenia.'-Vol. i. pp. 84-87.

Subjoined is Dr. Aufrecht's report of the last results of his Etruscan researches:

'The convincing proofs of the Indo-European character of the Etruscan grammar, are principally the following facts:

1. On the Cippus Pennimus we find the following forms of the word Velthina:

Velthina, Velthinas, Velthinam.

That s is the genitive termination, as in the other Indo-European languages, is undeniable.

2. We find a, ia, the termination of female names, exactly as in Greek and Latin.

3. Al is the patronymic and metronymic termination, which evidently corresponds with the Latin Alis, as in Australis, Arvalis, Triumphalis.

4. Sa added to a man's name indicates the name of his wife; thus Larthial-i-sa means the consort of the son of Larthius. This form also bears the character of the Indo-Germanic languages, while that syllable has a genitive signification. In a similar way, the Greek genitive in oto, originally orto, is not properly a case, but an adjective, in—σ—10— equestris. The barbarous sound of the words in the Etruscan inscriptions, certainly cannot be explained by the accumulation of consonants alone; for earlier inscriptions, (that of Agylla and some shorter ones,) have many more vowels than the later. The only admissible explanation of this phenomenon is the assumption, that the Etruscan is a mixed language. We have abundant examples that the consequence of a mixture of two very different languages is, that they both become decomposed, and lose their former clearness, lexically as well as etymologically. I assume it to be a historical fact, that the conquering Etruscans took Tyrrhenia from the Umbrians; and I deny the historical existence of Pelasgi in Italy, whether their language were akin to Greek or not.

'I have, therefore, adopted another mode of getting nearer to the barbarous element in Etruscan. The Euganean inscriptions which are found in the southern part of Rætia, as well as in Lombardy, particularly about Padua, and other ancient inscriptions which have come to light in that district, exhibit the same alphabet, (except that the O occurs in them, which is unknown in Southern Etruria,) and a language, which, in its character, bears strong resemblance to the Etruscan. But I abstain from following up this conjecture until new monuments come to our aid.'

As long as there is no bilingual monument of any extent, the full fruits of Dr. Freund's mission to Ratia by the Berlin

1 He supposes it had a common root with hariolus, and meant simply to observe he entrails of victims.

Academy of Sciences, to which allusion was made in our former article, cannot be reaped. The last researches instituted on the specific Romanic language now spoken there, having shown that, beside the ordinary Romanic words, and some roots bearing a Celtic character, there remained about one-tenth which could not be reduced to either, he engaged in this expedition, with the view of examining this mysterious caput mortuum. He discovered a far greater number of the words of that primitive residue than he expected. The fact of their existence is of great importance; but it will be difficult to identify them, until a monument, of the character described above, shall have been discovered.

In pronouncing the Etruscan to be a mixed language, the results of philology conspire with ethnological conclusions. The national civilization is obviously similar in character; it has its Oriental, it has its classical affinities; but the latter never formed the prevalent type. The Etruscan influence in Italy presents many points of analogy to the Moorish dominion in Spain; the Moors left no enduring legacy of arts and social culture to posterity, and the Etruscans, though brought into intimate connexion with the two noblest nations of antiquity, never attained to Greek and Roman humanities.

Up to the present time, then, modern research has only effected for Etruria the discovery, that her language belongs to the Indo-European family; with what elements it was blended, what was its relationship to other members of the same family, is a question still to be cleared up; its obscurity can only be dispelled by the discovery of monumental remains and inscriptions, to which a scientific philological theory may be applied.

Before closing this article, it may be well to point to the elucidation which recent researches have given to a well-known remark of Niebuhr, who, in illustrating his belief that the Latin was a mixed language, referred to the fact that, whereas the words belonging to the sphere of peaceable rural life agree in Greek and Latin, the Latin expressions for everything belonging to warfare, arms, and hunting, have no words corresponding to them in Greek. Upon this illustration Dr. Arnold founded the gratuitous illusion, that the Latin people arose 'out of a conquest of the Pelasgians (the Greek element) by 'the Oscans; so that the latter were the ruling class of the ' united nation, the former were its subjects.'-Roman History, vol. i. p. 22.

This is a mere conjecture, which ought not to have been intruded, in its peremptory dogmatic form, as an undoubted historical conclusion. It is entirely unauthorzied by subsequent discovery; comparative philology shows the fact referred to to be

1

It

of general occurrence in the Indo-Germanic languages. must, therefore,' observes Dr. Aufrecht, 'be explained in a manner applicable to all, by the circumstance that those 'nations once lived as peaceable herdsmen,' (the primitive occupation of the human race,) and, in part, at least, as agriculturists, in their original Asiatic abodes.' Thus, the names of the most important domestic animals, and only a few of the wild beasts, as wolf and bear, and the words for primitive wants, (breadstuffs, metals, names of consanguinity and affinity in their furthest extensions,) are, as we must naturally expect, found to be identical, not only in Greek and Latin, but also in the Germanic, Lithuanian, and Slavonic languages. These words, 'therefore,' says the learned Doctor, are the Asiatic heir-loom ' of the civilized nations of Europe.' So that, if we find, in the different branches of this stock, different words for the implements of hunting and warfare, we must conclude that they were fixed after the separation took place. In Greek and Latin, however, the diverging terms quoted by Niebuhr, in proof of a mixture, are generally reducible to roots common to all the branches. The natural explanation of this is, that the Greeks and Romans lived longer together, and adopted in common, about the same period, a more southerly direction; whereas the Germans and Slavonics took, or kept in common, a more northerly one.

2

1 Eg. Mother, Osc. amma; old high Germ. amma; compare Ger. amme (nurse); Icelandic, amma (grandmother); Sanskrit, amâ. The Italic expression for man, in opposition to woman, is, Lat. Vir; Umbr. Veir; Teut. Ver; in Skr. Viras.

2 Dr. Aufrecht exhibits, in proof of this, the etymology of the very words chosen by Niebuhr as instances. Scutum is the Greek σKUTOS, from the root sku, to cover;' Parma, nápμn; Jaculum, from jacere, láπтw; Arma, from arcere, that which defends, wards off;' Gr. аркeîv, åλáλкew. In some others mentioned by him the resemblance is far-fetched.