Meru, which is on the confines of Kashmire and Tibet. Out of it they describe four rivers as flowing towards the four quarters of the earth. In this Paradise are mentioned not only the tree of life and death (the Chiampa, well known in India, which is said to bear both a wholesome and a deleterious fruit), but also the tree of immortality, and the serpent which poisons the water, the source of life." It is impossible to mistake the connection of these representations with those of Genesis.

Those who have investigated most diligently the traces of arts and knowledge in early times, have arrived by a very different track at the same point. They discover the existence of a nation which, prior to the age of all history, occupied the higher region of Asia, and there cultivated the sciences. To them are attributed the invention of astronomy, the arrangement and naming of the constellations, and of the oldest Zodiac in the world, consisting of the 24 lunar mansions, and the discovery of the planets. Some great catastrophe of nature, according to Bailley, overturned this primitive empire, and scattered the remnants of its people over distant regions, whither they carried with them fragments of their sciences, and the memory of the great event which dispersed them. That event Bailly supposes to be the same which is described in our Scriptures as the deluge of Noah.

Mr. Adelung eagerly adopts the hypothesis of this primeval empire, and is ready to fix upon the same locality for his Eden and Ararat; but luckily recollects, in good time, that the ground is already appropriated. Dante has chosen this very spot for the situation of his Hell. It would ill accord with the methodical proceeding of a German Aulic Counsellor to dispute the right of prior occupancy, and to attempt to dislodge the poet from his quarters. Our author quietly takes up a more southerly position. In the vicinity of this region, which so many physical and historical probabilities point out as the cradle of mankind, and of the arts and sciences, we find many nations, comprising some hundred millions of men, whose manners still preserve the simple character of ancient times, and whose languages, entirely monosyllabic, and constructed in the rudest manner, seem to refer us to the earliest ages of human society. Such are the Tibetans or Tanguts, the Chinese, the natives of Ava, Pegu, Siam, and the whole of India beyond the Ganges. To the northward of these wander the celebrated hordes of the Mongoles, Mandshurs, and Tartars, distinct from each other, but all holding an intermediate place in their character and languages between the above mentioned races and the rest of mankind.

Much ingenuity is certainly displayed in this method of reducing the history of mankind to one simple beginning. As there is nothing in the hypothesis that seems to be at variance

with the Scriptural records, or with the tenour of ancient history, we shall not start any objections to it at present, though we think there are some which might be urged with considerable force; and that other parts of the earth, particularly the submerged Atlantic Isle might offer claims scarcely less specious to be considered as the seat of the antediluvean world. But it is time to proceed to the proper subject of the work before us.

Our author's geographical arrangement of languages is ill adapted to the purpose of a connected essay. We shall, therefore, present our readers with a Table, in which they are distributed according to their affinities, taking care to avoid the pedantry of applying a technical classification to what admits of endless subdivisions.

MONOSYLLABIC LANGUAGES.

1. Chinese Languages.

2. Tangut or Tibetan.

3. Barma or Birman.

5. T'hay or Siamese.
T'hay-j'hay or old Siamese.

Lâo or Laos.

Rukheng or Dialect of Ara- 6. Khômen or Cambojan.

The Bali is not properly the parent of any living dialect, but has contributed to modify many of the monosyllabic languages and the polysyllabic idioms of Japan and Ceylon.

a. Pahlavi.

C. ZEND.

c. Kurdish.

b. Parsí, parent of modern Persic. 1 d. Afghan?

Upper Saxony, since Luther's time, the polite language of Germany.

The African and American Languages are too numerous and too little distinguished to be enumerated here.

MONOSYLLABIC LANGUages.

Tibet, the Chinese empire, and the whole of India, beyond the Ganges, contain a population much greater than that of all Europe. The languages of all these nations, with the exception a few tribes on the coast of the Malay Peninsula, are monosyllabic. The people themselves are distinguished from the rest of mankind by their physical traits, the most striking of which are a broad flattened countenance, with their cheek bones extending laterally, compressed features, and oblique orbits. These characters do not, however, prevail among them universally, or in the same degree. Some of the tribes of the Eastern peninsula scarcely differ from some casts of Hindus.

There are few problems in the history of mankind more curious than the uniform picture which these nations present, and the unvarying character which they have preserved through so many ages. The cause of this phoenomenon must be sought partly in their insulated situation, in a remote corner of the world, where they are cut off from other nations by natural boundaries; and partly in the multitude of their population, which is so great as to swallow up in its mass the more warlike tribes who have occasionally penetrated their boundaries, and have exercised a temporary dominion over them.

A very remarkable fact with respect to these nations, is the almost endless variety of their oral languages. The same written character is used, throughout the Chinese empire, and the same writing is intelligible in all its provinces. Europeans, from this