have not been able to cross. A parrot is able to articulate every letter of the alphabet. The reason, therefore, it has not a language must be found in some mental difference between it and man. What is this inward faculty whose outward development and sign is language, as distinguished from the cries and shrieks of birds. and beasts?

Mental philosophers have approached this problem from another point, and have attempted a solution. The psychologist busies himself with the inner works and movements of microcosmic man; the philologist with the chimings of his mind in speech. If both interpret rightly, there should be no discrepancy. In regard to the case in point, are the conclusions of mental philosophers found to agree with those of philologists, such as M. Muller? Locke in his "Essay on the Human Understanding," gives it as his opinion that "the power of abstracting is not at all in brutes, and that the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and them, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain to." Now if Locke be right and if M. Muller be right, language will be that which outwardly answers to this mental power of abstracting.

We previously learned that the primary elements of all language were predicative and denominative roots. Two theories accounting for the origin of these roots stand in the way of M. Muller's own conclusion respecting them. These theories he playfully, or as some will think contemptuously, calls the one the bow-wow, the other the pooh-pooh theory. The former has been dignified by its advocates with the title of the onomato-poetic theory, and it holds that roots were imitations of sounds; the latter holds that roots were involuntary interjections. As to the former theory, it is enough to say that there are only few words comparatively in any tongue that are imitations of words. The number of such terms is even smaller than might be supposed. For the ear of a person who may have no bias towards onomatopeia is apt to be deceived, at times, by fancied resemblances between certain words and sounds, which words, when traced back to their roots, are seen to have no connection at all with those sounds. No doubt thunder has often been thought to be a word mimicking uproar; yet it is taken from a root signifying to extend, which root has entered into the comparitive of the words thin, tender, and tone. The second theory is open to the same remark, only few words have been elaborated from interjections. Language, as Horne Tooke says, "has been erected on the downfall of interjections." It is only when men are reduced to a state of nature, or when language is forgotten that interjections are indulged in. In opposition to both these theories M. Muller holds that roots were significative of general terms. Now it is an old controversy amongst philosophers whether

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proper terms or general appelatives were the first to be constructed. Adam Smith advocates the former view, Leibnitz the latter; while Muller mediates between them. Adam Smith is no doubt right in saying that after men had acquired such a word as cave, they would give that name to other things which they saw resembled the place where they had been wont to shelter themselves from the elements. But Leibnitz is also right in holding out that the formation of general terms preceded the assignment of particulars. We find that the Latin for cave is antrum, and the root of that word signifies in Sanscrit within; or before a particular cave could be called antrum, the general idea of inwardness must have been acquired. Analyze any word and you will find it expresses a general idea. Thus the moon is the measurer; the sun the begetter; the earth the ploughed; animal is from a word signifying the soul, and anima itself means breath; man signifies to think.

But how did roots originate? "The four or five hundred roots that remain as the constituent elements of language were phonetic types produced by a power inherent in the human mind." These words are rather vague, necessarily so, perhaps, considering the question with which they deal; yet we think M. Muller would repudiate the gloss put upon them by one of his critics. "It was," says the latter, “an old notion that language was conventional; but it is more consistent with probability to suppose that language is a growth of the human race, that it sprang out of its organisation and brain just as the hair of the European and the wool of the Negro sprang out of their respective scalps; and that not only the languages of men, but the imperfect dialects of the inferior animals sprang out of their organisation, perfect and imperfect, in exact proportion to the physical organisation itself." Certainly man in common with the animals must just speak, as ""Tis his nature to;" but it seems to us that the opinion just enunciated on the origin of language might consist with the extreme view of modern Anthropologists. We are very greatly mistaken if Professor Muller would not stoutly resist any attempt to make his science a mere branch of one that deals with the physical qualities of the race. Those given to examining the physical, more especially the craniological structure of man, may believe, the superiority of that structure accounts for the fact that there are not lexicographers, and orators, and poet laureates among the animals. But the philologist will hold that were it possible to give beasts or birds organs capable of sounding the whole gamut of human utterances, unless they could at the same time give them certain mental powers, they would after all remain mere talking automata or parotters of speech. Language is not merely the mimicry of sound, the symbol of feeling, it is also the expression of thought. It was the outbirth of an instinct that led man to

give articulate expression to the conceptions that thrilled through his mind. At first these phonetic types, indefinitely modifiable, must have been almost boundless. But in the course of time they would be thinned by the process of natural selection. This language-producing instinct has been lost, for man loses his instincts as he ceases to want them. Yet those roots that survived the struggle for existence have amply sufficed, and will suffice, for the wants of the human race. No new material element has been introduced into language since the beginning of the world's history. Thus the history of the changes that have taken place in language is but the history of its development or growth.

One word as to the literary character of M. Muller's work. At the commencement of the oral delivery of these lectures, M. Muller hinted that his imperfect acquaintance with their language would require forbearance from an English audience. Whether our tongue receives injustice at the mouth of the Professor we have not been informed; it certainly receives little from his pen. Many men of considerable literary eminence display a less complete mastery of English than he. But there is one fault in the book that detracts somewhat from its interestingness. In some parts the author is in danger of causing his readers' interest in his subject to flag by tediousness. Yet this very fault is the result of the Professor's erudition and generosity. Having a principle to establish or doubt to remove, he draws from the vast stores of his learning fact after fact, which he pours upon the mind of his reader until the latter almost loses sight of the point to be proved, or the doubt to be resolved, and cries "hold! enough!" But those who read for profit rather than pleasure will not let this occasional prolixity prevent their taking an early and careful reading of a work crowded with information.

BICKERSTAFF.

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ART. VII.-MARY, THE MOTHER OF GOD.

T the present day Popery is making the most strenuous efforts to recover the position she lost at the Reformation in this country. No means likely to promote her interests are neglected by her. She is audacious, violent, or smooth-tongued, as may best suit her purpose. Now she resorts to terrorism, now to suavity. In the immediate neighbourhood of the writer her priests will urge their flock to call in the aid of the policeman forceably to eject the city missionary who may, unassumingly, happen to cross their threshhold in his mission of mercy. In an adjoining locality, when an appearance of candour or charity is judged likely favourably to impress dissentients from the dogmas of Rome, they are addressed within the walls of a Popish chapel as dear dissenting brethren. These are small local illustrations of the multifarious aspects of Popery. As the spreading flood fills every crevice within its extension and up to its level, so Popery, diffusive and insinuating, steadily pours her malign influence into every opening which will give her a position whence she can advance her ends. Vigilance and indefatigable perseverance are commendable qualities considered per se, or in connection with virtuous objects, but we do not regard them with admiration when allied to detestable error. We would commend the zeal of Popery were it tributary to truth, but it is not; on the contrary, it is evoked in favour of "damnable heresies," having destruction in their wake. Mariolatry is one of the grand errors of the Romish Church. It is the centre of many others, that with which they stand or fall. Hence the devotion of the educated papist to the virgin mother, the boldness with which he will defend this idolatry. All error is more or less related to truth. The relation is like that of divergent lines to their starting point; like that of the strayed sheep to the forsaken fold. But for the angle we could not affirm the lines divergent; but for the fold we could not describe the sheep as strayed. The ultimate extension of the divergent lines may be incalculably distant, and the strayed sheep may be so far off as to be irretrievably lost; but distance does not destroy connection. Is there any principle in human nature, any principle of truth from which this huge error may have started? Is it the echo of our sympathy? Are there superior excellencies in womankind which the sterner sex regard as the complement of our nature, without which heaven itself would be defective? It may be so. It may be that this error is but the exaggeration of these sympathies. As somewhat illustrative of this

idea we quote the following suggestive remarks without committing ourselves to their orthodoxy: "It is remarkable that Christ is never said to have called a woman to follow him as he called the disciples; and quite as remarkable that, so far as the evidence goes, no woman ever spoke a word against him, while many women were last at the cross, and earliest at the sepulchre. It seems as though he had assumed that the womanly side of human nature would not require any calling, that the heart of woman would instinctively welcome him as the solution of all difficulties, the sum of all charms, the sovereign of frail and needy creatures, who have immense capacity for suffering, but little satisfaction in the results of mere logic. Christ was emphatically, uniquely, the seed of the woman. What woman could reject her own son? Does not every woman look with intensely hopeful love upon the son of her womb? He will be her comfort, her song, her saviour; she no longer lives but in him and for him. Through him she interprets the future, and for his sake takes a kinder view of all mankind. Christ was born to every woman. Men required to be called, women only to be attracted. Women had but to see him in order to claim him as the fairest among ten thousand and the altogether lovely, to recognise him as the tenderest and wisest friend of womanhood. They needed no call. The dew waits for no voice to call it to the sun. Few women ever go to Christ through the medium of mere doctrine. They live beyond the cold propositional region. The dew finds its way up to the sun without knowing anything of the laws of motion, or the mysteries of light; and womanly hearts go up to Christ, often knowing little of objective theology, yet wise because inspired and guided by the love which is the elect interpreter of God. God is love, and by her superior capacity of love, woman is so much nearer God than man can ever be. It is hardly to be wondered at, that millions of Christians, even now, feel that heaven itself requires the distinctive presence of the womanly element, and express the feeling by addressing Mary as mother of God. If Protestantism were less technical and more human, it would hesitate before condemning the feeling which dictates this startling appellation. The fact may be that God is more human than traditional doctrinisin has yet dared to conceive. We think of humanity too exclusively by the flesh. It is to be remembered that the body is the lesser portion of man, and that we speak rightly of the human mind as well as the human body. It is on the mind side that we approach God, through the mind side that we communicate with God, and on the mind side that we resemble God. In this sense God is more human, or man more divine, than has yet been authenticated by the councils of Christendom. God is not declared to be power, but he is declared to be love; whosoever, therefore, can love most is most like God. It is