Conversion of St. Paul.

312

Humboldt on America and its Native Tribes.

does not indicate one common stock, at least denotes a very close analogy in the intellectual faculties of the American nations, from Greenland to the streights of Magellan.

Very minute enquiries, conducted according to a method before unknown in etymological studies, have proved, that

there is a small number of words common to the languages of the Old and New World. In 83 American languages, examined by Messrs. Barton and Vater, have been found about 170 words which seemed to have the same roots; and we may easily convince ourselves that these resemblances are by no means accidental or an imitative harmony, and perhaps resulting only from the uniform structure of the organs which renders the first articulated tones of children pretty nearly the same in all parts of the world. Out of 170 words, in which this similarity is perceived, three fifths seem to claim affinity with the languages of the Mantchous, Tungusians, Mongols, and Samojedes, and the other two-fifths with Celtic and Tschoudian dialects, and with the Basque, Coptic, and Congo languages. Those words were found out on a comparison of the whole of the American languages, with the whole of the languages of the Old World: for as yet we know not of any American dialect which can be deemed more nearly allied than the rest to any of the numerous groups of Asiatic, African, or European languages. The assertions of some scholars, proceeding upon abstract theories, respecting the supposed poverty of all the American languages, as well as the extraordinary scantiness of their system of numbers, are as rash and unfounded as the statements of others who contend for the imbecility and stupidity of the human race in the New World, the diminution of organic bodies, and the degeneracy of the animals transported thither from our hemisphere.

Various dialects at present spoken by barbarous nations alone, seem to be relics of copious and flexible languages, which denote a considerable progress in civilization. I shall not here enter into an examination of the question-whether the original condition of mankind was a state of rudeness and stupidity, or whether the savage hordes are descended from nations whose mental powers, as well as the language in which they are reflected, were previously both equally developed but I shall merely observe that the little which we know of the history of the Americans seems to de

[Nov. I,

monstrate that those tribes which migrated from north to south, possessed in their northern abodes that variety of languages which we discover in the tropical regious. Hence we may draw the analogical inference that the ramification, or to use an expression independent of all systems the diversity of the languages is a very ancient phenomenon. Perhaps the languages which we term American originally belong no more to this quarter of the globe than the Madjarian or Hunarian, and the Tschoudian or Finish do to Europe.

It must be admitted that the comparison of the languages of the Old and New World has led as yet to no general results; but we ought not on this account to relinquish our hopes that this study will prove more productive when the sagacity of scholars shall possess a larger stock of materials. How many languages of America, as well as of the interior and eastern part of Asia may there still be, whose mechanism is as unknown to us as that of the Tyrrhenian, Oscian, and Sabine dialects! Of the nations which disappeared from the Old World, there may perhaps still exist some petty detached tribes in the vast wilds of America.

If, however, the early intercourse between the two worlds can be but very imperfectly proved by the languages, it is on the other hand unequivocally demonstrated by the cosmogonics, the monuments, hieroglyphics, and institutions of the American and Asiatic nations, I think that to the evidences already adduced on this point, I have added no small number that were hitherto unknown. I have every where endeavoured to discriminate that which denotes a common origin from what must be considered as the result of analogous relations, subsisting between nations which have attained the highest degree of civilization.

To determine the period of the ancient connexion between the two worlds was previously impracticable, and it would be too presumptuous to pretend to designate the group of nations in the Old World, to which the Toltekes, Aztekes, Muyscas, or Peruvians, are nearest allied, since the relations here alluded to are founded upon such traditions, monuments, and usages, as may possibly be of higher antiquity than the present division of the Asiatics into Mongols, Hindoos, Tongouses, and Chinese.

At the time of the discovery of the New World, or to speak more correctly, at the period of the first Spanish inva

Nelson's Motto-Hydrophobia.

We perceive in the New World, as in Asia and Africa, various centres whence spread an original civilization, whose inutual relations, however, we are incapable of discovering as those of Meroe, Tibet, and China. Mexico derived its civilization from a more northern region. In South America it was the extensive structures of Tiahuanako that furnished the models of those monuments which the Incas erected at Coutzko. Ramparts of considerable extent, bronze weapons, and engraved stones found in the vast plains of Upper Canada, in Florida, and in the wilds bounded by the Oronoko, Cassiquiare, and Guainia, attest that these regions now traversed only by hordes of savage hunters were once the abode of nations who had made some proficiency in the

MOTTO of the NELSON FAMILY.
To the Editor of the New Monthly Magazine.
SIR,

ANY of your correspondents would
much oblige several of your admirers by
informing them whether the motto borne
by the family of Nelson-PALMAM QUI
MERUIT FERAT, be a quotation from one
of the ancients, or purposely made for
him who was so worthy to wear it.
I am, &c.
Chatham, Sept. 20, 1814.

314

Recipes for Hydrophobia-Death of George II.

RECIPES for the BITE of a MAD DOG.

No. 1. Take four ounces of Mithridate or Venice treacle, six ounces of filings of pewter, four ounces of garlic, and six ounces of rue, cut the garlic and rue small; put the above into three quarts of strong beer or white wine, in an earthen vessel, stopped up close, and put into a pot of boiling water, with hay about it, to prevent it breaking; let it simmer over a slow fire for three or four hours, then take it up, strain out the herbs, and bottle the liquor for use. Give the patient one table-spoonful the first morning, two the second, three the third, four the fourth, five the fifth, and continue five for four mornings longer. A child will require half the quantity, If the patient be wounded, put a poultice of the strained herbs to the wound.

No. 2.-Take of leaves of ue picked from the stalks, and bruised; garlic, picked from the stalk and bruised, of each six ounces, Venice treacle, or Mithridate, and scrapings of pewter, each four ounces; boil all these over a slow fire, in two quarts of strong ale, till one pint is consumed; then keep it in bottles close stopped, and give it nine spoonfuls to man or woman, warm, every seven mornings together, fasting. This, if given within nine days after the biting of the dog, will prevent hydrophobia. Apply some of the ingredients, from which the liquor was strained, to the bitten place.

"This recipe was, some years ago, taken out of Calthorp Church, Lincolnshire, the whole town being bitten by a mad dog, all that took this medicine did well, while all the rest died mad.” In a P.S. it is added, "Many years experience have proved that this is an effectual cure."

N. B. I should prefer the gradual mode of giving the medicine, as in the recipe No. 1, to that of nine spoonfuls at once, in No. 2.

On the IMMEDIATE CAUSE of the DEATH
of GEORGE the SECOND.

To the Editor of the New Monthly Magazine.
SIR,

I AM induced to make the following observations, by reading in your miscellany; in the fourth number of an article

respondent, or from the benevolent proprietor of the recipe, whose name, also, in justice to his disinterested philanthropy, we are desirous of holding forth to the imitation and admiration of his contemporaries.EDITOR.

[Nov. 1,

entitled "Georgiana," an account of the death of George the Second, which states, "he d ed very suddenly of a rupture of the aorta."

It seems somewhat singular that your correspondent should differ so materially from Smollett in the main cause which occasioned his death, and which, if founded upon good authority, must compietely refute the account as given by him. The subject may be of trifling importance to the majority of your readers; but to others, who take an interest in matters of this nature, and whom they more immediately concern, your correspondent will be rendering a great service by stating, whether more implicit reliance can be placed on the cause as related by him, than on that recorded by the continuator of Hume.

The account, as given by Dr.Smollett, is as follows:-" An attempt was made to bleed him, but without effect; and, indeed, his malady was far beyond the reach of art; for when the cavity of the thorax or chest was opened, and inspected by the serjeant-surgeons, they found the right ventricle of the heart actually ruptured, and a great quantity of blood discharged through the aperture into the surrounding pericardium, so that he must have died instantaneously in consequence of the effusion. The case, however, is so extraordinary, that we question whether there is such another on record."

The uncommon occurrence of the complete rupture of the heart is particularly dwelt on, and if the faculty were in want of an instance of such a nature, it appears more than probable that that attending the death of George the Second would be the first in quotation. To corroborate the above probability, I beg to acquaint you that a particular friend of mine, in translating from a foreign author a work on the diseases of the heart, and the author remarking that a complete rupture of the heart had rarely been observed, he gives, as an instance, the case of George the Second, concluding it to have actually been so.

As ruptures of the aorta are not unmotive to have been, by placing the common, I suspect your correspondent's circumstance in the shape of an anecdote, to contradict Smollett's account. If so, by his information, he will confer a favour stating from what source he has derived on some of your readers, and oblige Your obedient servant,

Sept. 26, 1814.

ANONYMOUS.

1814.]

Etymology; or Philological Ventilations.

For the New Monthly Magazine. ETYMOLOGY; or PHILOLOGICAL VENTILATIONS. By HUMFREE TELLFAIR, M. A.-Part II.

(Continued from No. 9, p. 229.) I come now to pay some little attention to my learned predecessors in the philological walk, such as lexicographers, critics, or etymologists. And first I shall mention Ainsworthius, who, under the word concurro, gives us "to concur, to condog," that is, to run together, as curs or dogs do. This appears in the edition of 1678; but, as a proof of want of taste in lexicographers, it has ever since been omitted. It might perhaps be suspected to be the insertion of some typographical wag; yet what objection can there be to it, any more than to the deriving of the word curtail from the cutting off the tails of curs? And Johnson need not have been squeamish about admitting this last etymology, had he recollected that it has the highest of all authorities. Cloten, in Cymbeline, (Act 2, Sc. 1,) is made to say, "When a gentleman is disposed to swear, it is not for any standers-by to curtail bis oaths-ha? 2d. Gent. No, my lord, nor to crop the ears of them." i. e. not to cut off the tails nor the ears of these currish expletives. I shall just subjoin that Entickius, the younger brother of Ainsworthius, at the word uxor, has, for the edification of youths at school, translated the phrase uxorem ducere, to be hen-pecked."

.

315

that the word bath-house is not derived,

as one would naturally suppose it to be," from bath and house, but from the Greek περι Babous, as expressive of sinking or diving under water.

But of all the professors of a certain figure, that might be called the longinquopetite in criticism, Mr. Stephen Weston, in his "Specimens of Conformity of European and Oriental Languages," has gone farther than any gentleman I have met with. I have only scen extracts from this work, in a very entertaining critique upon it in the British Critic for December, 1802, one of which specimens being an attempt to illustrate the immortal Shakspeare, I shall here notice. Hamlet says, (act 2, sc. 6,) “I am only mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw." Mr. W. it seems, would read a bansa, which, in the Hindostanee and Avan languages, means a goose. Hanmer, indeed, had before been dreaming about a hernshaw, a word which Mr. W. misled perhaps by Johnson, explains to mean, not the bird, but the place it breeds in. This palpable mistake, the only one I recollect in Johnson, is ably refuted by the British Critics; and yet even these ingenious writers directly afterwards say, "It is most probable, as Warburton has observed, that the word hernshaw might have been corrupted through ignorance, or a sort of quaint jocularity, into handsaw."Now I freely own that I cannot think this probable at all; nor can I be induced, even by all this blaze of learning, to give up my original admiration of this beautiful passage, while it remained untouched. We may live and learn to be sure! but I had always thought that the whole humour of the passage arose from the discrepancy or glaring incongruity of the objects, as if he had said, "I know, at such and such times, what it is utterly impossible not to know;" which was an exquisitely characteristic method of bantering, and playing upon his supple and officious auditors. If it must needs be mended, there is a lne in a modern theatrical song, I know a sheep's-head from a carrot, a carrot," that may require a similar improvement. Could a carrot, or something like it, be found in some obPermit me, scure Asiatic language to signify a calf'sthen, that I may not be outdone in my head, how would the sense brighten! own department, to propose an etymo- and what light would the goose and the logy, which from both sense and sound calf's-head reflect upon each other! appears to challenge the confidence of Mr. Brand, rather than to be liable to the doubting of Mr. Upton, and that is,

Brand, in his Popular Antiquities," (p. 349,) denies that true-love-knot is derived, as one would naturally suppose it to be," from true and love, but from the Danish verb trulofa, to plight one's faith. And this, he says, is proved beyond a doubt, because in the Icelandic gospel the word trulofed stands for espoused! My dear and valued friend, the late Dr. Farmer, in his incomparable essay, (p. 22,) tells us, that Mr. Upton doubted whether Truepenny, as Hamlet calls his father's ghost, (act 1, sc. the last,) might not have been from the Greek TuTavov. Now as this signifies a gimlet, we may conjecture that it might be intended to bore a hole, through which the ghost, or at least his voice, might ascend from the shades below upon the London stage.

Fanciful consonances from the Persic, Coptic, and all manner of outlandish languages, might indeed be multiplied