language in his 'Buddhist Pilgrims' had ill prepared us to find. We have seldom seen a scientific question of the same class handled with more fairness and discretion.

One inquiry remains. Taking for granted the primeval unity of language, how did it come into being? What is the philosophy of the formation of human speech? As to this we suppose no one will now maintain, either that God put into man's lips the very vocables by which he first expressed the workings of his mind and heart, on the one hand; or, on the other, that man made language, just as he has since made clothes, houses, and pictures. By the former theory, man becomes a machine. The latter, in face of all analogy, makes language dependent on man's mere will. All sober thinkers will agree, that while the process of the creation of speech, like every other creative process, is, as Mr. Müller wisely reminds us, beyond the grasp of our understanding, God furnished man in the beginning with the faculty of language; and that faculty came into operation in the utterance of ideas by the organs of speech, as soon as the occasion for the use of it was presented. This is the doctrine which Mr. Müller adopts, and which he expounds, illustrates, and defends, with great beauty and power, in his last lecture. No animal thinks, and no animal speaks, except man. Language and thought are inseparable. Words without thought are dead sounds; thoughts. without words are nothing. To think is to speak low; to speak is to think aloud. The word is the thought incarnate.' What the primitive form of language was, so far as observation and analysis will enable us to judge, we have seen already. And the same guides lead us to highly probable conclusions as to the sort of ideas which were expressed by the primordial monosyllables. There have been two favourite theories of philosophers on this subject, not unaptly styled by Mr. Müller the 'bow-wow' and the pooh-pooh' theories. The first of these makes all words to have been originally imitations of natural sounds. The second finds the roots of speech in interjections. Both are a libel on human nature, and can only be held in our own days by those who wilfully close their eyes against the phenomena of language itself. As we have before intimated, a scientific examination of all known tongues points most strongly to the conclusion that, apart. from a certain number of interjectional and onomatopoetic words, the ultimate monosyllables were all originally either pronominal, indicating objects viewed as to their individuality, or else predicative, expressing various qualities which were perceived to belong to objects, and from which they were named. The doctrine of the pre

dicative character of most of the primal roots of language is not a little supported by the à priori consideration, that it is likely the external difference between man and the brute would correspond to the inward mental character in virtue of which he enjoys the same distinction. Now if Locke and other great philosophers are right, it is the power of conceiving of qualities apart from the objects in which they inhere; the power of abstraction and generalization; in other words, the power of forming predicates, which gives to the mind of man its most marked pre-eminence over that of the inferior animals. And if this be so, we have here as striking a coincidence in the results of à priori and of à posteriori reasoning as the realm of human knowledge can furnish. On the one hand, if man speaks, a principal element in his speech will surely be words expressive of qualities, characteristics, properties. On the other hand, what might be naturally expected from his intellectual constitution, is found, by the independent scrutiny of language in all its modes, to be actually the case. At the very point where man parts company with the brute world, at the first flash of reason as the manifestation of the light within us, there we see the true genesis of language' And for its subsequent history, though we may not lose sight of the mental loss which man has sustained through sin, no doubt the blunting of the creative instinct, which first gave birth to language, was an inevitable consequence of the satisfaction it found in its own work; and it is easy to see, how definite forms would be gradually eliminated, as time wore on, from the multitudinous phonetic types' employed by language in the beginning; and so, subject to the miraculous infraction of which we have spoken, human speech might come to appear as it actually does, when it first shows on the horizon of history.

Mr. Müller is a foreigner; but his knowledge of the English language and literature, and the singular ability and grace with which he has written in the tongue of his adopted country on some of the most crabbed and intricate of all subjects, claim for him the respect of all Englishmen. As an Orientalist, and particularly as a Sanskrit scholar, he has a well-earned and world-wide reputation. His works on comparative language are not his least praise; and they are worthy of diligent study on the part of all who aspire to adequate views of the genius, the constitution, and the manifold history of human speech. For the science whose interests he has so greatly promoted, we will only say further, that as a guide to the lessons of universal history, as a torch-bearer in many a perplexed and stony path of our most precious literatures, and as not the least important

The Revolution of 1848.

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auxiliary on which Truth may count in her task of renewing the face of the earth, it deserves well of the love of all wise and good men.

ART. VII.—History of the Revolution of 1848.
PAGES. Vols. I., II., III. Paris: Pagnerre.

By GARNIER1861.

To form a just estimate of the causes and character of the Revolutions of 1848, of which M. Garnier-Pagès has commenced the history, it will be well to take a retrospective glance at the events of the last thirty-five years, down to the close of the Liberation War, and to the Peace of Paris in 1815. The recurrence, within the limits of a single generation, of the mighty Revolution which has shaken the governments of the Continent to their foundations, re-enthroned the proscribed Imperial dynasty in the person of Napoleon III., and changed once more the political aspect of Europe, indicates the existence of disturbing forces of no less magnitude than those which shattered the colossal power of the first Napoleon, and placed the destinies of the continental nations in the hands of the allied sovereigns assembled in Congress at Vienna. Such of our readers as remember the retreat of the grand army from Moscow; the downfall of the despot to whom these monarchs had bowed the knee; and the universal jubilee of nations, full of new-born hopes, and hailing, with loyal confidence, the promises of free institutions, made to their subjects by the elated sovereigns of France, Spain, Poland, and Prussia-will likewise remember how, at the first symptom of the wish of the people to make use of their institutions, liberty was suppressed, charters were revoked, promises ignored; and how, through succeeding years, political freedom has been more jealously proscribed, and liberal opinions more vindictively oppressed, than ever. To such observers it would occasion little surprise that they who sowed the wind should reap the whirlwind,'-that the influence of the Revolution of 1848 sped with electric force and rapidity through the whole of Western Europe. It was the inevitable reaction of national sentiment outraged, and confidence betrayed, against the forcible repression, the 'peine forte et dure,' exercised upon their subjects by the allied sovereigns, down to the period of its outbreak.

In this career of moral, intellectual, and social progress, Time is happily the ally of the oppressed. Each succeeding decade brings with it heartier sympathy with right and freedom, and

sturdier opposition to tyranny and wrong. Abuses, old and new, find little quarter; reflection and discussion are promoting knowledge, lessening prejudices, and dethroning long dominant errors on every hand; while truth, justice, and humanity, are manifestly acquiring extended sway over the councils and conduct of men. The advancing tide of freedom and civilization will bear down whatever bulwarks are opposed to it, by the pride and ambition of rulers, whenever the measure of wrong and intelligence is full. There is but one bulwark by which thrones can now be protected, the attachment and conscious interest of a free and intelligent people.'

The necessary connexion between oppression and insecurity is strikingly illustrated in the series of Revolutions narrated and admirably elucidated in the volumes before us, wherein M. Garnier-Pagès reviews the political constitution of Europe from the reconstruction of the continental states at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, noticing the several popular movements in each kingdom, and the circumstances which determined the repeated struggles for national independence and reform prior to 1848. The first volume is devoted to Italy, and depicts its political condition from the death of Pope Gregory in 1846, and the

accession of Pius IX.

It was under the auspices of the new pontiff that the cry for nationality and reform arose with unprecedented vigour. The efforts made in 1820, 21, and 22, by Italy, unanimous in her abhorrence of Austrian domination, to shake off her ignominious yoke, and put an end to the tyranny of the Italian princes, had proved unavailing against the combined powers of both. In 1830 and 1831, aroused by the French Revolution of July, she raised again the standard of liberty. Encouraged at the outset by the Government of July, in order to divert the forces of Austria, she was abandoned to that power, and handed over to a congress of diplomatists, pledged to support the monarchical principle, ' which recognises no institution as legitimate which does not flow spontaneously from the monarch; and to enforce the claims of the three Powers,-Russia, Prussia, and Austria,—to universal jurisdiction throughout Europe in all changes of government, as set forth in their circulars of 12th of May and 5th of June, 1821: "That they will always mark rebellion, under whatever form it may appear, with the stamp of their disapproval: wherever it appears, and they can reach it, they will repress, condemn, and combat its work.' The history of the following twenty-five years throughout the continent of Europe, was the carrying out of these insolent and arbitrary pretensions. Constitutions were proscribed by these pacificators of Europe, emboldened by the

mutual support guaranteed to them in virtue of the Holy Alliance. No monarch was allowed to concede a constitution to his subjects. The Neapolitan constitution was put down by Austria in 1820, and that of Piedmont in 1821, by force of arms; and in 1831 she interfered to uphold, by the same arms, the Papal States, the worst and weakest of all the States of Italy.

This audacious defiance of the rights of sovereigns and subjects met with a rude rebuff from the other great Powers. An European intervention nullified that undertaken by Austria singly for her own purposes. A note was addressed by the great Powers to the Papal Government, to which Austria was constrained to adhere.

'It demanded, First. The general application of administrative and judicial reforms to the capital and to the provinces; Secondly. The general admission of laymen to all administrative and judicial functions; Thirdly. A system of elective municipalities and provincial councils, ending in a central administrative council, formed out of the new municipalities; and, Fourthly. The creation of a central establishment, destined to watch over the financial administration of the State, composed of men chosen from the local councils, and the counsellors of the Government, forming a junto or administrative council, co-ordinate with a council of State, whose members should be nominated by the sovereign, and chosen among the municipalities of the country.'Vol. i., p. 7.

The Pope, Gregory XVI., consecrated these several improvements by a succession of edicts (motu proprio), and promised to carry them into effect; but in a very short time,-acting on the covert advice and encouraged by the proffered support of Austria, -he absolved himself from his promises, and tore up the resolutions of the powers without compunction, and without protestation even from the government of Louis Philippe. From this time, all pacific roads to reform were closed. The government of Gregory XVI. became worse than that of the worst of his predecessors, relying on the bayonets of Austria, with the acquiescence of the French, to repress any rising of the people. Not content with abetting the Pope in violating his engagements, Austria would neither improve her own institutions, nor allow other Italian princes to improve theirs.

'Abuses,' continues M. Garnier-Pagès, multiplied to a scandalous extent; no resource was left to the peoples but in secret societies, conspiracies, and insurrections. From one extremity of Italy to the other, energetic men, patriots, savants, men of letters, maintained continued correspondence, exchanged ideas, and prepared for action.......The princes opposed to the human mind and to progress an insurmountable barrier; it was impossible to march onwards but by breaking it