No study is more rich in grand results than the study of language, and to no study can we look with greater certainty to elucidate the earliest history of mankind. For the roots of language[3] spring in the primitive liberty of human intelligence, and therefore its records bear on them the traces of human history. We read with deep interest the works of individual genius, and trace in them the life and character of the men on whom it has been bestowed; we toilfully examine the unburied monuments of extinct nations, and are rewarded for years of labour if we can finally succeed in gaining a feeble glimpse of their history by deciphering the unknown letters carved on the crumbling fragments of half-calcined stone; but in language we have the history not only of individuals but of nations; not only of nations but of mankind. For unlike music and poetry, which are the special privilege of the few, language[4] is the property of all, as necessary and accessible as the air we breathe. Of all that men have invented and combined; of all that they have produced or interchanged among themselves; of all that they have drawn from their peculiar organism, language is the noblest and most indispensible treasure. An immediate emanation of human nature, and progressing with it, language is the common blessing, the common patrimony, of mankind. It is an[5] admirable poem on the history of all ages; a living monument, on which is written the genesis of human thought. Thus “the ground[6] on which our civilisation stands is a sacred one, for it is the deposit of thought. For language, as it is the mirror, so is it the product of reason, and as it embodies thought, so is it the child of thought. In it are deposited the primordial sparks of that celestial fire, which, from a once bright centre of civilisation, has streamed forth over the inhabited earth, and which now already, after less than three myriads of years, forms a galaxy round the globe, a chain of light from pole to pole.”
Philology, the science which devotes itself to the study of language, has recently[7] arrived at results almost undreamed of by preceding centuries. Indeed, it received its most vigorous impulse from the acquaintance with the languages of India, and, above all, with Sanskrit, which, like so many other great blessings, directly resulted from our dominion in India. Already it has thrown new light on many of the most perplexing problems of religion, history, and ethnography; and, being yet but an infant science, it is in all probability destined to achieve triumphs, of which at present we can but dimly prophesy the consequences.[8]