I say it—on my honour as a gentleman, on my
oath as a Christian, if the man you pointed out
at the Opera knows me, he is so altered, or so
disguised, that I do not know him. I am ignorant
of his proceedings or his purposes in
England—I never saw him, I never heard his name,
to my knowledge, before to-night. I say no
more. Leave me a little, Walter: I am
overpowered by what has happened; I am shaken
by what I have said. Let me try to be like
myself again, when we meet next."

He dropped into a chair; and, turning away
from me, hid his face in his hands. I gently
opened the door, so as not to disturb him—
and spoke my few parting words in low tones,
which he might hear or not, as he pleased.

"I will keep the memory of to-night in my
heart of hearts," I said. "You shall never
repent the trust you have reposed in me. May I
come to you to-morrow? May I come as early
as nine o'clock?"

"Yes, Walter," he replied; looking up at me
kindly, and speaking in English once more,
as if his one anxiety, now, was to get back to
our former relations towards each other. "Come
to my little bit of breakfast, before I go my
ways among the pupils that I teach."

"Good night, Pesca."

"Good night, my friend."

TRIBES AND TONGUES.

IT was the fancy of past generations to
derive all languages from one common root, all
races from one aboriginal man and woman.
Then came sundry subdivisions, whose origin
remained utterly unexplained, of which the great
distinctions were white, yellow, red, brown, and
black men, with skulls characteristic of each.
As to idioms, a few were deemed the source and
origin of all the rest.

Has such a theory any foundation in truth?
Will it be confirmed by observation, by tradition,
by history? Assuredly not. The better we are
enabled to investigate through the past the means
by which man holds, or has held, intercourse with
man, the more varied, the less resembling one
another, will the instruments of that intercourse
be found. The tendency of time, of commerce
and of civilisation is not to separate languages
into many, but to fuse them into one. The
languages of knowledge will as assuredly displace
and supersede the languages of ignorance, as the
superior races dispossess the inferior of their hold
upon our common mother earth. The process is,
in fact, identical. Imperfect idioms disappear
with the beings that employ them; if they contain
elements of strength and usefulness, those
elements may indeed be preserved in the great
transition that is going on. Languages, like other
creations, have their progressive developments of
improvement, but it is onward from something
worse to something better. For ignorance is
misty, clouded, complicated and obscure, as are
the modes of expression by which it is
represented; while knowledge is associated with
clearness and simplicity, and conveys to others
the lucidity of its own conceptions in the most
intelligible, appropriate and acceptable terms.
We have not the same means of tracing the
mutations of tongues which we possess for marking
the different geological eras in the earth's
structure, but we know enough and see enough
to convince us that the same great law of
improvement which is operating slowly and surely
on the world of matter, is carrying on its not
less important work on the world of mind.

We have not lost, we cannot lose, what
antiquity possessed of excellence in the instruments
of oral or written communication. The
ancient Greek, Latin, Sanscrit and Chinese have
left indelible marks on the existing languages of
civilisation, but of the hundred, thousand,
perhaps ten thousand, jargons which were employed
by the rude tribes of remote times, no fragment,
no record remains. Of the old Gothic,
Scandinavian and Slavonic we find, pervading their
derivatives, an impress which represents the
better and sounder portions of their earlier
forms; but of the idioms disassociated from
traditional or historical compositions—from
verse, or music, or any other representative of
intellectual culture—of these, little or nothing
is to be traced, and by them little or nothing
could be taught.

The evidence of the very remote civilisation
of the Chinese is of the most satisfactory
character. Whatever was written in Chinese
symbols four thousand years ago is understood now
by one third of the human race. How many
are there living at the present time who are
able to enjoy the original writings of Homer or
Herodotus? How many can master a Hebrew
text? How many read the Shaster? But those
who are now engaged in studying the works of
Confucius in the very characters which he
employed, may be reckoned by hundreds of
millions. Time-changing habits and new necessities
have no doubt greatly added to the number of
these characters, and the great master, if now
living, would not be able to interpret, an imperial
rescript, nor examine the paper of a modern
candidate for literary honours. Yet all that the
sage wrote and which is preserved, is intelligible,
and is the substructure of the most widely
extended influence in the world of letters existing
at the present hour.

The fusion of languages is one of the most
striking evidences of progression; the absorption
of dialects by the Latin, about the Christian
era, gave a great impulse to civilisation.
It is by superior instruments of intercourse that
the more cultivated prevail over the less cultivated
races. Imperfect and insufficient idioms
are replaced by those which best supply the
intellectual wants of society. In these islands
the various Celtic dialects, which furnish no
adequate expressions for philosophical science,
disappear in the presence of our nobler English
tongue, with its strong Saxon and Norman
roots, which have intertwined themselves with
so many classical auxiliaries, its multifarious
branches stretching out to seek and find new
forms and phrases suited to the progress of