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do not possess one word ending with a conso-
nant, except the proper names of the originals. The air we breathe, the temperature in which we live, and the objects with which we
are surrounded, acting from day to day upon
body and mind, necessarily produce an effect upon the organs of utterance, and mould them
for harsh or for softer expression. To imagine the daring sea-kings of Scan- dinavia, cradled on the ocean and rocked by
the storm, speaking in melting accents adapted
to the Lydian lute, would be a monstrous and
unnatural supposition: it would be as much out of place as would be the language of Prome- theus, could we imagine him, when riveted to the bleak Scythian rock and defying the ven-
geance of Jove, to be expressing himself in the
liquid melody of an Anacreontic love song.
Whatever, therefore, might be the scanty
vocabulary of the, early progenitors of mankind,
it is obvious that it would be amplified in some
cases, and changed in others, and that generally it would be modified in substance, form, and
enunciation, by the influences of external cir-
cumstances.
The language of the mountaineer would differ widely from that of the inhabitant of the plain;
that of the wanderer of the burning desert from that of the rude and hardy barbarian of the
cold, dark, and damp German forest. The wants
of a people merely pastoral would be few, and
easily expressed; but a people whose territories
might branch out into mountain, and plain, and
forest, who might have flocks, and herds, and
corn-fields, and vineyards, their rivers, and lakes,
and seas, and mines, and minerals, and who
might be daily establishing some interchange of productions with other communities, more or
less remote, would be constantly i…