The Arabic language is distinguished among those that know it for its _beauty_, and among those who are learning it for its _difficulty_. To the Arabs their language is not only the language of revelation, but of the Revealer himself. Allah speaks Arabic in heaven, and on the day of judgment will judge the world in this “language of the angels.” All other tongues are vastly inferior in grammatical construction, and what else could they be since the Koran with its classical perfection has existed before all words, uncreated, written on the preserved tablet in heaven, the daily delight of the innumerable company of angels! As Renan says, “among a people so preoccupied with language as the Arabs, the _language_ of the Koran became as it were a second religion, a sort of dogma inseparable from Islam.” But the innate beauty of the language is acknowledged by all who have made it a study, whether born on the soil of Arabia or educated in the universities of Europe. From the days of the Dutch scholars, De Dieu, Schultens, Schroeder and Scheid, and the Swiss Hottinger to the times of Nöldeke, Gesenius and Renan, the praises of Arabic have been proclaimed in Europe, and its study pursued with a devotion that almost amounted to a passion. The elements of beauty in this language are many. There is first its logical structure, which, we are told, surpasses that of any other language. Even the order of the alphabet is more logical as regards form than the Hebrew; its grammar is altogether logical; the exceptions to its rules can be formed, so to say, into a syllogism. Palmer’s and Lansing’s grammars show how this logical structure can be discovered in the minutest detail, so that, _e. g._, the three short vowels control the forms not only, but the significance of roots, and are the key to the interpretation of all grammatical mysteries.