There are other points on which we should join issue with Dr. Haug--as, for instance, when, on page 17, he calls the Zend the elder sister of Sanskrit. This seems to us in the very teeth of the evidence so carefully brought together by himself in his Zend grammar. If he means the modern Sanskrit, as distinguished from the Vedic, his statement would be right to some extent; but even thus, it would be easy to show many grammatical forms in the later Sanskrit more primitive than their corresponding forms in Zend. These, however, are minor points compared with the great results of his labours which Dr. Haug has brought together in these four Essays; and we feel certain that all who are interested in the study of ancient language and ancient religion will look forward with the greatest expectations to Dr. Haug's continued investigations of the language, the literature, the ceremonial, and the religion of the descendants of Zoroaster. _December, 1862._ VI. PROGRESS OF ZEND SCHOLARSHIP.[47] There are certain branches of philological research which seem to be constantly changing, shifting, and, we hope, progressing. After the key to the interpretation of ancient inscriptions has been found, it by no means follows that every word can at once be definitely explained, or every sentence correctly construed. Thus it happens that the same hieroglyphic or cuneiform text is rendered differently by different scholars; nay, that the same scholar proposes a new rendering not many years after his first attempt at a translation has been published. And what applies to the decipherment of inscriptions applies with equal force to the translation of ancient texts. A translation of the hymns of the Veda, or of the Zend-Avesta, and, we may add, of the Old Testament too, requires exactly the same process as the deciphering of an inscription. The only safe way of finding the real meaning of words in the sacred texts of the Brahmans, the Zoroastrians, or the Jews, is to compare every passage in which the same word occurs, and to look for a meaning that is equally applicable to all, and can at the same time be defended on grammatical and etymological grounds. This is no doubt a tedious process, nor can it be free from uncertainty; but it is an uncertainty inherent in the subject itself, for which it would be unfair to blame those by whose genius and perseverance so much light has been shed on the darkest pages of ancient history. To those who are not acquainted with the efforts by which Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and Rawlinson unravelled the inscriptions of Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, it may seem inexplicable, for instance, how an inscription which at one time was supposed to confirm the statement, known from Herodotus, that Darius obtained the sovereignty of Persia by the neighing of his horse, should now yield so very different a meaning. Herodotus relates that after the assassination of Smerdis the six conspirators agreed to