The attempts that have been made to trace the origin of languages to the varieties of our species, or to the influence of climate, have hitherto been fruitless, and the doctrines broached on the obscure subject refuted by observation. Mr. Jefferson states that there are twenty radical languages in America for one in Asia; more than twenty languages, he adds, are still spoken in the kingdom of Mexico, most of which are at least as different from one another as the Greek and the German, the French and the Polish. The variety of idioms spoken by the people of the new continent, and which without the least exaggeration may be stated at some hundreds, offers a very striking phenomenon, particularly when we compare it to the few languages spoken in Asia and in Europe. Vater also informs us, that in Mexico, where the causes producing insulation of the several tribes have been for a long time in a course of diminution, Clavigero recognised thirty-five different languages. Some of these words are rather of difficult pronunciation, and Humboldt tells us that _Notlazomahuiztespixcatatzin_ is the term of respect with which they addressed their priests. During the French revolution, a learned Jacobin discovered that the early Peruvians adored a divinity who patronized the _Sans-culottes_, of their day, and who was named _Cawaltze-quos_, i. e. without breeches. Such barbarous words do not constitute that engaging tongue that Shakspeare calls "_speaking holiday_," but rather confirms Byron's ideas of the Russians' difficult expressions, which no man has leisure to pronounce except on high-days and holidays. Although brutes pronounce no articulate sounds, there is, no doubt but they have a language perfectly intelligible to one another. Their manner of expressing their different emotions is in some instances perfectly distinct; and birds have most decidedly a peculiar language. The following may be said to be the words of a nightingale's strain observed by Bechstein, an ingenious ornithologist, and committed to paper several times while he listened with deep attention to that sweet bird's "complaining notes," that "tune our distresses and record our woes."