There is no ancient historical problem of so great interest as that of the Aryas, that mysterious people of whom we talk so much and know so little, as has been pointed out. The movements of the planets, the orbits of comets, have been accurately calculated; Nature is continually being compelled to yield many of her secrets to the patient investigations of science. But of this masterful white race, some of whom, from the high tablelands of Central Asia, swarmed down upon India as conquerors, while others, wandering by the shores of the Caspian Sea, overran Europe to become the progenitors of all that is noblest in mankind, there is no record, no history, and in regard to them even fable is silent. Where there is no writing, not so much as a graven stone, there can be no Champollion, no Rawlinson. The migrations of the Aryas, which meant so much for the children of men, were long unsuspected, and only in recent times realized. Even so, the few men of learning who gave thought to this crucial human enigma were travellers in a dense and dark forest, until in the Cimmerian gloom comparative philology opened out vistas—none too broad—through which they were enabled to gain glimpses of a civilization and people of whom all trace had been lost in the mist of many decades of centuries. Narrow as they were, they afforded the ποῦ στῶ, from which the investigation of the lost history was set in motion. Of this modern learning we must acknowledge Max Müller as the foremost prophet. Bopp, Schlegel, Humboldt, Grimm and Burnouf were great men, but Max Müller, like Saul among the Benjamites, “from his shoulders and upward was higher” than any of them, and he it was who introduced the science of language into this country. To one who, like myself, has been a faithful believer in his teaching, it is a matter of unceasing wonder that there should be men of undoubted scientific and literary merit who hold in opposition to him that the Aryas were originally a European race, who in remote times found their way into Central Asia. This bold theory was started about the year 1839 by a famous Belgian geologist and ethnologist, Omalius d’Halloy, and it was taken up by no less a man than Robert Gordon Latham, by Benfey, Spiegel, Poesche, Penka, Schrader and others. Max Müller appears to attribute the idea to Benfey, a Jew, who was a learned Orientalist and professor of comparative philology at Göttingen. In Vol. IV., page 223, of Max Müller’s “Chips from a German Workshop,” we read: “We have all accustomed ourselves to look for the cradle of the Aryan languages in Asia, and to imagine these dialects flowing like streams from the centre of Asia to the south, the west and the north. I must confess that Professor Benfey’s protest against this theory seems to me very opportune, and his arguments in favour of a more Northern, if not European, origin of the whole Aryan family of speech deserve, at all events, far more attention than they have hitherto received.”