The evidence furnished by language in support of the proposition suggested above, viz., that its roots or elements do not consist either of Nouns or Verbs, but of sounds which constitute the common basis of both, will be found, I conceive, to derive direct confirmation from an examination of the faculties employed in the formation of language, and the order of their development. Man is endowed with two faculties of a very different nature, of which language seems to be the joint product, viz., with powers of imitation and powers of reflection. Now the elementary sounds, or roots of language, may be viewed as exclusively the work of the imitative propensity; the steady appropriation of these elements as recognized descriptions of actions and objects seems, on the other hand, to be the result of the progressive growth and of the reiterated subsequent exercise of the functions of Memory and Abstraction. Thus we find infants mimic sounds long before we can suppose their minds to be sufficiently developed permanently to associate such sounds with particular objects; afterwards, as their faculties are gradually unfolded, these imitations are appropriated as names. Accordingly we find that almost all children are in the habit of using a certain number of words thus formed, which are understood and employed by the guardians and companions of their infancy.(89) An instructive example of the natural activity of those mental qualities to which language first owed its existence—an activity which is repressed by no other cause than by the maturity of languages in use, which fully meet all the exigencies of the social state! The vehement gesticulations of uncivilized tribes is another manifestation of the imitative propensity. Nor are the vestiges of its influence among civilized nations altogether confined to the period of childhood. They may be recognized in the marked, though generally unconscious, disposition we feel to select words imitative of the ideas we seek to convey, and in the pleasure we derive from works of imagination, in which the sound is rendered “an echo of the sense,” in conformity to the critical rule of classical antiquity. Of the sublime associations called forth by a happy appeal to the imitative faculty, we possess a fine example in the lines of the great living Poet, which, with a fastidiousness as marvellous as the genius by which they were conceived, he proposed to cancel, as being “Drum and Trumpet lines!”(90) “On Linden when the sun was low All bloodless lay the untrodden snow, And dark as winter was the flow Of Iser rolling rapidly. “But Linden saw another sight When the trump blew at dead of night, Commanding fires of death to light The darkness of her scenery! “By torch and trumpet fast array’d Each warrior drew his battle blade, And furious every courser neigh’d To join the dreadful revelry!” (Campbell’s “Hobenlinden.”)