hieroglyphics under the personal direction of Champollion, he took copies of the most important drawings and manuscript works of his teacher, part of which are still inaccessible to the public, and with the greatest liberality he opened to me his important collections, and allowed me the freest use of them. Under the auspices of the Sardinian government he is occupying himself with a comprehensive work on the Rosetta inscriptions, specimens of which he communicated to me. He also gave me a verbal explanation of the details. I thus became acquainted in the most rapid and thorough manner with the real value of the system of Champollion, and the development which it has thus far attained. It is true that the principal doubts which I had entertained were not entirely removed, but I believed in the difficulties which still remained to see, not a refutation of the system, but only a want of completeness. Especially I became aware that many difficulties might be removed when some other linguistic standpoint than that previously employed should be adopted. At the same time it seemed to me of the greatest importance to come to a positive opinion as to the relation of the Egyptian language to the other civilized languages of the ancient world, and to my great satisfaction I have now arrived at the conviction that the primitive Egyptian language is by no means so far removed from the Semitic and Indo-Germanic as, on a superficial examination, it has hitherto been almost universally considered. I believe that I shall not in all subsequent investigations into Egyptian antiquity allow myself to lose sight of this comparative point of view, since the great interest which the history of Egyptian civilization offers, as one of the most ancient of which we have a general historical knowledge, is without doubt greatly increased when we learn to know it also in its original relation to other civilizations. It also seems to me a worthy and useful task to draw the Egyptian people within the circle of those great groups of nations, whose most ancient history has in modern times acquired an altogether different aspect by means of the comparison of languages. I propose to preface my Coptic grammar with a special chapter on the relation of the Egyptian to the Semitic and Indo-Germanic primitive languages. I most respectfully beg you, Herr General Secretary, to present to the most favorable consideration of the very worshipful Academy two treatises in which I have attempted to prove the linguistic relationship of these two families of language. These papers treat of distinct points which would find no place in the Coptic Grammar. The first relates to the numerical words, the second to the arrangement of the alphabet, among the different nations.