First――That the forgery of a language is in itself highly improbable; Secondly――That, if it had been attempted, comparative philology is perfectly capable of detecting it. Taking a large historical view of this subject, we cannot suppress the following reflection: The formation of mighty and civilized states being admitted, even by our strictest chronologers, to have taken place at least twenty-five centuries before our era, it can but appear extraordinary, even after taking in account violent revolutions, that of so multitudinous and great existences, only such scanty documents should have come down to us. But, strange to say, whenever a testimony has escaped the destruction of time, instead of being greeted with a benevolent although discerning curiosity, the unexpected stranger is approached with mistrustful scrutiny, his voice is stifled with severe rebukes, his credentials discarded with scorn, and by a predetermined and stubborn condemnation, resuscitating antiquity is repelled into the tomb of oblivion. I am aware that all dialectical arguments which have been or may be alleged against the probability of forging a language, would be of no avail against well-proved facts, that languages have been forged, and that works, written in them, exist. We may remember the example adduced by Richardson[34] of a language, as he said, “sufficiently original, copious, and regular to impose upon persons of very extensive learning,” forged by Psalmanazar. This was the assumed name of a an individual, whom the eminent Orientalist calls a Jew, but who, born in 1679, in Languedoc or in Provence, of Christian parents, received a Christian, nay theological education, as good as his first instructors, Franciscans, Jesuits, and Dominicans could bestow. This extraordinary person threw himself at a very early age into a career of adventures, in the course of which, at the age of seventeen years, he fell upon the wild project of passing for a native of the island of Formosa, first as one who had been converted to Christianity, then, as still a pagan, he let himself be baptized by a Scotch minister, by whom he was recommended to an English bishop; the latter, in his pious illusion, promoted at once the interests of the convertor, and the fraud of the neophyte.[35] This adventurer who was bold enough, while on the continent, to set about inventing a new character and language, a grammar, and a division of the year into twenty months, published in London, although not twenty years old, a translation of the catechism into his forged language of Formosa, and a history of the island with his own alphabetical writing, which read from right to left――a gross fiction the temporary success of which evinces the then prevailing ignorance in history, geography, and philology. But pious zeal and fanaticism had changed a scientific discussion into a religious quarrel, and for too long a time rendered vain the objections of a few