Now the connection between the Greek and Latin languages is a fact that few have denied, and no one has explained. Unless we derive one from the other, we must refer both to some common source. But the locality of this mother tongue is difficult to fix--so difficult that no satisfactory doctrine concerning it has ever been exhibited. Greece is an eminently small area, and Italy is of no great size; for it must be remembered that the ancient country of the nations whose language was allied to the Latin, and, through the Latin, to the Greek, are not found far north of the Tiber, at the beginning of the truly historical period. The Valley of the Arno was Etruscan; the Valley of the Po, Gallic, Etruscan, and Liburnian; so that the northern boundary of the more western of the two classical languages was the Tiber, and that of the most eastern one the Ambracian Gulf--for farther than this it is not safe to carry Ancient Greece. Perhaps it cannot be carried so far. Be this, however, as it may, the scholar who recognises the fundamental affinity between the Greek and Latin languages, and at the same time requires either an _original geographical continuity_ or a _series of migrations_ to account for it, has a vast mass of difficulties to deal with: and I cannot think that these have ever been fairly met. The intervening area which lies between the Hellenes and Italians is of no ordinary magnitude. It is not only larger than either Greece or Italy separately, but larger than both put together. It is this if we give it the most favourable conditions imaginable. It is this if we suppose that, on the head of the Adriatic Gulf, there existed in early times a population from which the Italians on one side, and the Greeks on the other, are descended--at the head of the Adriatic Gulf, and no where else. I limit this hypothetical population to a small area, because, as no trace of its existence can be found, the smaller it is supposed to have been, the more easily its extinction is accounted for; and I place it in a locality equidistant to Greece and Italy, because, by so doing, the amount of its extension is diminished. The more distant we make it, the more improbable that extension becomes; and the larger it is, the more improbable its disappearance. I have put it, then, under the most favourable conditions. Yet, even here, its position is eminently doubtful. The first nations which we meet with in these quarters are the Liburnians; and few have a less claim to be considered either Greek or Italian, or, yet, intermediate to the two.