A convenient starting-point is afforded by the great group of languages known as the Indo-European, Japhetic, or Aryan. From the Ganges to the west coast of Ireland, through Indian, Persian, Greek, Italian, German, Celt, runs one great language--the Sanscrit and the dark Hindoo at one extreme, the Erse and the xanthous Celt at the other. No one now doubts the affinity of this great belt of languages. No one can pretend that any one of these nations learned its language from another. They are all decided branches of a common stock. Lying in and near this area are other nations--as the Arabs, the Syrians, the Jews--speaking languages differing in words and structure--the Semitic tongues. Do these mark a different origin? The philologists answer in the negative, pointing to the features of resemblance which still remain, and above all to certain intermediate tongues of so high antiquity that they are rather to be regarded as root-stocks from which other languages diverged than as mixtures. The principal of these is the ancient Egyptian, represented by the inscriptions on the monuments of that wonderful people, and by the more modern Coptic, which, according to Bunsen and Latham, presents decided affinities to both the great classes previously mentioned, and may be regarded as strictly intermediate in its character. It has accordingly been designated by the term Sub-Semitic.[127] But it shares this character with all or nearly all the other African languages, which bear strong marks of affinity to the Egyptian and Semitic tongues. On this subject Dr. Latham says, "That the uniformity of languages throughout Africa is greater than it is either in Asia or in Europe, is a statement to which I have not the least hesitation in committing myself."[128] To the north the Indo-European area is bounded by a great group of semi-barbarous populations, mostly with Mongolian features, and speaking languages which have been grouped as Turanian. These Turanian languages, on the one hand, graduate without any break into those of the Esquimaux and American Indians; on the other, according to Mueller and Latham, they are united, though less distinctly, with the Semitic and Japhetic tongues. They not improbably represent in more or less altered forms the most primitive stock of language from which both the Semitic and Japhetic groups have branched. Another great area on the coasts and in the islands of the Pacific is overspread by the Malay, which, through the populations of Transgangetic India, connects itself with the great Indo-European line. Mr. Edkins, in his remarkable book on "China's Place in Philology," has collected a large amount of fact tending to show that the early Chinese in its monosyllabic radicals presents root-forms traceable into all the stocks of human speech in the Old World; and the American languages would have furnished him with similar lines of affinity. If we regard physical characters, manners, and customs, and