Asia, of America, and of Africa. The Chinese must be considered as the most important and remarkable language of this class, precisely because it best answers to the character of a monosyllabic speech totally destitute of grammar, and has attained to as high a degree of refinement and perfection as languages of this kind are susceptible of. This is the stage of infancy in language, as children's first attempts at speech almost always incline to monosyllables--it is the cry of nature which breaks out in these simple sounds, or the infantine imitation of some natural sound. This primitive character is still to be clearly traced in the Chinese; although a very artificial mode of writing, and the high degree of refinement to which science has been carried, have given a mighty extension, and a quite conventional character, to this infant language. For any parallels or analogies which may be drawn between the periods of natural life and the epochs of intellectual culture must never be understood in an exact and literal sense. The next degree in this pyramid of speech is occupied by the noble languages of the second class, and this race of languages, which are connected with each other by strong and manifold ties of affinity, are the Indo-Persic, the Græco-Latin, and the Gothico--Teutonic[55]. Here the roots are, for the most part at least, dyssyllabic; and these roots, which are by this means internally flexible, and become as it were living and productive, afford room and occasion for a more varied grammatical structure. The distinguishing character of these languages is a very artificial grammar, which enters so completely into the primary formation of these languages, that the nearer we approach their original the more regular and systematic do we find their structure. In their progress these languages are characterized by a poetical fullness and variety in the forms of narration, and even by a rigid precision in scientific discussions.