The resemblances amongst languages are of two kinds,—identity of words, and identity of grammatical forms; the latter being now generally considered as the most important towards the argument. When we inquire into the first kind of affinity among the languages of the Indo-European family, we are surprised at the great number of common terms which exist amongst them, and these referring to such primary ideas, as to leave no doubt of their having all been derived from a common source. Colonel Vans Kennedy presents nine hundred words common to the Sanskrit and other languages of the same family. In the Sanskrit and Persian, we find several which require no sort of translation to an English reader, as _pader_, _mader_, _sunu_, _dokhter_, _brader_, _mand_, _vidhava_; likewise _asthi_, a bone, (Greek, _ostoun_;) _denta_, a tooth, (Latin, _dens_, _dentis_;) _eyeumen_, the eye; _brouwa_, the eye-brow, (German, _braue_;) _nasa_, the nose; _karu_, the hand, (Gr. _cheir_;) _genu_, the knee, (Lat. _genu_;) _ped_, the foot, (Lat. _pes_, _pedis_;) _hrti_, the heart; _jecur_, the liver, (Lat. _jecur_;) _stara_, a star; _gela_, cold, (Lat. _gelu_, ice;) _aghni_, fire, (Lat. _ignis_;) _dhara_, the earth, (Lat. _terra_, Gaelic, _tir_;) _arrivi_, a river; _nau_, a ship, (Gr. _naus_, Lat. _navis_;) _ghau_, a cow; _sarpam_, a serpent. The inferences from these verbal coincidences were confirmed in a striking manner when Bopp and others investigated the grammatical structure of this family of languages. Dr. Wiseman pronounces that the great philologist just named, “by a minute and sagacious analysis of the Sanskrit verb, compared with the conjugational system of the other members of this family, left no doubt of their intimate and positive affinity.” It was now discovered that the peculiar terminations or inflections by which persons are expressed throughout the verbs of nearly the whole of these languages, have their foundations in pronouns; the pronoun was simply placed at the end, and thus became an inflexion. “By an analysis of the Sanskrit pronouns, the elements of those existing in all the other languages were cleared of their anomalies; the verb substantive, which in Latin is composed of fragments referable to two distinct roots, here found both existing in regular form; the Greek conjugations, with all their complicated machinery of middle voice, augments, and reduplications, were here found and illustrated in a variety of ways, which a few years ago would have appeared chimerical. Even our own language may sometimes receive light from the study of distant members of our family. Where, for instance, are we to seek for the root of our comparative _better_? Certainly not in its positive, good, nor in the Teutonic dialects in which the same anomaly exists. But in the Persian we have precisely the same comparative, _behter_, with exactly the same signification, regularly formed from its positive _beh_, good.” {287}