The second great family is the _Syro-Phœnician_, comprising the Hebrew, Syro-Chaldaic, Arabic, and Gheez or Abyssinian, being localized principally in the countries to the west and south of the Mediterranean. Beyond them, again, is the African family, which, as far as research has gone, seems to be in like manner marked by common features, both verbal and grammatical. The fourth is the Polynesian family, extending from Madagascar on the west through all the Indian Archipelago, besides taking in the Malayan dialect from the continent of India, and comprehending Australia and the islands of the western portion of the Pacific. This family, however, bears such an affinity to that next to be described, that Dr. Leyden and some others do not give it a distinct place as a family of languages. The fifth family is the Chinese, embracing a large part of China, and most of the regions of Central and Northern Asia. The leading features of the Chinese are, its consisting altogether of monosyllables, and being destitute of all grammatical forms, except certain arrangements and accentuations, which vary the sense of particular words. It is also deficient in some of the consonants most conspicuous in other languages, b, d, r, v, and z; so that this people can scarcely pronounce our speech in such a way as to be intelligible: for example, the word Christus they call _Kuliss-ut-oo-suh_. The Chinese, strange to say, though they early attained to a remarkable degree of civilization, and have preceded the Europeans in many of the most important inventions, have a language which resembles that of children, or deaf and dumb people. The sentence of short, simple, unconnected words, in which an infant amongst us attempts to express some of its wants and its ideas—the equally broken and difficult terms which the deaf and dumb express by signs, as the following passage of the Lord’s Prayer:—“Our Father, heaven in, wish your name respect, wish your soul’s kingdom providence arrive, wish your will do heaven earth equality,” &c.—these are like the discourse of the refined people of the so-called Celestial Empire. An attempt was made by the Abbé Sicard to teach the deaf and dumb grammatical signs; but they persisted in restricting themselves to the simple signs of ideas, leaving the structure undetermined by any but the natural order of connexion. Such is exactly the condition of the Chinese language.