to all modern tongues, became again grossly barbarized and died. By what route the progenitors of the Oscans, Sabines, Itali, and Umbrians came from the original cradle of the human race, is not clearly known. They were evidently kindred to the Pelasgi of the Morea, and used the Phœnician alphabet. Their dress and national symbol, the eagle, were Lydian, and their theology, like the more refined system of the Greeks, was derived from the remotest East. The Romans were composite from the first, and in every thing. The septi-montium upon which their primitive city stood, was occupied by different tribes. If we may trust mythical tradition, a Latin tribe had their settlement on mount Palatine, and a Sabine community occupied the adjacent Quirinal and Capitoline heights. Mutual jealousy kept them a long time separate, but at length the privilege of intermarriage was conceded, and the different tribes became one people. The Etruscans were of purest Pelasgian origin, and for a long period possessed the greatest civilizing power in the West. When subdued politically, they still left the most indelible stamp on the arts and fortunes of the Roman people. These ethnical affinities are correlative to the linguistic affinities of the great martial cycle, and best indicate out of what elements its language was composed. The ancient Latin alphabet was an offshoot from primitive Greek, and evidently came from the same source. Its later departure from the original current, and modifications of its forms, are all traceable through the means of inscriptions on funereal urns, coins, and historical monuments. The alphabets of Gaul, Germany, Etruria, and Spain, were formed from the Greek; and even the Latin letters may be termed the universal alphabet, for it was the immediate parent of all the present modes of writing. But this mother-tongue did not, like its nobler parent, proceed from a single germ, and gradually unfold by a natural growth. It merged in the bosom of foreign elements, and presented great and striking contrasts in its progress. In the Republic it was like the people, high-minded, and competent for the debate of mighty interests; under regal or imperial sway, it became the fitting medium of an extravagant court, cramped and debauched by foreign manners. At the epoch of Livius Andronicus, B.C. 240, or the first Punic war, the language was elicited from various dialects, and consolidated into the vernacular of a whole people. The Oscan, Sabine, and Etrurian, or Tuscan, were the leading native elements; but the primitive Greek, or Pelasgic, was early blended with the Latin, greatly enriching it, and imparting to it the chief basis of its forms. From the first Punic to the first civil war, B.C. 88, was a period of marked improvement. Increased intercourse with the Greeks, after the second Punic war, greatly improved their native literature, aroused and directed all their energies to practical life, and the affairs of state.