“A tree,” he thus reasoned, “is known by its leaves, a stone by its grit, a flower by the smell, meats by the taste, music by the ear, colours by the eye,” and, in short, all the several natures of things by the qualities or aspects with which they address themselves to the senses or the intellect. And it is from these obvious traits of similarity or difference that the several classes are portioned by the associative faculty into the corresponding cells of understanding and memory. But it is not thus with words in any of the existing languages. Things the most opposite in nature are often represented by signs so similar that they can hardly be distinguished, and things of the same class by signs entirely different. Language is thus formed so loosely and unskilfully, that the associative faculty cannot be brought to bear on it;--one great cause why foreign languages are so difficult to learn, and when once learned, so readily forgotten. And there is a radical defect in the alphabets of all languages; for in all, without exception, do the nominal number of letters fall far short of the real, a single character being arbitrarily made to represent a variety of sounds. Hence it happens that the people of one country cannot acquaint themselves by books alone with the pronunciation of another. The words, too, proper to express without circumvolution all the multiform ideas of the human mind, are not to be found in any one tongue; and though the better languages have borrowed largely from each other to supply their several deficiencies, even the more perfect are still very incomplete. Hence the main difficulty of translation. Some languages are fluent without exactness. Hence an unprofitable wordiness, devoid of force and precision. Others, comparatively concise, are harsh and inharmonious. Hence, perhaps, the grand cause why some of the civilized nations (the Dutch for instance), though otherwise ingenious, make but few advances compared with others, in philology and the _belles-lettres_.