Page:Lytton - The Coming Race (1871).djvu/104

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94
THE COMING RACE.

was, in some not very distant communities of the Vril-ya, vitiated into the half-hissing, halfnasal, wholly disagreeable, sound of Subber. I thought to myself it only wanted the introduction of n before u to render it into an English word significant of the last quality an amorous Gy would desire in her Zummer.

I will but mention another peculiarity in this language which gives equal force and brevity to its forms of expressions.

A is with them, as with us, the first letter of the alphabet, and is often used as a prefix word by itself to convey a complex idea of sovereignty or chiefdom, or presiding principle. For instance, Iva is goodness; Diva, goodness and happiness united; A -Diva is unerring and absolute truth. I have already noticed the value of A in A-glauran, so, in vril (to whose properties they trace their present state of civilisation), A-vril, denotes, as I have said, civilisation itself.

The philologist will have seen from the above how much the language of the Vril-ya is akin to the Aryan or Indo-G ermanic; but, like all languages, it contains words and forms in which transfers