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LECTURE IX.
In the last lecture, we began a survey of the general dividing lines of human speech, an enumeration and description of the families into which linguistic science has combined the languages thus far brought under her notice. We had time, however, to examine but two of these families, comprehending the tongues of the two great white races which have taken or are taking, after our own, the most conspicuous parts in the history of mankind: they were, on the one hand, the Semitic, a little group of closely related dialects in the south-western corner of Asia, counting as its principal members the Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac; and, on the other hand, the Scythian, an immense aggregation of greatly varying forms of speech, occupying with its five principal branches—the Ugrian, Samoyedic, Turkish, Mongolian, and Tungusic—a very large, but, in part, a not very valuable, portion of the combined continent of Asia and Europe. We have now to complete our work by passing in cursory review the remaining families. The task may be found, as I cannot help fearing, a somewhat tedious one—consisting, as it must do, to no small extent, in going over a
