manifested by the harmony which exists between mi, (*)ni, tu on the one side, and mi, ni, ti on the other side of the channel of demarcation; as rather the agreement which is here exhibited between the whole system on the left, and the whole system on the right. It is along the several horizontal lines that the intimate concord of the dialects is to be discerned, rather than by comparing a couple of the vertical. By looking along the horizontal line we perceive that each pronoun has three or four forms, and that there is a striking correspondence in these forms as they appear in the Irish and Welsh respectively. In each there is the simple or single form,-in each there is the habit of lengthening or doubling the pronoun--each has the use of inserting a characteristic consonant of the pronoun between the verbal particle and the verb,--and each has the habit of attaching a similar letter to the end of a preposition, which becomes thus invested with a personal relation. Hence there are in each language four forms of the personal pronoun,-1. The simple ; 2. The double form; 3. That in the middle position; 4. That in a final position.

We may add a few examples of each. They are in archaic forms, being chiefly drawn from the old Laws and the Mabinogion.

1.The simple pronoun.

Mi a wnaf-I will do.
eryfassam ny-we have enumerated.
pei caffwn dewis ar holl wraged, mae ti a dewisswn-if I had choice of all

women, thee would I choose. ewch chwi drachefyn-go ye back. II.-The double pronoun.

Myvi a rannaf-I will divide.
yr ymdidan goreu a wypom ninneu—the best tale we know.
agwedy na welont hwy dydi—and since they have not seen thee.

weithon chwitheu bieu talu-now ye ought to pay. III.-The inserted or middle pronoun.

pei nam goganewch mi a gyskwn—if ye did not disturb me I should sleep. mynwn heb y gweisson mynn a gwr an gwnaeth-we wish it, said the boys, by

the man who made us. mi ath amdiffynaf os gallaf-I will set thee at liberty, if I can. mi ach differaf-I will defend you. Zeuss has given this phase of the pronoun the name of infixed, because in the Irish the verbal particle and the pronoun and verb are written as one word. IV.-The pronoun in the final position.

amdanaf-about me.
genhym-with us.
ragot-before thee.
wrthych-with you.

Now

every feature of this diversified pronoun is found to have its

counterpart in the Irish, as any one may see by the examples given in the work before us. Finding, then, minute correspondencies in all

. the parts and relations of such a complex system as this, we must recognize the operation of identical or kindred minds, and we must conclude that it was not such a very remote era comparatively speaking) when these peoples and tongues, who are now two, were still living as a single undispersed and unsevered human family.

The above table of pronouns supplies the eye with a rapid proof of the harmony which exists between the two branches of the Celtic; but it also ministers a proof of a different kind to the same effect, a proof which, though not so rapidly scanned by the eye, is equally palpable and full of conviction for the mind. The pronouns under comparison in the table are so manifestly identical in three out of the four cases, that the mind is taken by surprise when it comes to sib, and finds it offered as the counterpart of chwi. It looks as if one or other of the Celtic sisters had, since their estrangement, adopted a new word into the place of that which they brought from their common home. But even if the parallelism of the pronominal systems were at fault in this particular, we should not be at a loss to justify the preservation of sib and chwi on the comparative table. When our attention is no longer occupied by the identity of the material before us, we are more open to attend to that identity of mould in which the two have so obviously been cast.

Whatever quarter of the world sib may have brought its strange face from, it has so completely adapted itself to its position, that it is as much at home as chwi itself, and you might question which of the two were the interloper, did not both the minor dialects give their voice for the aboriginal claims of chwi. Sib displays itself in all the required variety of form, single, double, middle, and final; so that as far as its relation to the pronominal system is concerned, nothing can be more accommodating and faultless. So that if sib be an adventitious word, our proof sustains indeed a loss in regard to the radical identity of the Irish and Welsh pronouns, but it is more than made up by such an exhibition of force as that which would compel a foreign element to adapt itself to so intricate a form. This so tenacious and so strongly marked a form being common to the Irish, with the Welsh, can be explained only on the supposition that they both drew life from the same spring.

And the evolution of this agreement in form, with difference of material, is so important that we shall not consider we have wasted words about it, even if our particular example should prove unsubstantial. The thing itself is very real, and, in languages which have been much subjected to foreign influences, very common. Languages so pure as the Celtic family do not so readily offer good illustrations of this action, as those which underwent the confusions and intermixtures of the middle ages. So that we have been fain to shut our eyes for a while to an oversight that might very naturally be imagined

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se

sen

to take place, in order to avail ourselves thereby of hypothetical illustration.

The truth is, si and chwi are identical, and their wide apparent difference dwindles down to a mere variety of phase when we recognize the law under which it falls. It is not a peculiarity of the Celtic race, but a principle admitting of examples within the circle of most families of languages, that ch (h) and s are sounds produced by conterminous action of our organs, and therefore that they easily pass over one into the other.

It often happens that where one dialect has a guttural, a sister dialect has a sibilant. The following examples may serve to demonstrate the mutation as a stated law between the Welsh and Irish :24 Welsh.

Irish.
chwant

Saint
chwech
chwaer

siair
hen
hir

sior
halen

salaun It will easily be inferred that si and chwi are only two phases of the same word ; and thus our table of pronouns turns out to be quite a microcosm of etymological concordances, its apparent default being not only no diminution, but acting really as a multiplier of its force. In the case which we have been examining, the Cornish and the Breton preserve the guttural.

Of these two minor Cambrian dialects, as they may be called, the Breton seems to come nearer to the Welsh than the Cornish. This may perhaps be partly due to the preservative influence of respectability and literature on a language, as we need scarcely be afraid to assert that there was less mental cultivation in the promontory of Cornubia than in that of Armorica. But it may also be owing to a disparity in regard to the era of severance from the common stock. If the Cornish language assumed a separate existence earlier than the Armorican, its greater divergence from the Welsh is fully accounted for. We may here call to mind the old tradition which said that when Arthur was defeated in his struggles against Saxon conquest, great numbers of the British fled back over the sea to the land from which their fathers had emigrated. The existence of such a tradition, and the fact of a language in Bretagne so nearly allied to the Cymraeg, are, moreover, great auxiliaries to the conclusion which our author has arrived at touching the dialectic position of the ancient language of Gaul.

Although we cannot put implicit confidence in the story of a counter-emigration from Britain to Bretagne, yet we may rely pretty securely on the consciousness of natural affinity which such a tradition manifests. The vagueness of oral tradition is not without its limit; its combinations are often fanciful, but they are never unnatural; that which began in fact, grows into seeming fiction by an incongruous chronological position, relation and sequence; sometimes unappropriated, it oscillates or circulates in such a manner as to confuse the seeker who is bent on determining where is the beginning, middle, and end of the tale, or what is that point in external history on which he ought to belay it. Guided by this view, we venture to attach credit to the tradition in question, so far as it is an indication that the British, who were invaded by the Saxons, were at that period sensible of their unity of race and language with the Gauls of the continent. This is quite in accordance with the results of Professor Zeuss, derived from an etymological comparison of the remains of the ancient Gallic language with the Celtic of Britain. He concludes that the Gauls of the Roman period spoke the language now represented by the Welsh, rather than a dialect akin to the Irish, from the following observations :

Gallic words have frequently the initial P, which in Irish is Very rare. This branch of the Celts seems to have rejected the letter when it stood at the beginning of words, or to have adopted the gutteral c in the place of it. Examples of the former case are athir (=pater), iasg (piscis, Welsh pysg); of the latter, cia, ce, cid (= Welsh pa, pe, pui, Lat. quis, quæ, quid); cethir (W. petuar); coic (W. pimp); cenn (W. pen); cland (W. plant); craun (W. pren); each (Old Welsh, paup). This being the genius of the Irish, Professor Zeuss contends that such words as Petuaria, petorritum, pempedula, Penninum jugum, and others, which the classics have preserved to us bearing a P in an initial or prominent position, are more probably of the Welsh than of the Irish stock. On this we may remark that the only consideration which forbids us to pronounce such evidence quite conclusive, is the limited period to which our retrospective view of these languages is confined. We know not at what epoch the Irish aversion to be letter P became so pronounced. We know that languages are apt in their career to adopt arbitrary likings and dislikings, and it is from the combined effect of these that dialects of a common parentage acquire individual characters. But it is of vital importance for the

objects of comparative philology, that the dates, or at least the comparative antiquity, of such divergence, should, as far as possible, be ascertained, for otherwise we are in the dark, and dare not base arguments upon such peculiarities.

If we compare the present Welsh name of the Severn, Hafren, with the genuine old form which the Latin name, Sabrina, has preserved, we see clearly that the Cymru have within historic time dropped the initial sibilant, and have taken the guttural (or aspirate) in its place. Numerous examples of this change are exhibited in p. 144 (vol. i.),

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and such as can hardly fail to convince the reader. The Welsh hwyl (=sail) is in Irish seol; hen (Lat. senex); hir (Irish sir=long); haul (Lat. sol). But as this point has already been touched above, in the comparison of chwi and si, we will only add one remarkable example. That very active prefix of the present Welsh Hy, so extensively used in the sense of the English suffix,—able, (e. g. hygar =amiable, hygof=memorable), is believed by our author to be modernized from an ancient Su, which we find in the Gallic names Suessiones, Suanetes, Sucarus, and others. Other innovations of equal significance might be quoted (e. g. the well known one of m into f) which have occurred within our historical knowledge.

Now the oldest extant monument of the Irish language is a Latin Priscian in the Monastery of St. Gall, with interlinear Irish glosses. This appears to be of the eighth or ninth century, and accordingly it can afford us no positive evidence of the state of the language classical

age. We do not pretend to combat the conclusions of Professor Zeuss, as to the Cambrian classification of the ancient Gallic, but we observe, that the argument from the P can only amount to a certain degree of probability; it cannot be pronounced decisive. Not only within our own era, but within half the extent which it has now run, we find that the Welsh dialect had changed the S-initial into H; that, further, within the range of extant Welsh literature, internal and final M's have shrivelled up into F's—we cannot therefore help reflecting that the change which has come over the Irish dialect with regard to the P, may have had its rise within the historical period, and so may have had no existence at the time when the words Petuaria, Penninum, &c., were committed to writing. Still, all allowances made for this possibility, we allow that the presumption remains in favour of our author's view.

His other reasons for considering the Gallic to be Cambrian may be briefly summed up. Both the Gallic and the British have a liking for the gw; the prefixing a vowel before sp, st, sc; for the plural formation in et (modern ed, as in merched); the singular termination en, (as in afallen); and especially the syllable Gwer, which is not found in Irish, and which we are so familiar with in the British Vortigern, (written by Nennius, Guerthigernus), and in the Gallic Veragri, Vergasillaunus, Vercingetorix, and others, preserved to us in Cæsar.

In the work which we have been reviewing, the Manks and the Highland Gaelic, which are the lesser branches of the Irish family, are scarcely noticed, not so much (we imagine) for lack of material available for the purposes of a Comparative Grammar, as from the scarcity of books in which their ancient forms are registered.

Our author says in his Preface that the Manks is a more strongly marked dialect than the Highland Gaelic, and we should have been curious to see some of its forms ranged beside those of the more important sister-dialect. Spoken by a smaller population, and not enjoying the same advantages of literature, we might naturally expect

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