any more particular account of the whole transaction, than the two tracts published in the "Miscellanea Scotica. May we expect to see any continuation of "Chalmers's Caledonia?" I referred to it, as a very likely work to give me the information wanted; but found that Argyleshire, the seat of this affair of Glencoe, has not yet been noticed.

I would, at the same time, feel obliged for any account of the Mac Eans, who were a branch of the celebrated clan Donald. In Buchanan's "Inquiry into the Genealogy of the Highland Clans," reprinted at Glasgow, 1820, it is stated that an

Angus M'Donald had two sons, Alexander and John;""Alexander was his successor in the chieftainship of the M'Donalds, and John was the ancestor of the Mac Eans of Ardnamurchan."

These Mac Eans are seldom mentioned in subsequent history; they seem to have dwelt amongst, and remained in complete dependence on the original clan. In 1586, one of them, "John Mac Ean" occurs, as having married the mother of Sir Lauchlan Maclean, of the Island of Jura; but on the night of his marriage "he was seized by Sir Lauchlan, himself made prisoner, and eighteen of his clan slain." In 1598, a battle took place between the clan Donald and this same Sir Lauchlan Maclean, concerning the inheritance of the Isle of Ila, when about thirty of the clan Donald were slain," with many of the Mac Eans." In 1691, an "Archibald Mac Ean,' "alias "Mackean," is recorded to have been a celebrated prophet or seer;" he resided at Glencoe in Argyleshire, and with his clan and the Macdonalds took up arms in favour of King James ; the consequence of which rebellion was the before-mentioned massacre, which took place there on the 13th of Feb. 1692.

"

From this massacre, Archibald, with two relations (either brothers or sons) is supposed to have escaped; and I think them to have been the individuals said to have settled in the Lowlands about that period; but of this circumstance I am uncertain, and shall be very thankful for any assistance in discovering either its truth or falsity; if it prove true, I would like to know if any of their descendants now remain? I have been informed, that there are Mackeans now living in Scotland, who bear the Macdonald

117

I LATELY visited the Cathedral of Chichester, and was much gratified to observe the judicious restorations made in that venerable edifice. A chief attraction to strangers is the statue lately put up to the memory of Mr. Huskisson. It is not only a very correct likeness, but the attitude and execution do infinite credit to the sculptor, Mr. Carew. Mr. Huskisson is represented in the habit of a Roman senator, with a scroll in his hand, preparing to speak. I must confess I cannot bring myself to approve of such representations in a Christian Church. If the statue had been designed for a public hall, or exchange, or any place but where it is, I should say that nothing could be more appropriate, or designed in better taste; but in a Church, where devotional acts should be exhibited, or devotional feelings excited, the figure of an eminent Mammonist, in heathenish costume, preparing to make an oration on free trade, or the bullion question, seems quite out of place, Mr. Huskisson was one of the most amiable men in private life, and I believe a very sincere Christian; and it would not certainly have lessened him in the estimation of any of his friends, or political admirers, had his effigy been represented more in unison with the sanctity of a Christian Church. It is true there are endless examples of this kind of profanation; the figure of Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy in Westminster Abbey, and the huge rawboned figure of Dr. Johnson, like a brawny blacksmith, in St. Paul's, are two examples, among many others, of this vitiated taste. The effigy of the semi-barbarous crusader, with uplifted hands, in the attitude of supplication, is much more congenial to the sentiments of a Christian, than these heathenish exhibitions. As some of your readers will agree with me on this subject, you will perhaps give these remarks a place in your Magazine; which, above all other periodical publications of the present day, is devoted to the cause of religion.

MR. URBAN,

IN my first letter, (inserted in your Jan. number, p. 41,) I endeavoured to show the very strange application of the Analogia Linguæ Græcæ to the task of deriving real nouns like λόγος, νόμος, φθόρος, from forms of the verb sometimes real, as popa; much oftener imaginary, as λέλογα, νένομα, &c. I pointed out still greater extravagance in the application of that Analogy to the generating of κρίμα, κρίσις, κριτής, from κέκριμαι, κέκρισαι, κέκριται. And I concluded with the promise of a second letter, to place the whole matter in a new point of view.

Let me now endeavour to fulfil that engagement. I address myself, confessedly, to those persons, who on rational conviction believe, that verbs and nouns, like γράφω and δοῦλος, in all their flexions, were originally composed of the verb or noun in its crude state, ypad.. and dovλ... with certain lesser words or parts of words, w and os, &c. themselves also significant; although in the small vestiges now extant, that primary state and signification of those original letters cannot often be very clearly detected.

The natural tendency of the Greek language, quite obvious on comparing the ancient forms in Homer with the settled and reduced forms in Xenophon, was certainly this: to contract the vowels, to drop or to crush the consonants, and generally to shift and to shorten the elements, especially those in the formative syllables, into certain agreeable sounds, which, when once adopted, never afterwards suffered alteration.

Thus, then, δαήμεναι became δαῆναι, and πυλέων πυλῶν, while most probably γράψω was formed from γραφέσω ; and quite certainly Kúveσw was either lengthened into Kúveσow, or shortened into kvolv: Homer exhibits both those forms, and Xenophon of course has the latter only.

But mark one consequence, which might almost a priori be expected from this demonstrable and admitted process of nature. In the variable

parts of words, originally different, but consisting of elements not very unlike to one another, those different sounds would converge to one sound, and terminate in that, itself the pleasantest common tendency of many.

You ask for examples. Take a few by way of specimen : more of the same sort are abundantly at hand.

From δαμάω and δέμω, domo and struo, you have dédunka, the very same; from λείβω and λείπω, λείψω is equally the future: as πείσομαι represents the future middle from Tévew and from πείθω alike.

These instances are not merely individual and rare; a considerable number of similar kind might easily be collected. But the following cases of a more general nature exist in large classes, not in decads, but in hundreds, or in tens of hundreds, more probably.

From γράφω you have γράφει in the third person, and from ypápoμai you have (Attice) in the second, equally γραφει : from γράφω you have γράφουσι, scribunt, and you have ypápovoi (scribentibus) from ypádov. Again, you have the same form γραφόντων, whether it corresponds in Latin to scribunto or to scribentium; and the very same ypável, whether its Latin equivalent be scribet or scriptioni.

Now, in several of these instances, we have positive certainty for one of the ambiguous forms; when for the other we may claim little more perhaps than a negative assurance.

Thus, γράφει, from γράφομαι, was originally ypápeσai: from ypάow, assuredly, it must have been something else.

Then, γράφουσι, from γράφω, was (Holice) γράφοντι: from γράφων, t was yрapóvтeo, no doubt, in its original form. Even so, there is sufficient dissimilitude!

What γραφόντων, in either of its ambiguities, originally was, I pretend not to say; for it helps us but little to know, that in the sense of scribunto the form ypaperwσav prevailed in its stead.

Nor is it an easy matter to conjec

Ego sum pastor ille bonus.

Io sono il pastor buono.

Deus est creator et rector mundi.

Dio e il creatore ed il rettore del mondo.

The Latin with the Spanish:
Roma est civitas antiqua.

Roma es una cuidad antigua.

The German with the English :

Ein vogel in der hand ist besser als zwei in dem busch.

One fowl (bird) in the hand is better than two in the bush.

The Danish with the English :

Giv os i dag vort daglige bröd. Give us this day our daily bread. The Greek with the Romaic, as given by Lord Byron,

̓Εν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, &c.

Εις τὴν ἀρχὴν ἦτον ὁ λόγος, &c.

Now, if two thousand years, with the inroads of conquerors, and the common intercourse of nations, have made only the slight changes shewn in the foregoing examples, in what time will a language be worn out of all likeness to its mother tongue, or a sister dialect, so as to be wholly different in words and construction? Not in less than twice the time, or four thousand years, which will reach to the Babylonian dispersion; so that nations which have wholly different speeches, cannot easily be proved to be descended from the same race, but inasmuch as they are the offspring of the family of Noah,

We shall find more proofs of the slow change of languages in some of the writings of the middle ages. What great difference is there between the Italian of Dante or Petrarca, and that of Italian writers of this time? between the Welsh of old Taliesin Ben Beirdd, and the Bards of the modern Eisteddvodau? or even between the church dialect of the Slavonian of the ninth century, and the Russian? We know, however, that little languages give place to others, and are sometimes wholly lost, like the Cornish dialect of the British for example; but this happens only when a great extending nation overspread the land, bringing another language with them; as the English has expelled the Celtic dialects from some parts of Britain, and the American ones from some parts of the New World. But if, for instance, a Celtic dialect has yielded to the

Basque in Spain, what traces have we of the spreading nation which spoke the Basque, which is wholly different from all the tongues of the earth.

In tracing nations by their customs we should be very careful not to take those customs which have been common to several nations, as proofs of descent from any; for we know that different nations have sometimes the same customs, and branches of the same nation have often different ones.

The Celts, we know, were commonly buried under barrows, the most easily made and lasting monuments where stoneworking is unknown; and accordingly Virgil speaks of a "tumu+ over the grave of Anchises:

lus

Advocat Æneas, tumulique ex aggere fatur."

The sun was once worshipped in England (by the Saxons) as well as at Palmyra; because mankind in the early state of society commonly worship natural bodies, and of those the most striking ones they may happen to know. Human victims have been offered at Tyre, as well as in Britain and in the South Sea Islands. Water is in all religions the symbol of purity of soul, because it is every where the great cleanser of the body; and nearly all wild tribes use the bow and arrow, and adopt the cone for the shape of their tents and huts, because it fits best with the materials and tools they use; and the altars put up by Jacob at Bethel, and Balach when with Balaam, were most likely rude cromlechs like those of the Celts.

Again, the Highlanders of Scotland and the Irish are equally Celts; but the Highlanders have clans, plaids, and pibrochs, which the Irish have not. The English and Dutch are Goths; but the English build their houses with the side to the street, and the Dutch with the gable end outward.

The Britons had their Druids, the Hindoos have the Brahmins. The Britons painted or tattooed their bodies, and so do some wild tribes of the other hemisphere. Polygamy was common among the old nations of the East, and so it is with the Turks, a The Greeks took many Tartar race. things from the Egyptians; and Gothic, nations of this time build nearly as much in the Grecian manner as their W. BARNES.

own.

1832.]

OF GIBBON'S History, and of its author, as a collector and disposer of historical materials, an excellent character has been given by Porson, which, as it is but little known to common readers, I shall transcribe: "An impartial judge, I think, must allow that Mr. Gibbon's history is one of the ablest performances of its kind that has ever appeared. His industry is indefatigable; his accuracy scrupulous; his reading, which indeed is somewhat ostentatiously displayed, immense; his attention always awake; his memory retentive. His reflections are often just and profound; he pleads eloquently for the rights of mankind, and the duty of toleration; nor does his humanity ever slumber, unless when women are ravished, or the Christians persecuted."

He

With regard to style, Gibbon's great praise is, that he is always lofty, splendid, and magnificent, always anxious to maintain such elevation and elegance of style as the dignity of historical composition demands. He is therefore nice in the choice of his diction, and never descends to meanness or vulgarity, but uniformly appropriates to himself the best phraseology that the language affords. is always constant to himself; his reader finds no mixture of splendour and familiarity, no polished paragraphs succeeded by rude ones, no periods in which the beauty of one part is contrasted with the deformity of another. Of the florid style, which his taste led him to adopt, he shows himself a consummate master; his sentences are often artfully constructed, and always embellished with all the ornament that can be given them. His cadences are always harmoniously modulated; he is happy in finding the most apt and expressive words, and he rarely introduces any that custom has not sanctioned.

But with all these merits, Gibbon has great and numerous faults. His narration, as Bishop Newton has remarked, is often tedious and prolix; and his diction, however refined, frequently offends by affectation, and

Preface to the Letters to Travis. See Gibbon's Miscell. Works, vol. i. p. 241.

GENT. MAG. February, 1832.

c

sometimes by obscurity. He was perhaps not qualified by nature to write history with that animation and perspicuity which it demands; he ingenuously confesses to himself in his journal, that he had no wit, that his imagination was rather strong than pleasing, and that his understanding, though distinguished by the qualities of extensiveness and penetration, wanted both quickness and exactness; and his acknowledgment respecting the obscurity in his first production, his Essay on the Study of Literature, that, though it is occasionally affected, and is produced by a desire of express

"

ing," after the manner of Montesquieu, a common idea with sententious and oracular brevity," it" sometimes proceeds from a mixture of light and darkness in the author's mind, from a partial ray which strikes upon an angle, instead of spreading itself over the surface of an object," might have been made with equal propriety concerning the obscurity in his History.

"He writes,' as Whitaker. somewhat awkwardly expresses it, "to his own ideas only, and not to those of his reader; he throws out allusions that are not understood as

they arise, that perplex the memory, and that embarrass the judgment." He is extremely deficient in the art of condensation; he allows that the mat ter in his fifteenth and sixteenth chap ters might be reduced into much less bulk than himself, after two attempts, was able to reduce it; and the same may be said of the matter in many other parts. Even when he labours most effectually to condense, he is but half successful; he endeavoured, in his account of the elevation of Justin II., to translate, and believed, as he tells his reader,f that he had translated eight hundred verses of the poet Corippus "into simple and concise prose," but his reader quickly discovers that his prose is at nearly the same distance from simplicity and conciseness in this passage as in

c Miscell. Works, vol. i. p. 147. d Miscell. Works, vol. i. p. 129. • Review of Gibbon, p. 32. f Note 2 on Ch. xlv.