The subsequent history of this image is curious. It fell into the hand of some Protestant who, our author declares, was prevented from destroying it because of the judgments which fell on those who had attempted to lay hands on it. In 1623, William Laing, Procurator to the King of Spain, having obtained possession of it, had it conveyed to Belgium, and placed in the hands of the Infanta Isabella, the governor of the Low Countries. It was removed to a chapel attached to the palace of Brussels, where William Laing was entrusted to collect a history of it, and of the miracles connected with it. Three years after, it was transferred to a newly-built church of the Augustinian fathers with great pomp. Pope Urban VIII. granted a plenary indulgence to all who assisted at the ceremony. The image itself was decked with the Infanta's jewels, and covered with a robe glittering with gold and precious stones. A confraternity of Notre Dame de Bon Succès was formed, with the Infanta enrolled among its members. In the eighteenth century, when revolutionary troubles broke out, it was saved by an Englishman of the name of Morris; in 1805, it was again set up in its former place. The chapel having been granted to the Protestants in 1814, it was transferred to the parish church of Finisterre. In 1852, M. Van Genechten, curé of the parish, had a chapel built to receive it; and on May 5, in 1854, the confraternity of Notre Dame de Bon Succès was restored by the authority of the Archbishop of Malines, her Royal Highness the Duchess of Brabant accepting the office of honorary provost. Dr. Northcote adds in a note:-'It is understood that the pro'posal has been made to restore the image of Our Lady of Good Success to the Scottish Catholics of Aberdeen; and that a petition to this effect is at this moment under consideration at 'Rome.' There is no doubt that a very great effort is made just now to revive the medieval worship of the Blessed Virgin; and that converts from our own ranks, like Dr. Northcote, are the most strenuous in this endeavour. It is equally true that the old Roman Catholics of England look on the attempt with anything but favour. The English mind of the present day is too much given to calm investigation to adopt without inquiry the legends and stories which were once believed, and, in some countries, are still believed, about miracles and interventions, as matters of fact. The volume before us is, without doubt, published with the intention of helping forward the movement: we do not think it calculated to aid it much. Italians and a few enthusiastic Englishmen may be induced to credit the stories about pictures of the Madonna moving their eyes; but few Roman Catholics, we are assured, are prepared to endorse as true the accounts of them which Dr. Northcote gravely records in his pages. Nay, we may go further; we think that such publications as this are calculated to arrest the movement, rather than to aid it. As Anglicans, we may freely acknowledge that the Blessed Virgin does not receive the honour due to her as the Mother of God, and we should be glad to see the Protestant prejudice against her considerably abate. We confess that it is impossible to maintain a complete and full belief in the mystery of the Incarnation, without as full and complete an acknowledgment of the purity given to her who bore the Immaculate Son of God in her womb. We may assent, at least, to the teaching of Peter Lombard, that she was purified from all sin at the annunciation of the angel; Mariam totam Spiritus Sanctus in eam veniens a peccato prorsus mundavit' ('Lenten.' lib. iii. Dis. 3). And this is certainly also the doctrine of the Orthodox Church of the East, though we believe that no authoritative decision has been made on the subject: for in her catechism and books of instruction she exempts none from original sin; yet in her sacred offices and books of devotion the title of "Axpavros is continually given to her. For instance, in one office for the First Hour, ̓Ακολουθία τῆς Α. Ορᾶς, we have the following, and we might quote many more, Χριστὸς ὁ Θεὸς διὰ πρεσβειῶν τῆς παναχράντου αὑτοῦ Μητρὸς . . . . ἐλεήσαι ἡμᾶς, κ.τ.λ. a mode of expression which, at the least, implies that she was sanctified from her mother's womb. At a time when Anglicans are so earnestly desiring, and endeavouring to accomplish, the reunion with the Oriental Church, we should do our utmost to make our teaching not repugnant to her in all points not otherwise defined by our own. 143 ART. VIII-1. Lectures on the Science of Language. First Series, 5th Edition, 1866. Second Series, 3d Thousand, 1867. 2. Chips from a German Workshop. Essays on the Science of Religion, &c. &c. London: Longmans. 1867. WE believe the savans of our day-who in the positiveness of their positivism have abandoned the venerable traditions which Moses has delivered-have not yet decided at what stage of our pithekogenesis the great Adam-ape of us all began to speak; passing into self-revealing language out of the bestial chatter to which he had hitherto been doomed. If the testimony of the idea, or man, or number of persons represented by the name of Homer, if the testimony of the writings of the Veda, be worth anything, we have the evidence of the voice-dividing race, and its use of language, for a good three thousand years. Whatever refinements use may have introduced into speech, whatever higher energies, intellectual pursuits, or the crowning gift of the Pentecost may have imparted to language, we can scarcely discover in the New what is not to be traced in the Old; and a century of which it cannot be said with truth that it is wanting in great orators is still content to sit with all its doctors and listen to the speakers of the Agora, and the matchless eloquence of Athens. Speech is gained by imitation. Not long since, the world was charmed by the narrative of the labours carried on by some devout priests in Belgium, who have devoted themselves to teaching the deaf to speak. By eye and touch the deaf-born-these being more apt scholars than those not born so―are taught to speak with a very marvellous promptness and ease. Let us assume that our ape ancestors had all along the interior endowment which lies at the root of intelligent speech. We can do no less than assume this; because to deny it will be to disparage our progenitors. And we are bound to honour our parents, whatever may have been their state of physical and moral development. Who first helped them to formulize their chatter? By what aids, and in what age of creation, were the first roots enunciated by the pithekranthrope? There are nine hundred languages, more or less, to the substance of which nothing new has ever been added; and there is no miracle in the Bible more astonishing than that which, inferentially, connects the origin of language with the development of the Baboon, with or without Lord Monboddo's Egyptian Dæm on King. Sciences are either historical or physical, as the subjectmatter of them is, or is not, of mere human invention. The science of language is historical, if we accept the prevailing theory which is connected with the name of Locke, although older than Horace, that man having first lived in a state of mutism and half-unconscious pantomime, at last travailed under his accumulation of ideas and brought forth speech. The progress of language, the relationship to each other of the three main branches of language-the Semitic, the Aryan, and the Turanian-seem to indicate the presence of an historical life inherent in language,' and its subjection to the will of man and the power of time. By a slow process the venerable languages of Asia have been transformed to their present meagre and impoverished condition. In our own land, in four hundred years English has been so changed, that that in use in the thirteenth century is as difficult as a dead language. But in northern and southern Asia and in Africa, in a few generations, sometimes in one, the whole aspect of their dialects are changed. Since the publication of the Bible we have lost one-fifteenth of all the words used in it, that is 388, and we have popularized the possessive pronounits,' which never once occurs there. But in all this ebb and flow man is an unconscious and involuntary agent. The impotency of man to alter even the gender of a noun is illustrated by the attempt of the Emperor Sigismund to change the gender of Schisma. Though the indi'vidual seems to be the prime agent in producing new words ' and new grammatical forms, he is so only after his individuality 'has been merged in the common action of the family, tribe, or 'nation to which he belongs' (Max Müller's Lect., 1st Ser. p. 43). There are, in truth, two factors engaged in bringing about that gradual change which we denominate the growth of language. These two factors are Phonetic Decay,-which produces grammatical forms, and takes place under the control of laws which man has not originated, but which man obeys, unconscious of their very existence, and Dialectic Regeneration. Now, in the geology of language, dialects are the 'popular and lower strata of speech out of which the literary languages have sprung; they are the pursy citizens and burghers by whose contributions the royal dynasties of literature are sustained in their state and influence. Where a dialect is selected and consecrated to the priesthood of letters, it passes out of common life, and, as far as popular use is concerned, is consigned to absolute decay. And even more than in the case of phonetic decay, the law of dialectical growth is beyond the control of individuals. A poet may invent a word, but its acceptance does not depend on him. And grammarians are quite unable to prune language of its abnormal - accidents. It is very likely that the gradual disappearance of 'irregular declensions and conjugations is due, in literary as well as illiterate languages, to the dialect of children' (1st Ser. p. 71). If the term 'growth' be applied to language, the image it expresses must be identical with that implied when we speak of the growth of the crust of the earth, and not with that implied when we speak of the growth of a tree. In the latter case there is not even a legitimate analogy. The growth of the crust of the earth and the growth of language herein resemble one another, that in both cases we witness that 'modification 'which takes place in time by continually new combinations of 'given elements, which withdraws itself from the control of 'free agents, and can in the end be recognised as the result of 'natural agencies' (1st Ser. p. 73). The science of language bears no closer relationship to history than do other sciences, though to some extent it contains its own history within itself. The study of all language is the acme of this science, and to this end the first main step is the classification of all the varieties of human speech. Two axioms are to be laid down which we must carry with us through the whole subject: that grammar is the most essential element, and therefore ground of classification, in all languages possessing grammatical articulation; and that grammar does not admit the existence of a mixed idiom. Thus, whatever may be the Latinisms and Normanisms of an English sentence, the grammar will be Teutonic. In languages like the Chinese, where these axioms will not apply, we must be satisfied with the criteria of a morphological affinity instead of those of a genealogical relationship.' We shall know when grammar was born when we are able to determine when men began to acquire a language other than their mother tongue. The conquests of Alexander may be fixed upon approximately as a terminus a quo. But barbarians took the lead in the new studies; and while Livius Andronicus at Rome was translating Homer, we have cotemporary linguists in the authors Berosus the Babylonian, Menander the Phoenician, and Manetho the Egyptian, and about the same time Moses and Zoroaster were translated into Greek. But although some of the terms of grammar were known to Plato and Aristotle, the actual study of grammar belongs to the schools of Alexandria, and the pursuit of it is due to the critical labours of those engaged in comparing the different manuscripts of Homer. The first grammar was the work of Dionysius, the pupil of Aristarchus. This Dionysius lived at Alexandria at first, then removed to Rome, and there published the grammar of his vernacular, where Greek already was the language of fashion and refinement. But grammar had already found a home in Rome. Crates, between the second |