than among the wearers of inexpressibles, and thus, as the Celts approach the nearest to Adam in dress, so it must be presumed they do also in dialect. The pretensions which Mr M'Lean advances on behalf of his native tongue are of no mean order. He is clear that it is the primitive form of human speech, and treats with dignified contempt the conflicting claims to antiquity preferred by various languages which have hitherto enjoyed an undeserved veneration among kind. Mr M'Lean says, man "With the Hebrew language, under that appellation, he has no quarrel, being comparatively modern; receiving its very name from Heber, the great-grandson of Shem, who flourished somewhere about two thousand years after the creation of Adam, and, consequently, about two thou sand years after language had been ripening and flourishing. Those who plead for it as being the primitive language, under that name, give the lie, innocently, er. haps, to their own belief of the account of the confusion of the primitive tongue at Babel; seeing, it is plain, that if the primordial language were then and there confounded, it must have been then and there lost and how could Heber, who flourished subsequently to that period, retain it ?" This is certainly convincing, and shows the folly of all those systems which either deny the antiquity of the Erse, coeval as it is with Nature and with nudity, or would postpone it to a mere mushroom like the Hebrew, which cannot trace back even its name beyond the great-grandson of Shem. But Mr M'Lean has not yet done with this Heber, whose appellation, he tells us, "is a misnomer." "The original is (Hebrew) oinbr or ainbr. Now oin or ain means, in Celtic, a river; and bar, or bhar, beyond. The name, therefore," he continues, "is equivalent to our Inver; whence Inverich, Iberich, or Iberians, and Ebirich or Ebrideans, all expressive of isolation, or beyond water. Here in we are abundantly borne out by sacred writ itself. The identical word ayoinbr, is the word rendered in Deut. iv. 49, "This side Jordan ;' and in Joshua, xiii. 27, "The other side Jordan. the Cromarty Frith called Inver-Gordon, which can be nothing else than a purer and more primitive compound of the Hebrew vocables, to which Mr M'Lean refers, viz. oinbr and Jordan. We are not sure that Mr M'Lean is quite orthodox as to what he calls "the affair at Babel." In every view of it he is convinced that it had no effect upon the pure transmission of the Celtic. "But allowing," he says, "a confusion of language, literally speaking, to have taken place, it refers only to such as were engaged in the tower. Noah was in life, and did he head the faithless crew? No; he attends to his vineyard, which he planted far east from Shinar. Therefore, take either view of it, the first speech still remains unconfounded_ the stream of language may be still traced without a break up to the Can any fountain of paradise!" of us hesitate after this to throw aside our Miltons, and to engage Dugald M'Tavish from the stand in Hanover Street, for a morning hour, three times a-week, to acquire in all their purity the genuine accents and aspirations of Eden in its very hours of innocence? Mr M Lean seems all at home in the proceedings of Paradise, and the progress of Adam through his vocabulary. His second chapter, which treats of "The Dawn of Human Existence-Man contemplated as fresh from the bands of his Maker," opens with this magnificent description. "We may now fancy the morning of man's creation-the sun in eastern grandeur emerging from behind the Shirvanian hills, as if eager to obtain a view of the not unimportant stranger-Adam in silent admiration, tired of wondering who and what he himself was, and whence come; now arrested for the first time at sight of a rare object-a golden globe-mounting gradually the blue field, and taking indisputed possession as sole monarch of the planet world; for the regent moon with her myriads of twinkling attendants retire at sight of him with obsequious majesty ; the lion rampant with beaming eyes and terrific mane, dallying with the meek lamb -the domestic cow browsing in Eden, or couchant ruminating-the ape among the yielding boughs scampering and pampering To those who, like our friend Tom-the wily serpent now rearing his burkins, have travelled the north circuit, it will occur in aid of these last illustrations, that there is still a place on nished crest, and now astonishing Adam with sinuous gambols-the hyena laughing the cuckoo, together with like a maniac · the world of winged choristers of the grove singing their varied matins the industrious bee whispering to the shamrock," &c. Our author then proceeds to explain the principles on which Adam bestowed his nomenclature on the beasts, and which he conceives to have been regulated by a natural imitation of the sounds which they respectively uttered. These sounds, our readers must be already aware, were necessarily nothing less than the Celtic terminology which is still in use. Adopting what Montgomery says of the art of nest-making among birds, we may thus affirm with Mr M'Lean, that All the blessed habitants of Paradise, Whose words once mingled with the voice of angels, Spoke Gaelic just as curiously and well "Of the order," says Mr M'Lean, "in which the Great Shepherd brought the animals to Adam, we are not informed; nor is it essential. Let us suppose the first to have been the domestic cow: the name of this animal in Celtic is bua, buo, or bō; an echo or imitation of its common note." We feel assured that Mr M'Lean must here be right, and that Adam must have addressed the word bō to the cow. There has been a Saxon practice of saying bo to an animal of a very different description; and sometimes we have ourselves felt disposed to do so. But we shall always hereafter think of Mr M'Lean on such occasions, and refrain from so misapplying the exclamation, however strong the temptation may appear. Having established the exclusive claims of the cow to the ejaculation in question, Mr M'Lean thus proceeds : But "Let this suffice upon this note. Nature rests not here. The cow, besides this confidential voice, has a variety of other tones by which it can communicate even to man its sensations of want, pleasure, fear, pain, &c. These as well as the note buo, or bō, form part of the Celtic vocabulary, and, like bō, are just echoterms. For example, gnōsd, a term expressive of its suppliant voice; geum, of its low; langan, of a straggling sort of lowing, not unlike the braying of an ass; reic, of a desperate roar when being pushed or goaded by a fellow-cow; cread, of its note when sick and unable to inspire and expire with freedom; nual, of a loud low three or four times repeated; thus, ua, ua, ua, and Bruchd, expressive of eructation in the process of rumination. This language can die but with Nature: in the term bruchd, we have, perhaps, the primary idea of the Arabic, ruch, breath, and symbolically, spirit, &c." No one can fail to perceive, in their minutest variations, the perfect propriety of the terms in question, and not only to recognise, without a dic tionary, the true meaning of gnòsd, nual, and bruchd, but to feel assured that these are the very words that Adam must have applied to their respective ideas, and the only ones which his descendants should still employ. It would be tedious to follow our author through all the appellations of the other animals; but his observations on the lion deserve to be singled out from the rest. There was, it seems, a period when the appropriate imitation of the lion's voice, and consequently his original name, was the sound Who; and from this tradition the term commonly in use has doubts less been derived. But this is much too musical a sound to be equally appropriate at the present day. An cuan "The lion, since the fall, at least, tunes its voice to a far different key from lō, when making the awful spring upon its prey. The term roar is by no means a true echo to it; no term can express it but the Celtic béuc. Bheuc an leomhan,' says Amos. The note of ocean when scourged to madness is not a bad imitation of it, and hence we say agus na tonnan a' béucadh;' i. e. the ocean and its billows roaring. It was well for Adam the lion did not play upon this second key first, when showing what to be called. If it had, the good Patriarch's labour, probably, had had an end, at least for a time. Paradise would have fled affrighted, aud the more timid animals would have yielded up their new-obtained life for very horror." There are noble descriptions of the lion's wrath, both in classical and in modern poetry: but we see here, at a glance, how imperfect they must all be. Greek, Latin, German, English, all break down under the attempt to give an idea of the lion's roar. No term, it is clear, can express it but the Celtic beuc! What a pity that Snug the joiner, who was slow of study, had not possessed these views of Mr M'Lean's! If he had sought to give a bona fide representation of an existing lion, beuc was at hand to frighten his audience out of their wits; if he feared this result, and wished to aggravate his voice, without quitting his character, he had only to fall back on the softness of supra-lapsarian innocence, and delight the ladies with a melodious Ilho. From sounds, which are an echo of the sense, Mr M'Lean passes to words and letters of a hieroglyphical and cabalistical character. This is perhaps as obscure as any other portion of the book; but its importance may be estimated by the following passage :— "Yes, a compound figure of a dog and a lion, in the Cabari make C, L; giving these their syllabic power we read CouEl: with a human head introduced, C, L, S, Coueles: with, instead of a human figure, a terrier or a cross, C, L, T, Celt! Of this there is a Druidical column in Largo, in Fifeshire, the property of General Durham, highly illustrative. The lion, the serpent, the bull, the barker-in short, the most of the constellations, as on the Farnese globe-are displayed in bold relief upon that most curious relic of anti quity. The writer was not a little struck when, in visiting this stone and other antiquities of Fifeshire, in the autumn of last year, in company with the scientific Mr Kyle of Glasgow, and the naturalist, Mr John Wood of Colinsburgh-to find how very forcibly these hieroglyphics reverberated a tale of the days of old-of the deeds of other years.' Thus, in looking up to one of the half-decayed arched Archives of St Andrew's, you observe a star, a dog, and a lion. A star, in Celtic, is Ré, a dog, Aug, and the lion, or eagle, El; which produce the name of the found er. Regulus! Kil, Re, Eph Ain, its Celtie name, is equivalent. We have never seen the Rosetta stone in London, but we see it in the name R, S, T, Ro-Esh-Taua circle, a man, and a cross, or a dogwith probably their attributes, severally, if not their history? This accounts for the name of Fife, (Ff,) and of that of the beautiful hill Largo, as also that of the tattooed worshippers, Bretanich, Albanich, Horestii, Pehs, &c." The same idea, perhaps, may also account for the milk in the cocoa nut, and for any other phenomenon of which no satisfactory explanation has as yet been given. Hitherto we have been examining names imposed by our great ancestor on the lower orders of creation; but a different scene was now awaiting him. The creation of a help meet for him, turned his thoughts to his own nature and race, and a wider range of phraseology was the result. This subject is thus beautifully developed by Mr McLean:: "'Tis morn! The lark is up mid sky to sing up the king of day! The bee whispers it to the unfolding rose, and zephyrs run to and fro, the grateful messengers of Aurora, loaded with fragrance; the towering mountains now reflecting the horizontal sunbeam, make every dew-drop a sparkling diamond. Adam awakes, and awakes Eve! and now, and from this hour, may we begin to date the elements of language more abstractly considered. We shall, therefore, endeavour to show that herein our principle will still hold goodthat language is still in its elementary principles the gradual offspring of Nature, being based upon sounds produced by bodies in motion or collision, and in articulation, forming roots, spontaneously generated by action and passion. The greatest difficulty with which we have now to contend, is to distinguish between the Cabalistic and the Natural language. "Sron, the nose. Here is a sound from bodies in collision: no reflection or echo can be truer than srōn of the vibratory sound produced in blowing it, especially with the hand, which must of necess sity, have been the primitive mode, and still is among the unsophisticated." Transition is one of the greatest charms of good composition. In the tragedy of Macbeth, the calmness of the scene before the castle of Inverness, succeeding to the turbulent anxieties of guilty ambition, has been often and justly admired; and we have here an example of the same artifice, though with a different tendency. From the beauty of a morning in Paradise, and the ecstacies of newly. inspired love, the author gracefully sinks at once (quam familiariter !) to the vibratory sound "srōn, the nose," and our imaginations are elegantly led to a consideration of details in the unsophisticated life of our first parents, of which Milton has unaccountably omitted to take the slightest notice. The following may be offered as a fair, or perhaps a favourable sample of our author's etymological acumen : "Lib or Lab, the heart; either an imitation or rehearsal of its beat; or, if the reader prefer it, oracularly, El-Ab, as being a heavenly monitor. We may easily imagine that the first pair were struck suf ficiently early with the pulsation of the heart; and wonderful indeed it must be to every person of reflection; counting the passing moment as it does from the moment of our birth till the last throe of death breaks the golden cord, at the rate of about one hundred thousand times aday! Methuselah's pulse must have told upwards of 42,442,200,000 during his lifetime! Here, then, we have the root of libiden, a man of little or no heart, judging from actions; duine libideach,' a trifling, heartless man. We are corroborated here, at least, by Parkhurst, upon the root b, the heart,' says he, 'from its vibratory motion, pulsation, or beating.' We naturally attribute to this beating and sensitive monitor, thoughts, will, love, hatred, joy, grief, &c. We are apt to view it, in fact, as the light, the in former of the whole universe of man : hence we say, by figure, lib, or libh, bright, shining, white, clear: 'I libh mar Eal'air a chuan.' i. e. Fair as a swan upon the wave was she. 'Claidheamh libhara do shenar.' i. e. The shining blade of thy fathers, Again, libher, a book, because it informs: library, a collection of books: liberal, large-hearted; and b and v being convertible letters, liv-ain, or leven a clear river; synonymous with Libanus or Lebanon. The Saxon leof, the English love, and life, are but a variety. The radix, in process of time, assumed a prefix or formative for ease to our organs in conversation; hence cliabh, the chest, breast, as being the house of the heart; by figure, a hamper, a creel, or any wicker-work, from a resemblance to the chest, having ribs : cliath, a harrow; cliathach, the side, or cross timbers of a house or ship. And, follow ing out the analogy, cliathranich, to be at cross purposes, a fight." We have now, we hope, afforded sufficient specimens of Mr M'Lean's History, to excite, without satiating, the curiosity of our readers, to whom, after what we have already said, it is needless for us to recommend the purchase and perusal of the book itself. When we contemplate the principles that are here developed, we look with pity and contempt on the occupations of even the most celebrated modern philologers of the day. What are the labours of a Bopp, a Grimm, or a Graff, compared with those of a MacLean? What pretensions has the Gothic to be studied, which can only establish by mere historical documents a literary existence of about 1400 years, when the Gaelic can be drawn antecedent to the creation of woman, back, by internal evidence, to a period nay, antecedent even to the creation of man himself; since it is plain by Mr M'Lean's demonstrations, that before Adam existed, the lower animals spoke Celtic in the sounds which they severally uttered, and which afterwards proved the type of the names conferred upon them? Investigations of this kind are fitted to elevate their author far beyond the reputation of a plodding grammarian; and Mr M'Lean may boldly lay claim to a niche in that transcendental gallery, of which the one extremity is already occupied by Wolfgang Menzel, and the other by Maximus Macnab. which we set out; we repeat that the To return to the proposition with publication of the present work is calculated more and more to impress us with the importance of an increased attention to the Celtic languages. There are two ways in which this object may be promoted. One of them, and the more sublime of the two, is that pursued by Mr M'Lean, which seeks to inculcate, from lofty generalities and enthusiastic imaginations, the primeval antiquity and mystical signi ficance of those languages. The other lies along a humbler path, in which their elementary principles and structural analogies are to be collected by a patient and dispassionate induction from indisputable realities. If the attempt of Mr M'Lean succeeds, it is good and well; if it fails, we recommend to our Celtic philologists to try what they can make of the more sober system which has been already followed, with no small success, by their Teutonic brethren. ART AND ITS VEHICLES. THE Art Union, a monthly journal very ably conducted, and promising to be of great utility, having, in the last number, (for April,) noticed some remarks and expressions made use of by us in a review of Taylor's translation of Merimée, and having, we think, somewhat misunderstood the view taken by us, we think it as well shortly to revert to the subject, because we consider it one of great importance to art, and we are particularly desirous that public attention should be directed to it. If we mistake not the meaning of the writer in the Art Union, he would rather deprecate such discussions, and the continual search after new vehicles. At least he appears to give no encouragement to experiment and enquiry." The diversity of opinions expressed by writers," he says, "who, it is assumed, feel competent to instruct us, is strong evidence that conjecture occupies the place of certainty." Now, we do not quarrel with any because they feel competent to instruct, provided they will furnish us with the means of judging for ourselves; that is, if they will clearly detail to us their experiments, their progress, and processes, as well as their results; and their reasons for what is more conjectural. A very bad artist may be a very inquisitive man, and spend time and labour upon the material of the art, that the man of more active genius cannot afford to do. And, while artists must be under the necessity of relying upon the improvements and inventions of colour-makers, canvass-makers, paper-makers, and workers in other trades, we see no reason why they should turn the eye of scorn upon the efforts, either of an humble brother artist or amateur. Perhaps it is be cause they are humbler that their usefulness in this way may be greater. "Did you never hear yet A fool may teach a wise man wit ?" was the reply of the poor shepherd to the archbishop. For ourselves, we are not above learning from a child what a child may teach; and think it possible, that, while others are occupied in daring flights of design, even our humble selves may, by intensely studying the materials, and en gaging others to help us in the study, enable the greater genius, with more facility and more effect, permanently to embody the high conceptions of his mind. We do not say that we shall do so; but we shall not be deterred from making the trial, because it may be implied that we feel too confident, and that we have no higher aim of art. Confidence in self, to a certain degree, is the mark of enthusiasm: it is that hope enlarged which blends itself with experiments till it makes them more complete: it is that which gives patience to endure the toil, the research, and labour; and, after all, as it stands visibly for no more than it is worth, may be pardoned for the efforts to which it leads. We have ourselves felt this encourager, or child of enthu siasm; and, when the chill of doubt has cooled us down, and we have drawn the pen across our confident expressions, we know not that we have done wisely-certainly not where accurate detail, and the whole process of inferences and reasoning have accompanied the ardent expression. In our moment of enthusiasm, now, we say confidently that we will yield to none of womanborn in our love-devoted love to art; and we will do our best to teach all we know to those who know less, and love it as we do, and will most gladly receive information from any who know more than we do, on any point or points of the arts. The writer we have alluded to says, "That the subject of vehicles for painting continues to furnish matter for discus sion amongst us, is to be seriously regret ted. We cannot plead as an excuse that it is with us an art of yesterday for we surely have had time to come to some conclusion as to the propriety of using this or that vehicle. That we have not arrived at any certain and desirable results is clear, from the variety of modes practised by our artists. One, and not the least of the many evils attending this state of things, is the prejudicial influence it has on the student; who, hearing daily allusions to it, it acquires with him undue importance. Who has not heard a thousand times, in exhibition-rooms or galleries, in the front of works demanding admiration:- What does he paint with?' What is it painted |
