portant article of its belief; but personal knowledge and intercourse with the Armenians themselves have given me opportunities of seeing much of which the public have never heard. If my words be denied, as I quite expect they will be by interested persons, let inquiries be set on foot. Let one question alone be asked, Is it not true that as late as April of this year a caravan was stopped by the Turkish authorities at Kotur on the Persian frontier, and the pack-saddles of the mules found to be stuffed with inflammatory and revolutionary literature? And let reasoning men and women consider whether such a course as pouring treason into Armenia at such a moment was not an incentive to fresh massacre and equally appalling barbarities as those that had taken place the autumn before.

It may be asked, What is the ultimate aim of these political agitators? and they will tell you that it is merely the better government of their fellowcountrymen. But is this so? Let us look for a moment at the condition of the Armenians in Russia. There the Gregorian Church is still untouched, though that of the Georgians has long ago been swallowed up in the national religion of the country. Armenian schools flourish in every part; their worship is freely allowed; the dignitaries of their Church are chosen by the Armenians and appointed by the Emperor himself, who has never been known to object to the Catholicos elected by the people. In fact, they are allowed every religious and civil privilege, with the exception that children of mixed marriages shall be brought up in the Orthodox Church. Under the just rule of Russia the Armenian flourishes; all the petty offices, and many of the higher ones, in the Government of Transcaucasia are held by them; in trade they have ruined the less crafty Russian; and southern Russia to-day is an Armenian province. But ask the agitators whether they desire that the plateau of Asia Minor should fall under Russian rule, and what will they tell you? That they prefer Turkey to Russia. Astonishing as this reply is, it is heard throughout all the East wherever Armenians are found; and why is this?

Because if Russia held Armenia, there would only be opportunities for the agitators and their friends to gain an honest livelihood by their labors or their efficiency, whereas what they are desirous of doing is to form a free and autonomous Armenia, in which their own personal enrichment and aggrandizement would take the place of patriotism and the welfare of their country. If you think that the Armenians are patriotic or sincere as a people, you are mistaken. At Echmiazin, the religious centre of the Armenians, one of the highest of the dignitaries of the Gregorian Church spoke the following words to me. "We love England, he said. "After Armenia we love her best of all. We pray for her every day, and many times a day. She is so rich." In those ingenuous words you have the whole keynote of the Armenian policy, the whole character of her people

love of power and wealth. In an autonomous Armenia there would be every opportunity for the agitators to practise their powers of intrigue, a gentle art in which they excel. In a Russian Armenia intrigue means Siberia--at least such intrigue as the Armenian loves to indulge in. No! the Armenian agitators and political aspirants with whom I came in contact in Southern Russia and in Persia, hovering about the frontiers, but careful never to run their necks into danger, one and all told me that they preferred Turkish to Russian rule, and that their war-cry was "Autonomy !" They pretend to be satisfied with such reforms as have been proposed by the Powersand for a time they may rest tranquil -the calm before the coming storm ; but as surely as the massacres have taken place, there will arise further and more serious troubles in the country-reforms or no reforms-troubles stirred up by men who are content to see their brethren suffer in the hopes of themselves some day gaining an end where power and fortune will be open to them. By all means let the European Powers insist upon the reforms proposed, and let them see that they are carried out; but once this is accomplished, once the Turk is morally and physically punished for the barbarities he has committed, barbarities

almost unparalleled in the world's history, and when the solitary Sultan in the Yildiz Kiosk has eaten dirt in the presence of the world, then let it be clearly stated to the Armenians that no further support will be given to their political aims as long as Turkey holds to her promises and her practices of reform. If, however, the Porte becomes lax, and continues to allow the Kurds to rob and steal under the eyes

of her provincial officials, it will be the duty of Europe once more to interfere. If, on the contrary, Turkey remains faithful to her promises she must be forced to give, then the time for interference is over, and the political atmosphere of the whole of Europe must not again be clouded in order to further the ends of unscrupulous adventurers. Blackwood's Magazine.

THE science of language, as treated by its modern students and professors, is so largely devoted to tracing the affinities, and the laws of growth and modification, of existing and recently extinct languages, that some of the essential characteristics of human speech have been obscured, and the features that contribute largely to its inherent intelligibility overlooked. Philologists have discovered, as the result of long and laborious research, what they hold to be the roots or fundamental units of each of the great families of language; but these roots themselves are supposed to be for the most part conventional, or, if they had in the very beginning of language any natural meaning, this is held to have been so obscured by successive changes of form and structure as to be now usually undiscoverable. As regards a considerable number of the words which occur under various forms in a variety of languages, and which seem to have a common root, this latter statement may be true, but it is by no means always, and perhaps not even generally, true. In our own language, and probably in all others, a considerable number of the most familiar words are so constructed as to proclaim their meaning more or less distinctly, sometimes by means of imitative sounds, but also, in a large number of cases, by the shape or the movements of the various parts of the mouth used in pronouncing them, and by peculiarities in breathing or in vocalization, which may express a mean

ing quite independent of mere soundimitation.

These naturally expressive words are very often represented by closely allied forms in some of the Teutonic, Celtic, or other Aryan languages, and they have thus every appearance of constituting a remnant of that original imitative or expressive speech, the essential features of which have undergone little change, although the exact form of the words may have been continually modified. But even when it can be shown that a word which is now strikingly suggestive of its meaning has been derived from some other words which are less, or not at all, suggestive of the same idea, or which even refer to some totally different idea, the obvious conclusion will be that, even in the present day, there is so powerful a tendency to bring sound and sense into unison, as to render it in the highest degree probable that we have here a fundamental principle which has always been at work, both in the origin and in the successive modifications of human speech.

Many writers have discussed the interjectional and imitative origin of language- especially, in this country, Archdeacon Farrar and Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood-but neither in their volumes, nor in any other English work with which I am acquainted, is the subject elaborated with any approach to completeness, while many of its most important features appear to have been overlooked. One of the most

celebrated philological scholars and writers has treated it with extreme contempt, and has christened it the "Bowwow and Pooh-pooh theory ;" and, perhaps in consequence of this contempt, its advocates often adopt an apologetic tone, and, while urging the correctness of the principle, are prepared to admit that its application is very limited, and that it can only be used to explain a very small portion of any language. This is, no doubt, true, if we go no further than the ordinary classes of interjectional and imitative words-the Oh! of astonishment, the Ah! and Ugh! of pain, the infantile Ba, Pa, and Ma, as the origin of father and mother terms, and the direct imitation of animal or human sounds, as in cuckoo, mew, whinny, sneeze, snore, and many others, together with the various words that may be derived from them. But this is merely the beginning and rudiment of a much wider subject, and gives us no adequate conception of the range and interest of the great principle of speech-expression, as exhibited both in the varied forms of indirect imitation, but more especially by what may be termed speech or mouth-gesture. During my long residence among many savage or barbarous people I first observed some of these mouth-gestures, and have been thereby led to detect a mode of natural expression by words which is, I believe, to a large extent new, and which opens up a much wider range of expressiveness in speech than has hitherto been possible, giving us a clew to the natural meaning of whole classes of words which are usually supposed to be purely conventional.

My attention was first directed to this subject by noticing that, when Malays were talking together, they often indicated direction by pouting out their lips. They would do this either silently, referring to something already spoken or understood, but more frequently when saying disána (there) or itu (that), thus avoiding any further explanation of what was meant. At the time, I did not see the important bearing of this gesture; but many years afterward, when paying some attention to the imitative origin of language, it occurred to me that while

pronouncing the words in question, impressively, the mouth would be opened and the lips naturally protruded, while the same thing_would occur with our corresponding English words there and that; and when I saw further that the French là and cela, and the German da and das, had a similar open-mouthed pronunciation, it seemed probable that an important principle was involved.*

The next step was made on meeting with the statement, that there was no apparent reason why the word go should not have signified the idea of coming and the word come the idea of going; the implication being that these, like the great bulk of the words of every language, were pure conventions and essentially meaningless; or that if they once had a natural meaning it was now wholly lost and undecipherable. But, with the cases of there and that in my mind, it seems to me clear that there was a similar open-mouthed sound in go, with the corresponding meaning of motion away from the person speaking; and this view was rendered more probable on considering the word with an opposite meaning, come, where we find that the mouth has to be closed and the lips pressed together, or drawn inward, implying motion toward the speaker. The expressiveness of these two words is so real and intelligible that a deaf person would be able to interpret the mouth-gestures with great facility. The fact that words of similar meaning in several other European languages are equally expressive, lends strong support to this view. Thus for go, we have the French va, the Italian vai, the German geh, and the AngloSaxon gân, all having similar openmouthed sounds; while the corresponding words for come-venez, vieni, komm, and kuman-are all pronounced with but slight movements of the mouth and lips, or even with the lips closed.

If, now, we assume that the wordgestures here described afford us indi

* The botanical explorer, Martius, describes lip-pointing as used by certain Brazilian

tribes, but he does not seem to have connected it with the character of the word accompanying the gesture, or to have drawn any conclusions from it.

cations of the primitive and fundamental expressiveness of what may be termed natural, as opposed to mere conventional speech, we shall be prepared to find that the same principle has been at work in the formation of many other simple words, though in some cases its application may be less obvious. We must, however, always bear in mind that, though to us words are for the most part mere conventions, they were not so to primitive man. He had, as it were, to struggle hard to make himself understood, and would, therefore, make use of every possible indication of meaning afforded by the positions and motions of mouth, lips, or breath, in pronouncing each word; and he would lay stress upon and exaggerate these indications, not slur them over as we do. The various examples of these natural forms of speech which will now be adduced will be almost wholly confined to the English language, since I have no sufficient knowledge of foreign tongues. I also think that the importance and reality of the principle will be better shown by illustrations drawn from one language only, while such a method will certainly be both more intelligible and more interesting to general readers.

First, then, we have a considerable number of pairs of words which are pronounced with mouth-gestures very similar to those of go and come. Thus we have to and from, out and in, down and up, fall and rise, far and near, that and this; in all of which we have, in the first series the broad vowels a or o, pronounced, expressively, with rather widely-open mouth, while in the second series we have the thin vowels e, i, or u, or the terminal consonants m, n, or p, which are pronounced either within the mouth or with closed lips; and in each special case the action will be found to be expressive of the meaning. Thus, in to the lips are protruded almost as much as in go (always supposing we are speaking impressively and with energy), while from requires only a slight motion of the lips ending with their complete closure; in out we have an energetic expiration and outward motion of the lips, while in is pronounced wholly inside the mouth, and does not

require the lips to be moved at all after the mouth is opened; in down we have a quick downward movement of the lower jaw, which is very characteristic, since the word cannot be spoken without it; while in up the quick movement is upward, after having opened the mouth as slowly as we please; in fall we require a downward motion of the jaw as in down, but slower, and the word is completed with the mouth open, indicating, perhaps, that fall is a more decided and permanent thing than down, which implies position rather than motion, while in rise we have a slight parting of the lips with a decided inspiration, and the meaning would probably be made clearer by the gesture of raising the head, which is natural during inspiration. In repeating the lines

"On the swell

The silver lily heaved and fell,"

we feel the motion in our heaving and falling chest, and we may be sure that with early man, such motions, when they helped the meaning of the words, were always fully emphasized.

Of the same general character as the words just considered, are the personal pronouns thou, you, he, they all of which are pronounced with outward breathing, and more or less outward motion of the lips, as compared with I, me, we, us, which require only slightly parted lips, and which are easily and naturally pronounced during an inspiration, thus clearly marking the difference between inward and outward, self and not-self. In like manner, there is spoken open-mouthed, and with strong outward breathing, while here requires but a slightly open mouth, and although slightly aspirated may be, and usually is, spoken during an inspiration.

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Mr. E. B. Tylor has called attention to "the device of conveying different ideas of distance by the use of a graduated scale of vowels," as being one of great philological interest, on account of the suggestive hint it gives of the proceedings of the language-makers in most distant regions of the world, working out in various ways a similar ingenious contrivance of expression by sound." He then gives a list of the

66

words for this and that, here and there, I, thou, and he, in twenty-three languages of savage or barbarous tribes in both hemispheres, in all of which the ideas of nearness and distance, or self and not-self, are conveyed by the similar ingenious contrivance" of different vowel-sounds.* But he does not appear to have observed that there is a method in the use of vowels, and that they are not therefore merely "ingenious contrivances," or contrivances at all in the true sense of the word, but are natural expressions of the difference of meaning in the way here pointed out. This is decidedly the case in eighteen out of the twentythree languages given by Mr. Tylor, the broad, open-mouthed sounds ah, o, and u, being used to express outwardness or distance, while the contrasted vowels, e and i, occur whenever selfhood or nearness is implied. In the other five languages the vowels are apparently reversed, which may be due either to a mistake of the compiler of the vocabulary-not at all an uncommon thing when vocabularies are obtained through interpreters-or, possibly, to a real change of the letter used, owing to some of the numerous causes which bring about modifications of language, and even reversals of the original meaning of words. The tendency to preserve or add to the expressiveness of speech evidently varies much among different peoples, and we must not, therefore, be surprised at finding some incongruities in the use. of even the most simple and natural sounds.

We now come to a series of words in which the action of breathing is the expressive part, the motion of the lips being very slight or altogether imperceptible; such are air, which is merely a modulated breathing; wind, in which more movement of the lips is required, with a slight indication of the characteristic murmuring sound; while in blow, we almost exactly imitate the action of blowing. The words breath and life are related, inasmuch as the lifegiving action of breathing is the fundamental part of both, modified by a different slight action of the lips and

* Primitive Culture, vol. i., p. 199.

tongue, and it is suggestive that in many languages breath is used for spirit or life. High and low are also breath-words, the former being probably pronounced during an inspiration, with the accompanying gesture of raising the head, the latter, during expiration, and with an opposite gesture. Slight modifications of the former word would lead to sky, and perhaps also to fly, in both of which the idea of height is prominent.

We next have a group of words of which the essential character seems to be that the mouth remains open when they are spoken, as in the word mouth itself, in which the lips, teeth, and tongue are all employed; and in all, in which the mouth is still more widely opened. This is especially the case in words denoting round objects, such as moon, ball, ring, wheel, round, in all of which, as well as in many of the corresponding words in other languages, the chief feature is that the lips are held apart, and the mouth more or less rounded in pronouncing them. Sun may well belong to the same group, if it is not the chief of them, since it is the only object in nature that is always perfectly round, a feature that would be more easily represented in primitive speech than the light or heat which to us seems its most important characters. The root Su, and the various forms of sun in other Aryan languages, have all the same character of open-mouthed pronunciation, and the term for south, or sunward, is clearly derived from it. In Mr. Kavanah's work on Myths traced to their Primary Source in Language, the symbol O, representing the sun, is held to have been the first word and symbol used by primitive man, and a vast wealth of illustration from various sources is brought together to support the somewhat fantastic idea.

Other characteristic mouth-words are mum (silence), a mere parting and closing of the lips, whence comes mumble and perhaps dumb. Spit also is a labial imitative word, but it imitates the action of spitting as well as the sound. Sleep may also be considered a mouthword, and in pronouncing it we gradually close the mouth in a very suggestive manner, while in wake, awake, we abruptly open it.