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I.], so widened their linguistic horizon as gradually to prepare the way for juster and more comprehensive views of the character and history of human speech. The restless and penetrating spirit of investigation, finally, of the nineteenth century, with its insatiable appetite for facts, its tendency to induction, and its practical recognition of the unity of human interests, and of the absolute value of all means of knowledge respecting human conditions and history, has brought about as rapid a development in linguistic study as in the kindred branches of physical study to which we have already referred. The truth being once recognized that no dialect, however rude and humble, is without worth, or without a bearing upon the understanding of even the most polished and cultivated tongues, all that followed was a matter of course. Linguistic material was gathered in from every quarter, literary, commercial, and philanthropic activity combining to facilitate its collection and thorough examination. Ancient records were brought to light and deciphered; new languages were dragged from obscurity and made accessible to study.

The recognition, not long to be deferred when once attention was turned in the right direction, of the special relationship of the principal languages of Europe with one another and with the languages of south-western Asia&mdash;the establishment of the Indo-European family of languages&mdash;was the turning-point in this history, the true beginning of linguistic science. The great mass of dialects of the family, descendants of a common parent, covering a period of four thousand years with their converging lines of development, supplied just the ground which the science needed to grow up upon, working out its methods, getting fully into view its ends, and devising the means of their attainment. The true mode of fruitful investigation was discovered; it appeared that a wide and searching comparison of kindred idioms was the way in which to trace out their history, and arrive at a real comprehension of the life and growth of language. Comparative philology, then, became the handmaid of ethnology and history, the forerunner and founder of the science of human speech.