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IX.] from being entitled to rank with the Indo-European and Semitic languages, being, rather, but a single step above the Chinese: in many of its constructions it is quite as bald as the latter, and sometimes even less clear and free from ambiguity.

The Egyptian pronouns present some striking analogies with the Semitic, and from this fact has been drawn by many linguistic scholars the confident conclusion that the two families are ultimately related, the Egyptian being a relic of the Semitic as the latter was before its development into the peculiar form which it now wears, and which was described in the last lecture. Considering, however, the exceeding structural difference between them, and the high improbability that any genuine correspondences of so special a character should have survived that thorough working-over which could alone have made Semitic speech out of anything like Egyptian, the conclusion must be pronounced, at the least, a venturesome one. Semitic affinities have been not less confidently, and with perhaps more show of reason, claimed for the Libyan and Abyssinian branches of the so-called Hamitic family. Only continued investigation, and more definite establishment of the criteria of genetic relationship, can determine what part of these alleged correspondences are real, and of force to show community of descent, and what part are fancied, or accidental, or the result of borrowing out of one language into another.

To enter in any detail into the labyrinths of African language and ethnography is not essential to our present purpose, and will not be here undertaken. As a consequence of the extraordinary activity of missionary enterprise and of geographical exploration and discovery in Africa within a few years past, much curiosity and study has been directed towards African dialects; a great mass of material has been collected, and its examination has been carried far enough to give us at least a general idea of the distribution of races in that quarter of the world. A vast deal, however, still remains to be done, before the almost innumerable and rapidly changing dialects of all these wild tribes shall be brought to our knowledge, combined into classes and groups, and