bute to the excellence of the instrument that which is due to the genius and skill of the master who handles it. The study of languages has, in conformity with this prejudice, been confined within a limited range; and from this it has resulted, that the laws of grammar have been narrowed to a degree highly unfavorable to the formation of enlarged and philosophical principles. The languages which commonly form a part of the education of the cultivated classes in England and the United States, and with whose investigation the scholars of these countries are chiefly occupied, are, indeed, those which have belonged to the most cultivated and refined nations of the earth; but they are, and even for that very reason, those which have departed the most widely from their original standard, and are the most defaced by corruptions and irregularities. The Greek, the Latin,— superior as they are in their construction to the mixed languages of modern Europe, with which we commonly compare them, even the Sanscrit, which, beside the other languages of the same family, might almost appear a model of grammatical perfection,—cannot rival in the completeness and delicacy of their inflections, in the power of expressing concisely the nicest shades of meaning, some of those disregarded languages, that have never yet been called into the service of literature, and on which the grammarian and lexicographer have not yet expended their cares. A more enlarged acquaintance with those languages which we are pleased to term barbarous would have the effect of checking the pride of vain learning, would lead to the substitution of the study of nature for that of books, even in those pursuits which have hitherto been more especially subject to the dominion of pedantry. There are, perhaps, no languages more worthy of investigation than those of some of the rude nomade tribes from time immemorial roaming the steppes of Asia, who, placed beyond the limits of the civilized world, have made their existence known to it only when, from time to time, they have overflowed their boundaries, to pour over the cultivated plains of the West their destructive living tide. These inundations commonly subsided as suddenly as they had risen; but have left behind them two permanent monuments in Europe: the nation of the Magyars, and the empire of the Osmanlis. These last have resisted the law which commonly governs the fate of barbarian conquerors, ordaining them to be

subjugated in their turn by the civilization they have invaded; they have rejected alike the religion and the refinement of the conquered, and have remained an Asiatic people on European soil. Their barbarous creed and their debased social state have prevented the development of a literature which could attract foreigners to the study of their language. The Magyars have likewise remained a distinct people; but distinct as a European and a Christian state. Retaining many of their Asiatic characteristics, they have yet evinced nothing of the Oriental passivity and indifference to progress. They are the only nation of Tataric origin which has yet attained to a high degree of civilization. Their language is the only one of the remarkable class to which it belongs, which has become the vehicle of the literature of a cultivated people.

This language is well worthy of a larger share of attention than it has yet received, both from the philologist and the belles-lettres student. It retains its original structure almost unimpaired. It will be found to throw great light on the construction of other tongues, even of those most widely separated from it, and to furnish a guide to the original source of many of their phenomena; while, independently of its utility in this view, its singularities and beauties will amply repay the trouble bestowed on its acquisition. It is not easy for those who are familiar only with broken and irregular languages, marred and defaced in the crowded, hurried life of civilization, or originally formed by the sudden and disorderly mingling of heterogeneous materials, to conceive the charm possessed by a primitive language like the Magyar, yet fresh, as it were, from the childhood of the world. The very causes which contributed to the depression and neglect of this extraordinary language, have tended to the preservation of its purity and originality.

It is not unfrequently the case, where different languages exist side by side within the limits of the same government, that while that which, by the partiality of the rulers, is received as the recognized language of the land, undergoes continual adulteration and change, those of the less favored races, protected from many sources of corruption which assail the language which is the privileged medium of literature, of legislation, and of traffic, preserve their purity and vigor through a course of ages. Thus it has been in Spain with.

the Euskara, the language of the remnant of the ancient Iberians. Thus it has been with the Welsh. The Celtic inhabitants of Great Britain are not vainly boastful, when they assert the great superiority of their language over that which has superseded it. Thus it has been to a great extent with the Magyar. Frowned upon by power and discountenanced by fashion, while the German language, favored by the government, and the French, attractive by its literature and its prestige as the language of the polite of Europe, found currency with the more artificial classes, the national tongue remained the language of the people, always the most faithful guardians of the language as of the customs of their ancestors. The Magyar was not indeed the language of a conquered people. No idea of degradation, therefore, was attached to it. Its use was never wholly abandoned by the higher ranks, except by that portion of the nobility who made their residence at the Austrian capital, and were ready completely to denationalize themselves. Those of the educated classes who still respected and retained their own language acquired the German as a matter of convenience, the French as a matter of fashion; these languages supplied their literary wants, and formed the medium of the intercourse of formal society; while the mother tongue remained the language of the home, of the affections, of the nearest and most personal cares and interests. The expression of genuine feelings, of actual wants, is always simple and direct. The household language is transmitted the same from age to age.

*

It was by intention, by a patriotic movement, that, after its long depression, the national language of the Magyars became the language of a national literature.

* We may quote, in confirmation of this, an observation of Cicero, who remarks that the purity of language is commonly better preserved by women than by men, in consequence of the greater retirement and simplicity of their lives. He instances the elegance and purity with which the Latin was spoken by his mother-in-law, Lælia. "When listen to her," he says, "I think 1 hear Plautus or Nævius. Thus her father must have spoken; thus our early ancestors."

The same observation was made in regard to the Greek in the latter days of the Eastern empire. A scholar of the fifteenth century, who visited Constantinople a few years before it was taken by the Turks, writes, that notwithstanding the corruptions which had been introduced into the language in that city, by the great influx of foreign merchants, he found many persons who cherished their language with great care, and who spoke it with the ancient purity and elegance. "This," he says, was especially the case with the noble women, who, living wholly secluded from the society of foreigners, had preserved the pure Greek language entire."

Never had the Magyar nationality been so dangerously threatened as in the time of Maria Theresa. This princess, not less determined than her predecessors to Germanize her Hungarian subjects, yet sought this end by a gentler and surer policy. She strove to undermine this obstinate nationality which defied all open attacks. She called the Hungarians to her metropolis, in order to break down the barriers between them and her Austrian subjects by the subtle influence of daily intercourse. She loaded them with honors and favors, which served her interest while they expressed her gratitude, and, in the very acknowledgment of past services, made new claims on their loyalty and devotion. She interested herself in the promotion of marriages between the Magyar nobles and Austrian ladies, thus transporting without violence German manners and the German language into the very heart of Hungary.

If the successors of Maria Theresa had maintained the same far-seeing policy, the German influence might have silently established itself, and the beautiful Magyar tongue, the language of the ascendant race in Hungary, might have shared the fate of the languages of subjected tribes, and, abandoned by the cultivated classes, have maintained its existence only among a rude peasantry; still, perhaps, for its singular beauties, to be made the theme of the foreign philologist, but destined never more to instruct in chronicle or charm in verse more dignified than the village fireside tale and rustic ballad. It was preserved from this fate, not so much by the jealous care of the people who owned it for their mother tongue, as by the imprudent aggressions of their Austrian king. The open war which Joseph II. made against the nationality of the Magyars, his violent attempts to force upon them the German language, and the illegality of the means by which he sought to bring about even salutary reforms, created a sudden reaction. The Magyars awoke to the danger of national extinction, which threatened them from the overthrow of their institutions and the suppression of their language. Every thing connected with the past now assumed a value in their eyes. Ancient customs were revived. The national costume was received once more into honor. Periodicals devoted to the national cause and to the support of the language sprang up in every part of the kingdom. The

emperor was forced to recede from his encroachments. The Magyar language superseded the German in the schools. Professorships of Magyar literature were established in the universities. Societies were formed, whose object was the preservation of the language and the promotion of a national literature. The theatre was likewise made to contribute to these patriotic ends. Translations were made of French, German, and English plays into the Magyar; and the zeal of patriotic writers supplied the stage with a great number of original pieces.

The Magyar reformers, however, found it to be a matter of less difficulty to triumph over outward obstacles than to overcome those which time and habit had been gradually raising up within themselves. The influence of foreign ideas and customs had extended itself widely over the cultivated part of the nation, and especially over the writers, who were so imbued with the spirit of foreign literature, that they could not emancipate themselves from it by an effort of will. During the first five years after the establishment of a Magyar theatre, not less than two hundred and fifty pieces were presented; but, of the original plays, which made perhaps a third of the whole number, few offered any thing in tone or spirit to distinguish them from the translated pieces, and very few enjoyed more than a transient popularity.

But these patriotic efforts were not lost; they raised the Magyar language from the neglect into which it was sinking, and prepared the way for a new and higher development of the intellectual resources of the nation. In the men who grew up under the influence of this spirit of revival, the sentiment of nationality was no longer factitious.

Among the writers who appeared immediately after this season of awakened zeal, the brothers Kisfaludy were the most distinguished. This name was first made eminent by Alexander Kisfaludy, the first Magyar poet of modern times who won for himself a national reputation. It was raised to yet higher distinction by his younger brother, Charles, in whom his countrymen recognize the founder of the Magyar drama.

Kisfaludy did not merely compose his works in the language of his country; he drew their themes from her history, and infused into them the national spirit. Every page glows