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[Page 2]
may be esteemed as so many elements, and radicals. They are to be found among nations very widely separated and have been current with people of very different eras.
It appears to me that there was a time, when one language only existed in the world; that this was soon diversified by dialects; and there in time became different tongues. Yet there has not been so total a change effected, but that some traces of the original still remain. There are some particular terms, which seem to occur in almost every climate. It has been often debated, which of the languages extant, is the primitive. This seems to be a question of the same purport, as to ask, which is the original branch of the Nile or Danube. The branches are all collateral, and derivative. They descend from one common stream: and language in like manner had one source: but there is this difference in the parallel: the present stream remains; but the maternal source of language is probably no more. It is lost, and irretrievable, excepting perhaps in those traces, of which I made mention before.
According to my best observation the names of Hills