(3) The Permic, comprising Permian, Syrjänian, Votjakian.

(4) The Finnic, comprising Finnish, Estonian, Lapponian, Karelian, Livonian, Wotian.

Fins.

For our own purposes the Fins and Estonians are the most interesting among the Finno-Ugric tribes. The Fins call themselves Suomalainen, i. e. inhabitants of fens. They are settled in the province of Finland (formerly belonging to Sweden, but since 1809 annexed to Russia), and in parts of the governments of Archangel and Olonetz. Their literature and, above all, their popular poetry bear witness to a high intellectual development in times which we may call almost mythical, and in places more favourable to the glow of poetical feelings than their present abode, the last refuge Europe could afford them. The epic songs still live among the poorest, recorded by oral tradition alone, and preserving all the features of a perfect metre and of a more ancient language. A national feeling has lately arisen amongst the Fins, despite of Russian supremacy; and the labours of Sjögren, Lönnrot, Castrén, Kellgren, Donner and others, receiving hence a powerful impulse, have produced results truly surprising. From the mouths of the aged an epic poem has been collected equalling the Iliad in length and completeness-nay, if we can forget for a moment all that we in our youth learned to call beautiful, not less beautiful. A Fin is not a Greek, and Wainamoïnen was not a Homeric rhapsodos. But if the poet may take his colours from that nature by which he is surrounded, if he may depict the men with whom he lives, the Kalevala.

possesses merits not dissimilar from those of the Iliad, and will claim its place as the fifth national epic of the world, side by side with the Ionian songs, with the Mahabharata, the Shâhnâmeh, and the Nibelunge. If we want to study the circumstances under which short ballads may grow up and become amalgamated after a time into a real epic poem, nothing can be more instructive than the history of the collection of the Kalevala. We have here facts before us, not mere surmises, as in the case of the Homeric poems and the Nibelunge. We can still see how some poems were lost, others were modified; how certain heroes and episodes became popular, and attracted and absorbed what had been originally told of other heroes and other episodes. Lönnrot could watch the effect of a good and of a bad memory among the people who repeated the songs to him, and he makes no secret of having himself used the same freedom in the final arrangement of these poems which the people used from whom he learnt them. This early literary cultivation has not been without a powerful influence on the language. It has imparted permanence to its forms and a traditional character to its words, so that at first sight we might almost doubt whether the grammar of this language had not left the agglutinative stage altogether. The agglutinative type, however, yet remains, and its grammar shows a luxuriance of grammatical combination second only to Turkish and Hungarian. Like Turkish it observes the 'harmony of vowels,' a feature which lends a peculiar charm to its poetry.

The yield of this popular poetry for mythological and religious researches is very considerable.

The Estonians.

The Ests or Estonians, neighbours of the Fins, and speaking a language closely allied to the Finnish, possess likewise large fragments of ancient national poetry. Dr. Kreutzwald has been able to put together a kind of epic poem, called Kalevipoeg, the Son of Kalew, not so grand and perfect as the Kalevala, yet interesting as a parallel.

The languages which I formerly comprehended under the general name of South-Turanian, should, for the present at least, be treated as independent branches of speech.

Tamulic Languages.

There can be no doubt about the Tamulic or Dravidian languages constituting a well-defined family, held together by strongly marked grammatical features. Tamil, Telugu, Canarese, and Malayalam occupy nearly the whole of the Indian peninsula. Some scattered dialects, still spoken north of the Dekhan, such as those of the Gonds, Uraon-Kols, Rajmahals, and Brahuis, show that the race speaking Tamulic languages occupied formerly more northern seats, and was driven from the North to the South by the Aryan colonists of the country.

Munda Languages.

There is another cluster of languages, the Munda or Kol, which were formerly classed with the Tamulic, but which, as I was the first to prove in my Letter on the Turanian Languages1, constitute by themselves an independent family of speech. The dialects of the Santhals, Kols, Hos, Bhumij belong to this class.

1 Letter to Chevalier Bunsen, 'On the Turanian Languages,' in Bunsen's Christianity and Mankind, vol. iii. p. 263. 1854.

These dialects, which I had called Munda, Sir G. Campbell proposed to call Kolarian.

Taic Languages.

In the same Letter on the Turanian Languages, I comprehended under the name of Taic, the Siamese, and its congeners, such as Laos, Shan (Tenasserim), Ahom, Khamti, and Kassia.

Gangetic Languages.

Under Gangetic I classed Tibetan, with such related dialects as Lepcha, Murmi, Magar, Gurung, etc.

Lohitic Languages.

Under Lohitic I arranged Burmese with Bodo, Garo, Nága, Singpho, and similar dialects.

The Lohitic and Gangetic languages together are sometimes spoken of as Bhotiya.

Languages of Farther India.

There are still the languages of what used to be called Farther India, but these languages, now spoken by Anamites, Peguans, Cambodjans, and others, have been so little explored in the spirit of comparative philology that it must suffice for the present to mention their names. For our own purposes, the study of Natural Religion, they have yielded as yet very little. They have long been under the influence of either China, Tibet, or India, and have hardly attracted the attention of the collector of sacred folk-lore.

Languages of the Caucasus.

The same remark applies to the languages spoken in the Caucasus, such as the Georgian, Lazian, Suanian,

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Mingrelian, Abchasian, Circassian, Thush, etc. They have been studied, but they have not yet been classified with any degree of success, and they yield us hardly any information on the natural growth of religious ideas.

Language and Religion.

We have thus surveyed the principal languages of Europe and Asia, more particularly those which have supplied the living soil for the growth of mythology and religion. I have intentionally confined my remarks to languages, without saying much of those who spoke them.

Blood and hair and bones can teach us nothing or very little about religion, and the more carefully the two sciences of ethnology and philology are kept apart, the better, I believe, it will be for both. We know, from history, that races may give up their own language and adopt that of their conquerors, or, in some cases, of the conquered. Much more is this the case with religion. Our interest therefore is with religion, whoever the people were who believed in it, just as we classify languages regardless of the people by whom they were spoken. Buddhism, for instance, is an Aryan religion, and its origin would be unintelligible on any but an Aryan substratum of language and thought. But it has been adopted by races whose languages belong to a totally different family, and whose intellectual peculiarities have completely changed the original character of Buddha's teaching. Who could understand Buddhism if he knew it in its Chinese, Mongolian, or Japanese form only?

In the case of Christianity we have a Semitic re