them, after the payment of their just debts, could hold title in his own right to the lowest priced slave on earth. Nevertheless, they might fight the more desperately, just by reason of the desperation of their circumstances; and, therefore, if they were determined to subdue and enjoy Kentucky, or perish in the attempt, as they commonly professed, it was a great gain to the commonwealth, and to all who had any stake in it, that they should be gathered into armies, and be fought at the frontiers. In a still more general point of view, it is easy to see that the events we have disclosed had a great share in pitching the chief scene of conflict at the center of the immense line of battle which traverses the continent, and in converting every victory from a local advantage into a national triumph. Such a succession of victories as Burnside afterward won on the coast of North Carolina, and which appeared to have no serious influence much beyond the sound of his cannon; if won six months earlier in any portion of the Confederate States to which any natural access implicates Kentucky, would have exposed the Mississippi Valley, and by consequence the Confederate States to have been subdued at once. The brief, triumphant, and most fruitful struggle of three months on the Cumberland and the Tennessee, compared with the tedious, dubious, and comparatively barren struggle of nearly the first twelve months on the Potomac, illustrates the great truth that the nation could be saved or lost, only at its heart-points out the strategical importance of Kentucky considered either as a highway or as a field of battle, and makes plain the decisive value of her earnest co-operation. This illustration, whether it be thought just, or otherwise, serves to make obvious the general perils which were escaped, and the general advantages which were secured, by the counter revolution in Kentucky, whose history we have traced. Thenceforward, the part allotted to Kentucky, instead of being a separate and barbarous series of obscure butcheries, became an advanced position on the great field where all was to be won, or lost. She could not expect more than this: she did not ask more. If the nation is saved, her own deliverance is also complete. If the nation perishes, she need hardly care to survive it. While the horrible carnage shall continue, our wretched kindred who still thirst for our blood, know in what part of the great bat

tle to look for our banner. They saw it at Wild Cat, at Parkton, at Ivy Mountain, at Logan's Field and Mill Springs, at Fort Donelson, at Shiloh ! In six months it has been borné in triumph by the side of the still more glorious banner of the nation-over an area five hundred miles square! God send that every wandering child of the State would return to its shadow, and share its glory!*

3. We have now traced this strange and eventful story up to the moment when the civil war broke out in Kentucky, and the Tennessee army under Zollicoffer advancing from the Cumberland Gap into the heart of the State, was repulsed at Wild Cat, near the Rockcastle River. It belongs to the military historian to record all that follows. We trust he may be worthy of so high a task; for he has that to recount at which our posterity will never cease to marvel-and concerning which no free people can ever be indifferent, nor any true statesman willingly ignorant. We have been eye-witness of one of those terrific human volcanoes, which have, at irregular intervals, desolated human society, and threatened the progress of the human race, since its creation. From the beginning our confidence has been great, and has been repeatedly expressed, that the entire nation would survive the terrible shock, and completely triumph over it. The attentive consideration of what we have now written, will probably beget, or confirm, a similar confidence in every candid mind. It is but an episode; but it is one wrought from a central point of unusual importance, and having the widest relations. Moreover, posterity, in order to comprehend fully those more glorious acts and events, concerning which many will write, must understand those earlier, more obscure, and less striking affairs, concerning which it chanced that we were of the small number likely to speak at all, who could do so with a certain confidence, at this time. All we have said concerning public affairs, can be verified by public records. Touching those things that are more private,

Great events and great changes have occurred during the months that have elapsed from the writing of this paragraph, till its present revision for the press. And in the months that must elapse before it can be issued (September), still greater events may occur. We leave it, very nearly as it was first written, to speak for itself. Much that has since occurred, confirms its scope; and we accept the risk of future confirmation.

we have stated nothing except upon personal knowledge, or upon such evidence as we believed to be true-and upon that belief acted under circumstances of great difficulty. And our conviction is, that though we may have fallen into mistakes, which we shall be glad to correct, there are no important facts stated by us, which will not be perpetually confirmed by time and scrutiny.

ART. II.-The Unity of the Human Race.

THE doctrine of the Bible is, that all mankind have descended from a single pair created immediately by God. But this doctrine has been assailed by men of no mean pretensions to learning and science. The grounds of their assaults are the differences of organic structure, including all the varieties of external appearance, the physiological and psychological varieties, and the numerous languages, that obtain among the human family. These organic, physiological, and psychological differences and varieties have been fully considered by Dr. Prichard, in his elaborate work entitled "The Natural History of Man," and shown to be perfectly compatible with unity of species. So minute has the Doctor been in his observation, and so extensive is his induction of facts, that little can be added by way of strengthening his conclusions. An impartial reader of his work must be led to acknowledge that God "hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth."

The objection against the unity of the human family, drawn from the variety of human languages existing in the world, has not, perhaps, from the circumstances of the case, been so fully met as that drawn from the natural history of the various races of mankind; yet enough has been done, by the classification of all the most important languages into distinct families, and by establishing points of connection between these families themselves, to convince any reasonable mind. that all the languages of the world have been derived from

one common source.

To exhibit as briefly as possible the principles that have guided philologists in their investigations, the results at which they have arrived, and the bearing of these results upon the question of the Unity of the Human Race, is the object of the present article.

Languages are subject to laws like all other manifestations of the human mind. They have their history, which may be traced through their periods of growth and decline. To investigate these laws, "and to trace the history of languages through their various stages, is the main purpose of Comparative Philology. To accomplish this end, we follow language to the earliest times. We view it as in constant and direct connection with the ever-active mind of man; and we find that the plan of making it and the progress in forming it, are not in the hand of man alone, but, like his own fate, subject to the will of the Most High. We consider, moreover, a language not merely as given and ready at a certain time, nor as standing by itself, subject to laws of its own, but we trace all idioms back to the period when their oldest forms are still apparent, and then compare these with one another. For only when we have found these primitive forms, which alone are objects of comparison, and by comparison afford valuable results, a systematic science of language can be said to begin. It will then receive aid from the three branches, which, for such purposes, are indispensable to each other. Lexicography, or the mere knowledge of words; Comparative Grammar, which investigates their structure and inflexions; and a Comparative History of all the various idioms which belong to the same great family." Thus has a popular writer on Comparative Philology indicated its main purpose, and its method.

The history of Comparative Philology is one of deep interest. In the words of Cardinal Wiseman, " it presents the same features in the moral sciences, which Chemistry does among the natural. While the latter was engaged in a fruitless chase of the philosopher's stone, or of a remedy for every disease, the linguists were occupied in the equally fruitless search after a primary language. In the course of both inquiries many important and unexpected discoveries were doubtless made;

De Vere's Comparative Philology.

but it was not till a principle of analytical investigation was introduced in both, that the real nature of their objects was ascertained, and results obtained far more valuable than had first caused and encouraged so much toilsome application."

Its history commences with the attempts to arrive at the knowledge of the primitive language. Curiosity, or national vanity, if we may credit the statement of Herodotus, prompted these attempts at a very early period. But in later times it was argued, if it can only be shown that there exists some language, which contains the germ of all the rest, and forms a center whence they all diverge, then the confusion of Babel receives a striking confirmation; for that language must have been, at one time, the common original speech of mankind. For this primitive language a host of claimants arose. The Celtic, Chinese, Dutch, Biscayan, Abyssinian, Syriac, and Hebrew had each their respective advocates.

The prosecution of their claims was conducted on principles, the subversion of which by more rational has raised Comparative Philology to the eminence which it occupies at the present day. The only affinity admitted between languages was that of filiation. Parallel descent from a common origin was hardly ever imagined. As soon as two languages were found to bear a resemblance to each other, it was concluded that one must be the offspring of the other. This erroneous principle led to many errors, as, for example, the derivation of the German from the Persian, and of the Latin from the Greek.

There was another error in prosecuting philological studies. It consisted in conducting researches by imaginary and forced etymologies, instead of an extended comparison of all the members of the same family. This was indeed the natural result of the object proposed-to prove the derivation of all other languages from the one assumed as the primitive. The investigator preferred to find, in his favorite language, a supposed original word, which contained in itself the germ, or meaning of the term examined, rather than to trace its affinities through sister languages, or to derive it from obvious elements in the language to which it belonged. Goropius Becanus, for instance, explains from Dutch the names found in Genesis; and concludes that these names were given in that tongue. It would argue, in his opinion, the most invincible