nerally true of these languages.
They did not have them, because they had no use for them,--and the more
blessed was their condition. European languages have been loaded with
several thousand such by metaphysics and mysticism, and it has required
several generations to discover that they are empty wind-bags, full of
sound and signifying nothing.

Yet it is well known to students that the power of forming abstracts is
possessed in a remarkable degree by many native languages. The most
recondite formulae of dogmatic religion, such as the definition of the
Trinity and the difference between consubstantiation and
transubstantiation, have been translated into many of them without
introducing foreign words, and in entire conformity with their
grammatical structure. Indeed, Dr. Augustin de la Rosa, of the
University of Guadalajara, who is now the only living professor of any
American language, says the Mexican is peculiarly adapted to render
these metaphysical subtleties.

I have been astonished that some writers should bring up the primary
meaning of a word in an American language in order to infer the
coarseness of its secondary meaning. This is a strangely unfair
proceeding, and could be directed with equal effect against our own
tongues. Thus, I read lately a traveller who spoke hardly of an Indian
tribe because their word for "to love" was a derivative from that
meaning "to buy," and thence "to prize." But what did the Latin _amare_,
and the English _to love_, first mean? Carnally living together is what
they first meant, and this is not a nobler derivation than that of the
Indian. Even yet, when the most polished of European nations, that one
which most exalts _la grande passion_, does not distinguish in language
between loving their wives and liking their dinners, but uses the same
word for both emotions, it is scarcely wise for us to indulge in much
latitude of inference from such etymologies.

Such is the general character of American languages, and such are the
reasons why they should be preserved and studied. The field is vast and
demands many laborers to reap all the fruit that it promises. It is
believed at present that there are about two hundred wholly independent
stocks of languages among the aborigines of this continent. They vary
most widely in vocabulary, and seemingly scarcely less so in grammar.

Besides this, each of these stocks is subdivided into dialects, each
distinguished by its own series of pho