hearty and affectionate words for my birthday added to the happiness
of the day, which I spent here in the quiet of the country, with my
family. I have long looked on you as one of us; and when I look forward
into the future, I see your form as one of the bright points which there
present themselves to me. You groan now under the burden of a very heavy
mountain, which you have taken on your shoulders as others would take a
block; only the further you advance, the more will you be satisfied that
it is a part of the edifice which you will yet find time to finish; and at
the same time it will stand by itself as a {~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}.

George is well, and will be with us to-morrow week; Theodora a week later.

Place your essay where you will. I find the connection with the Gothic by
means of "Grimm's Law" most natural. The foundation of my arrangement was
the purely external idea of progression from the nearer to the more
remote,--from the known to the unknown. I hope that next time Aufrecht's
muse will give us an intermediate chapter on the Hellenes, Pelasgians,
Thracians, AEolians, Dorians, and Ionians; it is curious enough that these
are entirely passed over. I do not know, though, what positive facts have
resulted up to now from comparative philology as regards the Hellenic
element. An historical insight is needed here, such as Ottfried Mueller had
just begun to acquire when death robbed us of his noble mind. But Mueller
really understood _nothing_ of comparative philology, as the Introduction
to his Etruscans proves. The Pelasgians must have been a nearly connected
people; the Thracians were certainly so. But from the north comes Hellas,
and from Hellas the Ionian Asia Minor. However, the history of the
language falls infinitely earlier than the present narrow chronologists
fancy. The Trojan War, that is the struggle of the AEolian settlers with
the Pelasgians, on and around the sea-coast, lies nearer 2000 than 1000 B.
C. The synchronisms require it. It is just the same with Crete and Minos,
where the early Phoenician period is out of all proportion older than
people imagine. Had we but monuments of Greek, like the F