On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
would be the history of the world , and a history free from all the fictions and misrepresentations in which history has ever yet been clothed by designing partisan writers - Scarce a history exists ,, in whicn internal evidence may not be found of wilful falsehood from interested motives ; and it would be unreasonable
to expect any thing else , for few writers are calm philosophers , and if they were , it is no easy matter to procure correct information as to the acts of human beings , even on the spot where they occur . If we take up six newspapers published yesterday , we shall probably find six different versions of the same fact , as for example ., that a carriage and horses were overset at the turning of a street corner , and a shop-window dashed in , whereby several
persons were killed . The names of the persons , and the number of them , and the injuries of which they died , may probably be misstated ; but that is of little consequence ; we know , and those who come after us will know , that carriages , and horses , and shop-windows , and streets , were things in use at the period of the accident . In reading the account of the battle of Pavia , it is of little importance whether Francis surrendered to Pescara ,
or Pescara to Francis ; but it is of importance to know what kind of armour , and weapons , and tents , and clothing were in use , and what kind of food was eaten , for thereby we can form an accurate estimate how far human art , and to some extent how far human civilization , had advanced . Sir Robert Walpole was accustomed to consider history as romance , and he was perhaps not very far from the truth , as history has hitherto been written ;
but the history of words must be true history , for names would never have been given to things , unless the things had previously existed ; names would as little have been given to the qualities of the human mind , unless those qualities had existed , and had been discovered . The history of language is the history of moral and physical science , it is the history of every source of consciousness of all that we know , of all upon which we can communicate our
thoughts to each other . By the analysis of language , we can ascertain the probability of facts , as well as their possibility ; we can detect interpolations in history , as the forgery of a document was proved by the posterior date in the wire-mark of the paper . We can get absolutely at the moral and physical condition of any human beings , at any given period , by studying the language they used at that period . By possessing a list of the Furniture of an ancient house , and a lfst of the furniture of a
modern house , we can ascertain the exact progress which has been made in personal comforts . In an ancient house , andirons or dogs were the furniture of a fire-place . In a modern one , a register stove with a poker , tongs , and shovel , is in use . This , even if we knew no other fact thereto pertaining , would be sufficient for a careful analyzer to trace the change from wood fuel to coal , and the immense train of new inventions consequent
Untitled Article
884 Proposal for a National College of Language .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1833, page 384, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2616/page/24/
-