G.  The National Institute at Paris has printed Mr. Duponceau’s Prize Essay on the Algonquin.  Dr. James wrote unsuccessfully for the prize.  Duponceau first mentioned you to me.  He has freely translated from your lectures on the substantive, which gives you a European reputation.

PUBLISHERS ON PHILOLOGY.—­G.  There is no patronage for such works here.  Germany and France are the only countries where treatises on philology can be published.  It is Berlin or Paris, and of these Berlin holds the first place.  In Great Britain, as in this country, there is not sufficient interest on the subject for booksellers to take hold of mere works of fact of this sort.  They are given to reading tales and light literature, as here.

ORAL TALES OF THE INDIANS—­G.  Your “Indian Tales” and your “Hieroglyphics” would sell here; but grammatical materials on the languages will not do, unless they can be arranged as appendices.

S.  I urged Governor Cass to write on this subject, and he declined.

G.  Does he understand the languages?

S.  Pronouns, in our Indian languages, are of a more permanent character than philologists have admitted.  They endure in some form, in kindred dialects, the most diverse.

G.  This is true, the sign is always left, and enables one, clearly enough, to trace stocks.  Dialects are easily made.  There are many in France, and they fill other parts of Europe.  Every department in France has one.

DISCRIMINATING VIEWS OF PHILOLOGY AND PHILOLOGISTS.—­G.  It is not clear what Heckewelder meant by “whistling sound,” in the prefix pronouns.  I told Mr. Duponceau that it had been better that the gentleman’s MSS. were left as he originally wrote them, with mere corrections as to grammar—­that we should then, in fact, have had Indian information.  For Heckewelder thought and felt like a Delaware, and believed all their stories.[89]

[Footnote 89:  This admission of the re-composition of Mr. Heckewelder’s letters, and the excellent missionary’s general deficiency, furnishes a striking confirmation of the views and sagacity of a critic of the North American Review, writing on that topic, in 1825.  And the more so, as those views were conjectural, but they were the conjectures of one who had personally known Mr. Heckewelder.]

MONOSYLLABIC LANGUAGE.—­G.  You have asserted that all the Indian roots are monosyllables.

S.  Most of them, not all.  This is a branch to which I have paid particular attention; and if there is anything in Indian philology in which I deem myself at home, it is in the analysis of Indian words, the digging out of roots, and showing their derivatives and compounds.

G.  The societies would print your observations on these topics.  They are of much interest.

ORIGIN OF THE INDIAN LANGUAGE.—­S.  The Hebrew is based on roots like the Indian, which appear to have strong analogies to the Semitic family.  It is not clearly Hindostanee, or Chinese, or Norse.  I have perused Rafn’s Grammar by Marsh.  The Icelandic (language) clearly lies at the foundation of the Teutonic.