[486] See Du Ponceau, Memoire, p. 294-5.
[487] Not only are the inflexions entirely different from those of the languages to which we are accustomed, but the very use of inflexions is altogether peculiar. For example, in the Chippewa language there is an inflexion of nouns, similar to our conjugation of verbs, by which all the states of the noun are expressed. Thus the word man can be inflected for person, to signify, ‘I am a man,’ ‘thou art a man,’ ‘he is a man;’ &c. So also the inflexions of the verb transitive vary according to the gender of the object—See Mrs. Jameson, p. 196. Schoolcraft ascribes the same character to the entire Algonquin family—See Du Ponceau, pp. 130-5.
[488] Letter of M. d’Abbadie, dated May 4, 1855.
[489] Letter of May 23rd, 1855.
[490] The Signor Churi mentioned by M. Fernando is the author of a curious and interesting volume of travels—“The Sea Nile, the Desert and Nigritia,” published in 1853. Being obliged by ill health to leave the Propaganda, and unwilling for many reasons to return to his native Lebanon, he settled in London as a teacher of oriental languages. One of his pupils in Arabic, Captain Peel, engaged him in 1850, as his interpreter in a tour of Egypt, Syria, and the Holy Land, and afterwards, in 1851, in an expedition to the interior of Africa, which forms the subject of Signor Churi’s volume.
[491] I have been assured by M. Bauer, a student of the Propaganda in 1855, that he often conversed with the Cardinal in Hungarian, during the years 1847 and 1848.
[492] A comparative Grammar of the Dravidian, or South-Indian Family of Languages. By the Rev. R. Caldwell, B.A., London, 1856.
[493] In a letter dated Calcutta, September 20, 1855.
[494] Letter dated Calcutta, September 22, 1855.
[495] See a most amusing account by Père Bourgeois, in the Lettres Edifiantes, of his first Chinese Sermon, which D’Israeli has translated. An interesting exposition of the difficulties of the Chinese language is found in Grüber’s Relazione di Cina, Florence, 1697.