“What is long delayed must be good when it comes.” So I would be patient till you had really caught your Tartar, did I not fear that my dear friend was suffering again from his wretched headaches. Meanwhile I worked up the Italica, and the summary of the sixty-seven African languages is getting into shape, and the printer's devils are run off their legs. It would be delightful if my dear M. were to send me soon the chapter on the Mongols; only he must not work up a headache. You will have received my Schott last week by book post.
I have not been well. Theodora has had gastric fever, but is quite on the mend since this morning.
At last I have received Lassen III. (2) with the map.
[39.]
My courier occupied me till nine. Since then I have read through your letter with intense delight; and now in a quarter of an hour I must go to the railway for a country party with Grote. I hasten to thank you for this beautiful gem for my Introduction and for my whole book. You shall have the last word. Your treatise is the only one in the collection which extends beyond isolated types of speech and families, although it preserves throughout the scientific method of Indo-Germanic philology. It was a double refreshment to me, as out of conscientiousness I had looked at and skimmed through L.'s perverse books. What determined impudence there is in that man!
Whilst I am looking over my materials, among which Aufrecht's contribution looks very well, I feel very strongly the want of a report of the last results of the Caucasian languages. My two lines on Rosen look too miserable; also new works have appeared on the subject. Samiel help!
I am entirely of your opinion concerning the transliteration, but I maintain that you must send me a table (key) to your own transliteration. For your table of the forty-eight is otherwise not easy for my good English readers, or even for me; and to most it is unintelligible. With the others I shall soon find my way.
I intend to insert a chapter on definite terminology. I think it must be settled from the only tenable hypothesis, namely, the spreading abroad from one central point in mid-Asia,—that is, from the great district which (originally) was bounded towards the north by the open Polar Sea, with the Ural Island or Peninsula; to the west by the Caucasus and Ararat; east by the Altai and Altan Mountains; and south by the continuation of the Taurus Mountains, which stretch in the interior from west east, as far as the Hindu-Kush.
Therefore, for Turanian == Ural-Altaic, or the northeastern branch.
For Semitic == Aramean, from Aram, the Mesopotamian highland.