Vicissitudes of local self-government in the various portions of the Aryan world illustrated in the contrasted cases of France and England.

Old Aryan self-government happily preserved in England.

It has been said that the town-governments of New England were established without any conscious reference to precedent; but, however this may be, they are certainly not without precedents and analogies, to enumerate which will carry us very far back in the history of the Aryan world.

The most primitive self-governing body of which we have any knowledge is the village-community of the ancient Teutons, of which such strict counterparts are found in other parts of the Aryan world as to make it apparent that in its essential features it must be an inheritance from prehistoric Aryan antiquity.

The most primitive self-governing body of which we have any knowledge is the village-community of the ancient Teutons, of which such strict counterparts are found in other parts of the Aryan world as to make it apparent that in its essential features it must be an inheritance from prehistoric Aryan antiquity.

The profound linguistic researches of Pictet, Fick, and others have made it probable that at the time when the Old-Aryan language was broken up into the dialects from which the existing languages of Europe are descended, the Aryan tribes were passing from a purely pastoral stage of barbarism into an incipient agricultural stage, somewhat like that which characterized the Iroquois tribes in America in the seventeenth century.

The profound linguistic researches of Pictet, Fick, and others have made it probable that at the time when the Old-Aryan language was broken up into the dialects from which the existing languages of Europe are descended, the Aryan tribes were passing from a purely pastoral stage of barbarism into an incipient agricultural stage, somewhat like that which characterized the Iroquois tribes in America in the seventeenth century.

From these illustrations we see that the mark, or self-governing village-community, is an institution which must be referred back to early Aryan times.

As we contemplate the vicissitudes of local self-government in the various portions of the Aryan world, we see the contrasted fortunes of France and England illustrating for us most forcibly the significance of this truth.

Hence in the early history of France there was no such stubborn mass of old Aryan liberties to be dealt with as in the early history of England.

Just as in the earlier nomadic life the aggregation of clans makes ultimately the tribe, so in the more advanced agricultural life of our Aryan ancestors the aggregation of marks or village-communities makes ultimately the gau or shire.

I have often thought that if some beneficent fairy could grant us the power of somewhere raising the veil of oblivion which enshrouds the earliest ages of Aryan dominion in Europe, there is no place from which the historian should be more glad to see it lifted than from Rome in the centuries which saw the formation of the city, and which preceded the expulsion of the kings.

In the impregnable mountain fastnesses of upper Germany the Swiss cantons had bid defiance alike to Austrian tyrant and to Burgundian invader, and had preserved in its purest form the rustic democracy of their Aryan forefathers.

This past was kept alive in the myth-loving mind of this Aryan people; in the songs of its poets and in the lays of its minstrels.

Their country is picturesque, densely wooded, and wild in the extreme; the men of fine appearance, with sharp Aryan features and keen, penetrating eyes; blue eyes are not common but do occur, but brown eyes and light hair, even to a golden hue, in combination are not at all uncommon.

As to the various routes to and through Kafiristan, he would add nothing to-night to what had been so ably stated, but as regards the languages, he could not forbear mentioning that there are at least five distinct dialects spoken by the tribes, which differ as much as Italian does from French, if not from German, although based on Aryan roots common to them all.

The various dialects spoken by the tribes of the Hindu Kush, including the Kafir tongues, were all of the Perso-Indian branch of the Aryan family, and showed that the mountains must have been colonised during the successive migrations of the Aryan tribes from Central Asia to the southward.

The various dialects spoken by the tribes of the Hindu Kush, including the Kafir tongues, were all of the Perso-Indian branch of the Aryan family, and showed that the mountains must have been colonised during the successive migrations of the Aryan tribes from Central Asia to the southward.

The Aryan nations, both East and West, might throw themselves with ardor into those high questions of metaphysics, but he contented himself with the utterances of revelation.

It is generally admitted that it was a branch of the great Aryan family, whose original settlements are supposed to have been on the high table-lands of Central Asia east of the Caspian Sea, probably in Bactria.

All branches of the Aryan family have been warlike and adventurous, if we may except the Hindus, who were subjected to different influences,especially of climate, which enervated their bodies if it did not weaken their minds.

Like the early inhabitants of Greece and Italy, they were of the Aryan race.

It was not the worship of ancestors, as among the Aryan races until Grecian and Roman civilization was developed.

The Norwegians, Icelanders, Swedes, and Danes are racially closely related, and they belong to the same branch of the Aryan family as the Germans, Flemish, English, and Anglo-Americans.

But it is now generally recognised that an impulse not wholly dissimilar also moved prophetic or poetic minds among other races, such, for instance, as the Egyptians, the Chaldaeans, and the Aryan conquerors of India, to inscribe on papyrus or stone, or brick or palm-leaf, the results of experience as interpreted by free imagination, traditional habits of thought, and limited knowledge.