12 JANUARY 1895, Page 3

Mr. Gladstone, writing to the publisher of a book on

"The Speech of Man and Holy Writ," says :—" If speech were only radical human invention, how could it have happened that an ancient language like the Greek (still more, as I understand, the Sanskrit) should be so superior in structure to our own ? and though we call it dead, should be the repository to which we repair when we want a new living word for any purpose ? " Mr. Gladstone might have added the still stranger fact that Sanskrit, which must be one of the oldest of human tongues, is specially capable of expressing fine shades of metaphysical thought. That is rather an odd result of mere evolution.