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NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE 40.
ON THE LANGUAGES OF AFRICA.
THE following review of Professor Lepsius' Nubische Grammatik' (Times, 29 Dec. 1880), gives an account of that scholar's latest views on the languages and population of Africa.
Whatever may have been written of late about the decadence of the German Universities, and particularly that of Berlin, the stars that once gave lustre to that name have not yet set, nor does it seem, to jedge from late publications, that they have lost their former brilliancy. There are not many Universities in any country that count among their professors so many stars of the first magnitude as Berlin; and, what is most extraordinary, though men like Lepsius, Mommsen, E. Curtius, Zeller, Helmholtz, to speak of the Philosophical Faculty only, have all passed the meridian of life, their power of work, and of creative work, too, seems undiminished. Professor Lepsius is 70 years old, yet he has just brought out a work which would have taxed to the utmost the powers of younger men, and which is full, not only of facts carefully collected, but of theories that will startle many of his readers, and set them thinking and, we hope, working. In publishing his long-expected 'Nubian Grammar,' a volume of more than 600 pages, Professor Lepsius has added an Introduction which, though smaller in extent, is by far the weightiest portion of the book. It gives the results of his long-continued studies of all, or nearly all, the languages of Africa, and lays down at the
