Item 136 - Letter from Charles Lyell

6 pp.

53 Harley Street, London - CL has referred to the chapters in which WW treats of languages ['Indications of the Creator', 1845]: 'Instead of a system of slow gradual and almost insensible change you assume sudden and irregular action which was more and more intense the further we go back to the earlier age of Man's history'. To challenge this CL points to the distinct differences of the Indo-European and Semitic language: 'I see in that a separation at a much more remote epoch, a vastly longer isolation of the people who spoke each, and long absence of intercommunication, not a violent disruption in bygone ages'. 'I cannot subscribe to the opinion that the revolutions of language must have been of an order altogether different from any which have taken place within the recent history of Man as you have supposed'.