Cumberland and Westmorland, Ancient and Modern; The People, Dialect, Superstitions and Customs (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1857 Excerpt: ... PART I. THE PEOPLE. "dubch sie (Ortnamen), die altesten und dauerndsten Denkmaler, erzahlt eine langst vergangene Nation gleichsam selbst ihre eigenen Schicksale, und es fragt sich nur, ob ihre Stimme uns noch verstandlich bleibt." W. Von Humboldt. Through these (names of places), the oldest and most enduring monuments, a nation long passed away relates as it were its own destiny, and the only question is, whether we yet understand its voice. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. Ethnology, the science that, in its widest extent, comprehends all the phenomena connected with Peoples, Dialects, and Superstitions, presents itself to us under a three-fold aspect. Any one of the departments, physiology, philology, psychology, may be studied separately; yet as all three are undeniably involved in every question of ethnology, it can be of no avail to establish under one aspect, what we are not equally prepared to do under the other two. The writers on ethnology hitherto have been mainly physiologists, partly also philologists; whilst psychology has remained a sort of neutral ground, for the conflicting opinions of both. But, it must be observed, that in the most pressing necessity of the science, namely, classification, the physiological investigators have established nothing more positive than that all distribution of races, under that aspect, must, if unaided, be in the highest degree baffling and vain. Physiologists, therefore, have only been too glad to avail themselves of the discoveries in the philological department, and especially of the classification that has so far resulted from a study of languages. But it follows, that when such ethnographers venture philological arguments on their own responsibility, their statements aTe to be received wi...