Note 180 — Chapter IV · ALBION
Reading edition
“A few years ago it would have been deemed the height of absurdity to imagine that the English and the Hindus were originally one people, speaking the same language, and clearly distinguished from other families of mankind; and yet comparative philology has established this fact by evidence as clear and irresistible as that the earth revolves round the sun.”—Smith, Dr. Wm., Lectures on the English Language, p. 2.