which is as much as to say as that they were sib together, i.e. of kin together through God."

Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, C. 7.*

But, while we have, on the one hand, words which have strengthened, and on the other hand, words which have softened and degenerated in signification, we have also words which have completely changed meaning-perfect turn-coats: not mere renegades, as are the others, but downright deserters.

,

How amazed, for instance, would one of our sturdy old English writers be, were he told, by some modern, ⚫tea-imbibing dame that she was very nervous. Viewing the word from the Latin stand-point-seeing in it merely the classic nervosus, sinewy, 'muscular'an epithet only applicable to the stalwart strength of manhood, and which even we can appreciate from the employment of our 'nervous style,'--we can easily

* Webster bungles over this word. Verstegan would have enlightened him, or Junius either, for that matter. For, as Junius remarks, these gossips under cloak of this 'SPIRITUALL AFFINITY' used often to meet to tell stories and

tipple over them!-a circumstance from which we in English derive our expression 'TO GO A GOSSIPING' etc. And it is a curious coincidence that the French for 'gossip' is commérage from commère, a god-mother-a precisely analogous process having taken place in the word.

imagine how the worthy would be either petrified (even though he might not be turned into-petrastone) with amazement; or at least he would regard the good lady as indulging in a joke!* And how much of Carlyle's teaching is but a fiery plaint of the sad seduction so painfully visible in the abysmal gulf that has come to intervene between 'KEN' and 'CAN' -which, we are aware, were once one and the same. But this was before 'CANNING' had become cunning; or 'CUNNING' had grown synonymous with crafty. So that then the Baconian apothegm, Knowledge is Power was to them a mere truism: since it only asserted that Ken-ning is Can-ning!

How titanic is the power which many words wield! Indeed, in numerous instances, so terrible is the influence they exercise that mankind has been compelled to break away in affright from their sway into the domain of others less potent. Of this we have a wellknown instance in that dangerous African cape, ever so fatal to mariners, and which the wrathful "Spirit of the Cape" lashes into foaming fury. Long was it all too truthfully known by the name of the "Cape of Storms;" but this was to recognize the danger (whereas the feared and the fearful must ever be nameless); and so, buoying up their courage, they gave it the more cheerful appellation of the "Cape of Good Hope." Again, how chilling to the ardor of the soldier must be that word 'FORLORN-HOPE'-men sent on a service attended with such peril that hope must be forlornrelinquished, left behind by them.

But it is in Poetry's mightier idealizations that a far loftier idealism discloses itself-in tones drawn by the Master's hand from the lyre of humanity-in the wild ravings of an old un-Kinged Lear, in an Othello's bursts of wailing sadness or tempestuous madness

"My wife! my wife! what wife? I have no wife !"

Or, when Cleopatra, refering to the asp, says:

Or when with the true prerogative of genius-to marry the phenomena of nature with the moods of man's mind-Shakespeare sees types of insanity in the green scum of the standing-pool-Poor Tom

"Drinks the green mantle of the standing pool!"

'Tis in the loftier and serener empyrean of Poetry that we catch lineaments-shadowy and far away-of a supernal beauty that haunts and will not leave us and hear tones of more than mortal pathos and power.

"In the silence of the night

How we shiver with affright,"

at memories awakened perchance by some one weak word-weak, yet winged: a mere breathing, and yet vitalized by the very spirit of life. And so, under the guidance of Bishop Hutchinson, let us return: "And to make short of this argument, we doubt not but many wise men have too mean an opinion of the power of words and take too little care about them: for though the words of a fool are little, the words of a wise man are wonderful. Words are the judges of our thoughts, the land-marks of all interests; and the wheels of our human world are turned by them. They move interests that are greater than mountains, and many a time have subdued kingdoms. Riches and Poverty, Love and Hatred, and even Life and Death are in the power of the tongue, and when their effects are least they are still the character of the mind and abilities of him who speaks them; and when they are first and natural, though plain and unaffected they carry charms that are superior to the beauty of the fairest face, while the improper use of them shows ignorance of words that are understood by others, they lessen the man and make the picture as mean as sign-post painting." *

'TRANSIENT' is a suggestive word. It is transienspassing away! With plaintive sadness it sings the requiem of human life. Said Ina's queen, "Are not all things, are not we ourselves like a river hurrying heedless and headlong to the dark ocean of illimitable time?" And I find in the Romaunt of the Rose this antique rhyme, through which the same figure runs:

"The time that passith night and daie,

And restilesse travailith aie,

And stelith from us privily,

That to us semith sikirly

That it in one poinct dwellith ever,

And certes it ne restith never,

But goeth as fast and passeth aie

* From a curious old tract, entitled, "The Many Advantages

of a Good Language to any Nation."