"Slept never on the Mount of Parnasso,
Ne lerned Marcus Tullius Cicero."

I quote the passage, however, merely to note the old spelling of 'SCHOOL' - Scole-a form which approaches nearer to the original word and gives us a glimpse thereinto. Schole is the etymon and signifies primitively leisure the 'otium cum dignitate' so essential to permit of 'scholastic' pursuits. The following passage, cited by Richardson, well illustrates the original meaning of the word:

"For hee pictured the noble ladie Hesione, K. Alexander the Great, and Philip the King his father, with the goddesse Minerva; which tables hang in the Philosopher's Schoole, or walking place, within the stately galleries of Octavia, where the learned clerks and gentlemen favourers of learning, were wont to meet and converse." Holland's Plinie.

The archaic use of 'CLERK,' in the above passage, suggests a remark in regard to the history of it, also. This word has, in its transition from its original to the present application suffered divers changes in signification. Thus the word is at first one with clergy (Latin clericus, Greek clericos-cleros)*-and then, since the clergy were supposed to absorb all the learning of the times and what could be a more conclusive evidence of this fact than that we find 'clergie' meaning literature?-it came to signify a man of letters "Every one that could read being," as Blackstone informs us, "accounted a 'clerk.'" We next find it approximating still closer to its present usage-being employed in the sense of a writer in an office: and then, by an easy gradation, a shopman, a "clerk."

We all recognize in 'FARCE' a stuffing of irrelevances and ludicrous conceits; but we will realize this all the more forcibly by noting that it actually does mean something stuffed the verb to 'farce' being formerly used in precisely that signification, as a passage from Sir T. More will well exemplify: wherein he says with his usual causticity:

"Which was farforth farsed, stuffed and swolē we venemous heresies."

'JEOPARDY,' again, is a word that smacks of the gaming table-the composition being in all probability that suggested by Tyrwhitt, namely, jeu parti -an even game, that is, one in which the chances are equal, so that there is a chance, and a danger, of its falling on either side-the whole being very jeopardous! And this derivation wears a still more decided air of probability when viewed in connection with such passages as the following:

"And when he, thurgh his madnesse and folie
Hath lost his owen good thurgh ju partie,
Then he exciteth other folk thereto,
To lose his goodes as he himself hath do."

Or in the following from Froissart:

Chaucer.

"Si nous les voyons à jeu partie"- If we see them at even game, etc.

Chronicles, Vol I. p. 234.

And more of the Archæology of Words!

"The Host looked stedfastly at Adams, and after a moment's silence asked him, if he was not one of the writers of the Gazetteers, for I have hear,' says he, 'they are writ by parsons.' 'Gazetteers!' answered Adams, 'What's that?'"

Fielding's Joseph Andrews.

Any school boy could now answer the good Parson's interrogatory; and tell him, moreover, that the 'GAZETTE' first took its name from a Venetian coin called a gazet or gazetta and which is said to have been the price charged for the first newspaper. But even in England this word was used as a designation

for a small coin. Thus,

"Since you have said the word I am content,

But will not go a gazet less."

Massinger's Maid of Honour, III. 1.

A curious piece of history is contained in our application of the word 'INOCULATION.' The application, I say; for originally the verb to 'inoculate' merely signified to ingraft-literally, to insert--oculaeyes i. e. buds or grafts, in a tree. And in this sense solely was it employed, until the rise of a new practice (and the necessity of a designation therefor) drew the word away from its primary usage, and gave it an application altogether novel. Here is a snatch of old rhyme-rubbish anent the subject:

"If I had twenty children of my own,
I would inoculate them every one.

Ay, but should any of them die! what moan
Would then be made for venturing thereupon.
No; I should think that I had done the best,
And be resigned whatever should befall.
But could you really be so, quite at rest?
I could. Then why inoculate at all?

Byrom on Inoculation. (Written when first practised).

Sometimes, again, there remain to us embers and ashes from some mighty social or political volcano, or revolution (which is also a turning of things upside down-revolvo, volutum). Instance 'SEPTEMBRIST '— a name given to those engaged in the Paris massacre of September '92. This same French Revolution has, moreover, left us 'SANSCULOTTES '-a term of reproach applied to the ultra Republicans that is, fellows so wretched as to be even destitute of breeches! The 'CHARTIST,' too, clearly lets us know that he goes in for his charta, or charter: and it is perfectly evident that the 'RADICAL' believes in going down to the very root radix-of the matter and upturning therefrom.

How perfectly faithful is the history 'MOB' gives us of itself. We, of course, instantly perceive it to be a shortened form of mobile the variable, fickle, mobile crowd that is swayed about by any wind of caprice. This derivation receives an additional certificate when we learn that it was formerly written mobile, in full, as a trisyllable. Thus in the "Song of an Orange," among the State Poems, * we have the following: