That considerable differences are often discernible between tertiary

individuals and their supposed descendants of the present day affords

no argument against Darwin's theory, as has been rashly thought, but is

decidedly in its favor. If the identification were so perfect that no

more differences were observable between the tertiary and the recent

shells than between various individuals of either, then Darwin's

opponents, who argue the immutability of species from the ibises and

cats preserved by the ancient Egyptians being just like those of the

present day, could triumphantly add a few hundred thousand years more to

the length of the experiment and to the force of their argument. As the

facts stand, it appears, that, while some tertiary forms are essentially

undistinguishable from existing ones, others are the same with a

difference, which is judged not to be specific or aboriginal, and yet

others show somewhat greater differences, such as are scientifically

expressed by calling them marked varieties, or else doubtful species;

while others, differing a little more, are confidently termed distinct,

but nearly related species. Now is not all this a question of degree,

of mere gradation of difference? Is it at all likely that these several

gradations came to be established in two totally different ways,--some

of them (though naturalists can't agree which) through natural

variation, or other secondary cause, and some by original creation,

without secondary cause? We have seen that the judicious Pictet answers

such questions as Darwin would have him do, in affirming, that, in all

probability, the nearly related species of two successive faunas were

materially connected, and that contemporaneous species, similarly

resembling each other, were not all created so, but have become so. This

is equivalent to saying that species (using the term as all naturalists

do and must continue to employ the word) have only a relative, not an

absolute fixity; that differences fully equivalent to what are held to

be specific may arise in the course of time, so that one species may at

length be naturally replaced by another species a good deal like it, or

may be diversified through variation or otherwise into two, three, or

more species, or forms as different as species. This concedes all that

Darwin has a right to ask, all that he can directly infer from evidence.

We must add that it affords a _locus standi_, more or less tenable, for

inferring more.

Here another geological consideration comes in to help on this

inference. The species of the later tertiary period for the most part

not only resembled those of our days, many of them so closely as to

suggest an absolute continuity, but, also occupied in general the same

regions that their relatives occupy now. The same may be said, though

less specially, of the earlier tertiary and of the later secondary; but

there is less and less localization of forms as we recede, yet some

localization even in palæozoic times. While in the secondary period one

is struck with the similarity of forms and the identity of many of the

species which flourished apparently at the same time in all or in the

most widely separated parts of the world, in the tertiary epoch, on the

contrary, along with the increasing specialization of climates and

their approximation to the present state, we find abundant evidence

of increasing localization of orders, genera, and species; and

this localization strikingly accords with the present geographical

distribution of the same groups of species. Where the imputed

forefathers lived, their relatives and supposed descendants now

flourish. All the actual classes of the animal and vegetable kingdoms

were represented in the tertiary faunas and floras, and in nearly the

same proportions and the same diversities as at present. The faunas of

what is now Europe, Asia, America, and Australia differed from

each other much as they now differ: in fact,--according to Adolphe

Brongniart, whose statements we here condense,[a]--the inhabitants of

these different regions appear for the most part to have acquired,

before the close of the tertiary period, the characters which

essentially distinguish their existing faunas. The eastern continent

had then, as now, its great pachyderms, elephants, rhinoceros, and

hippopotamus; South America its armadillos, sloths, and ant-eaters;

Australia a crowd of marsupials; and the very strange birds of New

Zealand had predecessors of similar strangeness. Everywhere the same

geographical distribution as now, with a difference in the particular

area, as respects the northern portion of the continents, answering to a

warmer climate then than ours, such as allowed species of hippopotamus,

rhinoceros, and elephant to range even to the regions now inhabited

by the reindeer and the musk-ox, and with the serious disturbing

intervention of the glacial period within a comparatively recent time.

Let it be noted, also, that those tertiary species which have continued

with little change down to our days are the marine animals of the

lower grades, especially mollusca. Their low organization, moderate

sensibility, and the simple conditions of an existence in a medium

like the ocean, not subject to great variation and incapable of sudden

change, may well account for their continuance; while, on the other

hand, the more intense, however gradual, climatic vicissitudes on land,

which have driven all tropical and sub-tropical forms out of the higher

latitudes and assigned to them their actual limits, would be almost sure

to extinguish such huge and unwieldy animals as mastodons, mammoths, and

the like, whose power of enduring altered circumstances must have been

small.

[Footnote a: In _Comptes Rendus, Acad. des Sciences_, Févr. 2, 1857.]

This general replacement of the tertiary species of a country by

others so much like them is a noteworthy fact. The hypothesis of the

independent creation of all species, irrespective of their antecedents,

leaves this fact just as mysterious as is creation itself; that of

derivation undertakes to account for it. Whether it satisfactorily does

so or not, it must be allowed that the facts well accord with that

assumption.

The same may be said of another conclusion, namely, that the geological

succession of animals and plants appears to correspond in a general

way with their relative standing or rank in a natural system of

classification. It seems clear, that, though no one of the _grand types_

of the animal kingdom can be traced back farther than the rest, yet the

lower _classes_ long preceded the higher; that there has been on the

whole a steady progression within each class and order; and that the

highest plants and animals have appeared only in relatively modern

times. It is only, however, in a broad sense that this generalization

is now thought to hold good. It encounters many apparent exceptions and

sundry real ones. So far as the rule holds, all is as it should be upon

an hypothesis of derivation.

The rule has its exceptions. But, curiously enough, the most striking

class of exceptions, if such they be, seems to us even more favorable to

the doctrine of derivation than is the general rule of a pure and simple

ascending gradation. We refer to what Agassiz calls prophetic and

synthetic types; for which the former name may suffice, as the

difference between the two is evanescent.

"It has been noticed," writes our great zoölogist, "that certain types,

which are frequently prominent among the representatives of past ages,

combine in their structure peculiarities which at later periods are only

observed separately in different, distinct types. Sauroid fishes before

reptiles, Pterodactyles before birds, Ichthyosauri before dolphins, etc.

There are entire families, of nearly every class of animals, which

in the state of their perfect development exemplify such prophetic

relations.... The sauroid fishes of the past geological ages are an

example of this kind. These fishes, which preceded the appearance of

reptiles, present a combination of ichthyic and reptilian characters not

to be found in the true members of this class, which form its bulk at

present. The Pterodactyles, which preceded the class of birds, and the

Ichthyosauri, which preceded the Cetaeca, are other examples of such

prophetic types."[a]

[Footnote a: Agassiz, _Contributions: Essay on Classification_, p.

117, where, we may be permitted to note, the word "Crustacea" is by a

typographical error printed in place of _Cetacea_.]

Now these reptile-like fishes, of which gar-pikes are the living

representatives, though of earlier appearance, are admittedly of higher

rank than common fishes. They dominated until reptiles appeared, when

they mostly gave place to--or, as the derivationists will insist, were

resolved by divergent variation and natural selection into--common

fishes, destitute of reptilian characters, and saurian reptiles, the

intermediate grades, which, according to a familiar piscine saying,

are "neither fish, flesh, nor good red-herring," being eliminated and

extinguished by natural consequence of the struggle for existence which

Darwin so aptly portrays. And so, perhaps, of the other prophetic types.

Here type and antitype correspond. If these are true prophecies, we need

not wonder that some who read them in Agassiz's book will read their

fulfilment in Darwin's.

Note also, in tins connection, that, along with a wonderful persistence

of type, with change of species, genera, orders, etc., from formation to

formation, no species and no higher group which has once unequivocally

died out ever afterwards reappears. Why is this, but that the link of

generation has been sundered? Why, on the hypothesis of independent

originations, were not failing species re-created, either identically or

with a difference, in regions eminently adapted to their well-being? To

take a striking case. That no part of the world now offers more suitable

conditions for wild horses and cattle than the Pampas and other plains

of South America is shown by the facility with which they have there run

wild and enormously multiplied, since introduced from the Old World not

long ago. There was no wild American stock. Yet in the times of the

Mastodon and Megatherium, at the dawn of the present period, wild

horses and cattle--the former certainly very much like the existing

horse--roamed over those plains in abundance. On the principle of

original and direct created adaptation of species to climate and other

conditions, why were these types not reproduced, when, after the colder

intervening era, those regions became again eminently adapted to such

animals? Why, but because, by their complete extinction in South

America, the line of descent was here utterly broken? Upon the ordinary

hypothesis, there is no scientific explanation possible of this series

of facts, and of many others like them. Upon the new hypothesis, "the

succession of the same types of structure within the same areas during

the later geological periods ceases to be mysterious, and is simply

explained by inheritance." Their cessation is failure of issue.

Along with these considerations the fact (alluded to on p. 114) should

be remembered, that, as a general thing, related species of the present

age are geographically associated. The larger part of the plants, and

still more of the animals, of each separate country are peculiar to

it; and, as most species now flourish over the graves of their by-gone

relatives of former ages, so they now dwell among or accessibly near

their kindred species.

Here also comes in that general "parallelism between the order of

succession of animals and plants in geological times, and the gradation

among their living representatives" from low to highly organized,

from simple and general to complex and specialized forms; also "the

parallelism between the order of succession of animals in geological

times--and the changes their living representatives undergo during their

embryological growth,"--as if the world were one prolonged gestation.

Modern science has much insisted on this parallelism, and to a certain

extent is allowed to have made it out. All these things, which conspire

to prove that the ancient and the recent forms of life "are somehow

intimately connected together in one grand system," equally conspire to

suggest that the connection is one similar or analogous to generation.

Surely no naturalist can be blamed for entering somewhat confidently

upon a field of speculative inquiry which here opens so invitingly; nor

need former premature endeavors and failures utterly dishearten him.

All these things, it may naturally be said, go to explain the order, not

the mode, of the incoming of species. But they all do tend to bring out

the generalization expressed by Mr. Wallace in the formula, that "every

species has come into existence coincident both in time and space with

preëxisting closely allied species." Not, however, that this is proved

even of existing species as a matter of general fact. It is obviously

impossible to _prove_ anything of the kind. But we must concede that the

known facts strongly suggest such an inference. And since species are

only congeries of individuals, and every individual came into existence

in consequence of preëxisting individuals of the same sort, so leading

up to the individuals with which the species began, and since the only

material sequence we know of among plants and animals is that from

parent to progeny, the presumption becomes exceedingly strong that

the connection of the incoming with the preëxisting species is a

genealogical one.

Here, however, all depends upon the probability that Mr. Wallace's

inference is really true. Certainly it is not yet generally accepted;

but a strong current is setting towards its acceptance.

So long as universal cataclysms were in vogue, and all life upon the

earth was thought to have been suddenly destroyed and renewed many times

in succession, such a view could not be thought of. So the equivalent

view maintained by Agassiz, and formerly, we believe, by D'Orbigny,

that, irrespectively of general and sudden catastrophes, or any known

adequate physical cause, there has been a total depopulation at the

close of each geological period or formation, say forty or fifty times,

or more, followed by as many independent great acts of creation, at

which alone have species been originated, and at each of which a

vegetable and an animal kingdom were produced entire and complete,

full-fledged, as flourishing, as wide-spread and populous, as varied and

mutually adapted from the beginning as ever afterwards,--such a view, of

course, supersedes all material connection between successive species,

and removes even the association and geographical range of species

entirely out of the domain of physical causes and of natural science.

This is the extreme opposite of Wallace's and Darwin's view, and is

quite as hypothetical. The nearly universal opinion, if we rightly

gather it, manifestly is, that the replacement of the species of

successive formations was not complete and simultaneous, but partial

and successive; and that along the course of each epoch some species

probably were introduced, and some, doubtless, became extinct. If all

since the tertiary belongs to our present epoch, this is certainly true

of it: if to two or more epochs, then the hypothesis of a total change

is not true of them.

Geology makes huge demands upon time; and we regret to find that it has

exhausted ours,--that what we meant for the briefest and most general

sketch of some geological considerations in favor of Darwin's hypothesis

has so extended as to leave no room for considering "the great facts of

comparative anatomy and zoölogy" with which Darwin's theory "very well

accords," nor for indicating how "it admirably serves for explaining the

unity of composition of all organisms, the existence of representative

and rudimentary organs, and the natural series which genera and species

compose." Suffice it to say that these are the real strongholds of the

new system on its theoretical side; that it goes far towards explaining

both the physiological and the structural gradations and relations

between the two kingdoms, and the arrangement of all their forms in

groups subordinate to groups, all within a few great types; that it

reads the riddle of abortive organs and of morphological conformity, of

which no other theory has ever offered a scientific explanation, and

supplies a ground for harmonizing the two fundamental ideas which

naturalists and philosophers conceive to have ruled the organic world,

though they could not reconcile them, namely: Adaptation to Purpose and

the Conditions of Existence, and Unity of Type. To reconcile these two

undeniable principles is a capital problem in the philosophy of natural

history; and the hypothesis which consistently does so thereby secures a

great advantage.

We all know that the arm and hand of a monkey, the foreleg and foot of

a dog and of a horse, the wing of a bat, and the fin of a porpoise are

fundamentally identical; that the long neck of the giraffe has the same

and no more bones than the short one of the elephant; that the eggs of

Surinam frogs hatch into tadpoles with as good tails for swimming as any

of their kindred, although as tadpoles they never enter the water; that

the Guinea-pig is furnished with incisor teeth which it never uses,

as it sheds them before birth; that embryos of mammals and birds

have branchial slits and arteries running in loops, in imitation or

reminiscence of the arrangement which is permanent in fishes; and that

thousands of animals and plants have rudimentary organs which, at least

in numerous cases, are wholly useless to their possessors, etc., etc.

Upon a derivative theory this morphological conformity is explained by

community of descent; and it has not been explained in any other way.

Naturalists are constantly speaking of "related species," of

the "affinity" of a genus or other group, and of "family

resemblance,"--vaguely conscious that these terms of kinship are

something more than mere metaphors, but unaware of the grounds of their

aptness. Mr. Darwin assures them that they have been talking derivative

doctrine all their lives without knowing it.

If it is difficult and in some cases practically impossible to fix the

limits of species, it is still more so to fix those of genera; and those

of tribes and families are still less susceptible of exact natural

circumscription. Intermediate forms occur, connecting one group with

another in a manner sadly perplexing to systematists, except to those

who have ceased to expect absolute limitations in Nature. All this

blending could hardly fail to suggest a former material connection among

allied forms, such as that which an hypothesis of derivation demands.

Here it would not be amiss to consider the general principle of

gradation throughout organic Nature,--a principle which answers in a

general way to the law of continuity in the inorganic world, or

rather is so analogous to it that both may fairly be expressed by

the Leibnitzian axiom, _Natura non agit saltatim_. As an axiom or

philosophical principle, used to test modal laws or hypotheses, this in

strictness belongs only to physics. In the investigation of Nature at

large, at least in the organic world, nobody would undertake to apply

this principle as a test of the validity of any theory or supposed law.

But naturalists of enlarged views will not fail to infer the principle

from the phenomena they investigate,--to perceive that the rule holds,

under due qualifications and altered forms, throughout the realm of

Nature; although we do not suppose that Nature in the organic world

makes no distinct steps, but only short and serial steps,--not

infinitely fine gradations, but no long leaps, or few of them.

To glance at a few illustrations out of many that present themselves. It

would be thought that the distinction between the two organic kingdoms

was broad and absolute. Plants and animals belong to two very different

categories, fulfil opposite offices, and, as to the mass of them, are

so unlike that the difficulty of the ordinary observer would be to find

points of comparison. Without entering into details, which would fill an

article, we may safely say that the difficulty with the naturalist is

all the other way,--that all these broad differences vanish one by one

as we approach the lower confines of the two kingdoms, and that no

_absolute_ distinction whatever is now known between them. It is quite

possible that the same organism may be both vegetable and animal, or may

be first the one and then the other. If some organisms may be said to be

at first vegetables and then animals, others, like the spores and other

reproductive bodies of many of the lower Algae, may equally claim to

have first a characteristically animal, and then an unequivocally

vegetable existence. Nor is the gradation purely restricted to these

simple organisms. It appears in general functions, as in that of

reproduction, which is reducible to the same formula in both kingdoms,

while it exhibits close approximations in the lower forms; also in a

common or similar ground of sensibility in the lowest forms of both,

a common faculty of effecting movements tending to a determinate end,

traces of which pervade the vegetable kingdom,--while on the other hand,

this indefinable principle, this vegetable _animula vagula, blandula_,

graduates into the higher sensitiveness of the lower class of animals.

Nor need we hesitate to recognize the fine gradations from simple

sensitiveness and volition to the higher instinctive and other psychical

manifestations of the higher brute animals. The gradation is undoubted,

however we may explain it. Again, propagation is of one mode in the

higher animals, of two in all plants; but vegetative propagation, by

budding or offshoots, extends through the lower grades of animals. In

both kingdoms there may be separation of the offshoots, or indifference

in this respect, or continued and organic union with the parent stock;

and this either with essential independence of the offshoots, or with

a subordination of these to a common whole, or finally with such

subordination and amalgamation, along with specialization of function,

that the same parts, which in other cases can be regarded only as

progeny, in these become only members of an individual.

This leads to the question of individuality, a subject quite too large

and too recondite for present discussion. The conclusion of the whole

matter, however, is, that individuality--that very ground of _being_ as

distinguished from _thing_--is not attained in Nature at one leap. If

anywhere truly exemplified in plants, it is only in the lowest and

simplest, where the being is a structural unit, a single cell,

memberless and organless, though organic,--the same thing as those cells

of which all the more complex plants are built up, and with which every

plant and (structurally) every animal began its development. In the

ascending gradation of the vegetable kingdom individuality is, so to

say, striven after, but never attained; in the lower animals it is

striven after with greater, though incomplete success; it is realized

only in animals of so high a rank that vegetative multiplication or

offshoots are out of the question, where all parts are strictly

members and nothing else, and all subordinated to a common nervous

centre,--fully realized, perhaps, only in a conscious person.

So, also, the broad distinction between reproduction by seeds or ova and

propagation by buds, though perfect in some of the lowest forms of life,

becomes evanescent in others; and even the most absolute law we know in

the physiology of genuine reproduction, that of sexual co-operation,

has its exceptions in both kingdoms in parthenogenesis, to which in the

vegetable kingdom a most curious series of gradations leads. In plants,

likewise, a long and most finely graduated series of transitions leads

from bisexual to unisexual blossoms; and so in various other respects.

Everywhere we may perceive that Nature secures her ends, and makes her

distinctions on the whole manifest and real, but everywhere without

abrupt breaks. We need not wonder, therefore, that gradations between

species and varieties should occur; the more so, since genera, tribes,

and other groups into which the naturalist collocates species are

far from being always absolutely limited in Nature, though they are

necessarily represented to be so in systems. From the necessity of the

case, the classifications of the naturalist abruptly define where Nature

more or less blends. Our systems are nothing, if not definite. They

are intended to express differences, and perhaps some of the coarser

gradations. But this evinces, not their perfection, but their

imperfection. Even the best of them are to the system of Nature what

consecutive patches of the seven colors are to the rainbow.

Now the principle of gradation throughout organic Nature may, of

course, be interpreted upon other assumptions than those of Darwin's

hypothesis,--certainly upon quite other than those of materialistic

philosophy, with which we ourselves have no sympathy. Still we conceive

it not only possible, but probable, that this gradation, as it has its

natural ground, may yet have its scientific explanation. In any case,

there is no need to deny that the general facts correspond well with an

hypothesis like Darwin's, which is built upon fine gradations.

We have contemplated quite long enough the general presumptions in

favor of an hypothesis of the derivation of species. We cannot forget,

however, while for the moment we overlook, the formidable difficulties

which all hypotheses of this class have to encounter, and the serious

implications which they seem to involve. We feel, moreover, that

Darwin's particular hypothesis is exposed to some special objections. It

requires no small strength of nerve steadily to conceive not only of

the variation, but of the formation of the organs of an animal through

cumulative variation and natural selection. Think of such an organ as

the eye, that most perfect of optical instruments, as so produced in the

lower animals and perfected in the higher! A friend of ours, who accepts

the new doctrine, confesses that for a long while a cold chill came over

him whenever he thought of the eye. He has at length got over that stage

of the complaint, and is now in the fever of belief, perchance to be

succeeded by the sweating stage, during which sundry peccant humors may

be eliminated from the system.

For ourselves, we dread the chill, and have some misgiving about the

consequences of the reaction. We find ourselves in the "singular

position" acknowledged by Pictet,--that is, confronted with a theory

which, although it can really explain much, seems inadequate to the

heavy task it so boldly assumes, but which, nevertheless, appears better

fitted than any other that has been broached to explain, if it be

possible to explain, somewhat of the manner in which organized beings

may have arisen and succeeded each other. In this dilemma we might take

advantage of Mr. Darwin's candid admission, that he by no means expects

to convince old and experienced people, whose minds are stocked with a

multitude of facts all viewed during a long course of years from the old

point of view. This is nearly our case. So, owning no call to a larger

faith than is expected of us, but not prepared to pronounce the whole

hypothesis untenable, under such construction as we should put upon it,

we naturally sought to attain a settled conviction through a perusal

of several proffered refutations of the theory. At least, this course

seemed to offer the readiest way of bringing to a head the various

objections to which the theory is exposed. On several accounts some

of these opposed reviews specially invite examination. We propose,

accordingly, to conclude our task with an article upon "Darwin and his

Reviewers."

* * * * *

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_Modern Painters_. By J. RUSKIN. Vol. V. Smith, Elder, & Co. London.

The completion of a work of the importance of the "Modern Painters,"

which has occupied in its production the thought and a large portion of

the labor of fourteen years, is an event of more interest than it often

falls to the lot of a book to excite; but when, as in this case, the

result shows the development of an individual taste and critical ability

entirely without peer in the history of art-letters, the value of the

whole work is immensely enhanced by the time which its publication

covers.

The first volume of "Modern Painters" was, as everybody will remember,

one of the sensation-books of the time, and fell upon the public opinion

of the day like a thunderbolt from the clear sky. Denying, and in many

instances overthrowing, the received canons of criticism, and defying

all the accepted authorities in it, the author excited the liveliest

astonishment and the bitterest hostility of the professional critics in

general, and at once divided the world of art, so far as his influence

reached, into two parts: the one embracing most of the reverent and

conservative minds, and by far the larger; the other, most of the

enthusiastic, the radical, and earnest; but this, small in numbers

at first, was increased, and still increases, by the force of those

qualities of enthusiasm and earnestness, until now, in England, it

embraces nearly all of the true and living art of our time. But that

volume, professedly treating art with reference to its superficial

attributes and for a special purpose, the redemption of a great and

revered artist from unjust disparagement and undeserved neglect,

touched in scarcely the least degree the vital questions of taste or

art-production. It had no considerations of sentiment or discussion of

principles to offer: it dealt with facts, and touched the simple truths

of Nature with an enthusiastic fire and lucidness which were proof

positive of the knowledge and feeling of the author; and the public,

either conversant with those facts or capable of being satisfied of

them without much thought, abandoned itself to the fascination of his

eloquence and acquiesced in his teachings, or arrayed itself in utter

hostility to him and his new ideas.

The second volume was more abstruse and deeper in feeling, and

comparatively few of Mr. Ruskin's followers through the first cared

to get entangled in the metaphysical mazes of the second, and it is

generally neglected, although containing some of the deepest and most

satisfactory studies on the fundamental principles of art and taste

which have ever been printed.

The third and fourth volumes, coming up again nearer the surface, made

an application of the principles investigated to the material for art

which Nature furnishes; and here again the author found in part his

audience diminished among those who had at first been carried away by

his enthusiasm or silenced and convinced by his unhesitating dogmatism.

A partial reaction took place, owing not only to the change in the tone

of the "Modern Painters," but to the springing up of a new school of

painting, the consequence, mainly and legitimately, of the teachings of

the work,--the pre-Raphaelite,--which, at once attacked virulently and

immeasurably by the old school of critics, and defended as earnestly by

Mr. Ruskin, became the subject of the war which was still waged between

him and them. Turner in the meanwhile had passed away and was admitted

to apotheosis, the malignant critics of yesterday becoming the ignorant

adulators of to-day: _his_ position was conceded, but the hostility to

Ruskin was sustained with unabated bitterness on the new field. He

was demolished anew, and proved, many useless times over and over, an

ignorant pretender; the public in the meanwhile, even his opponents,

taking up in turn his _protégés_, as he pointed them out to their

notice. The effect of his criticisms in enhancing the value of the works

they approved would be incredible, if one did not know how glad an

English public is to be led. As a single instance,--a drawing which was

sold from one of the water-color exhibitions at fifty guineas, sold

again, after Ruskin's notice, at two hundred and fifty; and in the lists

of pictures sold or to be sold at auction, one sees constantly, "Noticed

by Mr. Ruskin," "Approved by Mr. Ruskin," appended to the title.

The third volume, being devoted to the correction of the ideas of Style

and the Ideal, to Finish, and a review of the Past Landscape-Painting,

recurs to Turner in its closing chapter, "On his Teachers"; the fourth

was given to Mountain _Beauty_, following the parallel of the first,

which treated of the _Truth_ of Mountains, and bearing as its burden of

moral the expression of that Ideal by Turner; and the fifth now comes to

conclude the investigations on the Ideal by chapters: first, on "Leaf

Beauty," an exceedingly interesting investigation of the development

of the forms of trees and plants as concerned with the laws of beauty;

second, "Cloud Beauty"; and then of the "Ideas of Relation," in which

the author comes finally to the demonstration of the right of Turner to

his position amongst the thinking and poetic painters.

From the first division, "Leaf Beauty," we must make one extract.

The author has been speaking of the, influence of the Pine on Swiss

character.

"But the point which I desire the reader to note is, that the character

of the scene which, if any, appears to have been impressive to the

inhabitant is not that which we ourselves feel when we enter the

district. It was not from their lakes, nor their cliffs, nor their

glaciers, though these were all peculiarly their possession, that the

three venerable cantons or states received their name. They were not

called the States of the Rock, nor the States of the Lake, but the

States of the _Forest_. And the one of the three which contains the most

touching record of the spiritual power of Swiss religion, in the name of

the convent of the 'Hill of Angels,' has for its own none but the sweet,

childish name of 'Under the Woods.'

"And, indeed, you may pass under them, if, leaving the most sacred spot

in Swiss history, the Meadow of the Three Fountains, you bid the boatman

row southward a little way by the Bay of Uri. Steepest there, on its

western side, the walls of its rocks ascend to heaven. Far in the blue

of evening, like a great cathedral-pavement, lies the lake in its

darkness; and you may hear the whisper of innumerable falling waters

return from the hollows of the cliff like the voices of a multitude

praying under their breath. From time to time, the beat of a wave, slow

lifted, where the rocks lean over the black depth, dies heavily as the

last note of a requiem. Opposite, green with steep grass and set with

châlet villages, the Tron Alp rises in one solemn glow of pastoral light

and peace; and above, against the clouds of twilight, ghostly on the

gray precipice, stand, myriad by myriad, the shadowy armies of the

Unterwalden pine.

"I have seen that it is possible for the stranger to pass through this

great chapel, with its font of waters, and mountain pillars, and vaults

of cloud, without being touched by one noble thought or stirred by any

sacred passion; but for those who received from its waves the baptism

of their youth, and learned beneath its rocks the fidelity of their

manhood, and watched amidst its clouds the likeness of the dream of

life, with the eyes of age,--for these I will not believe that the

mountain-shrine was built or the calm of its forest-shadows guarded by

their God in vain."

But perhaps that conclusion of Ruskin's, in the new volume, which will

most interest his earnest readers, is that the Venetian school is _the

only religious school that has ever existed_. So much has Ruskin's

development seemed to contradict itself, that one is scarcely surprised

at one conclusion being apparently opposed to the former one; but a

change so great as this, from Giotto, Perugino, and Cima, to Tintoret,

Titian, and Veronese, as the religious ideals, will, indeed, amaze all

who read it. Yet this is but the logical consequence of his progression

hitherto. If he commenced with a belief that asceticism was religion, he

would recognize Perugino and Giotto as the true religious artists; but

if, as seems to be the case, he has learned at last that religion is a

thing of daily life, mingling in all that we do, caring for body as well

as soul, sense as well as spirit, and that a complete man must be a

man who _lives_ in every sense of the word, then the Venetians, as the

painters of the truth of life in _all_ its joy and sorrow, are the true

painters, and the only ones whose art was inhabited by a religion worth

following.

It is interesting to follow what are called Ruskin's contradictions and

see how perfectly they represent the whole system of artistic truth, as

seen from the different points of a young artist's or student's growth

up to mature and ripened judgment; so that there is no stage of artistic

development which has not some form of truth particularly adapted to it,

in the "Modern Painters." If it be urged that the book should have been

written only from the point of final development, it can only be said

that no true book will ever he so written, for no man can ever be

certain of his having attained final truth. "Modern Painters" has

value in this very showing of the critical development, which to an

intelligent student is greater than that a complete and infallible guide

could have.

The chapter on Invention is full of the most delightful artistic truth,

and shows completely, by copious illustrations, how well Turner deserved

the rank Ruskin gives him amongst great composers. The analyses of the

compositions of Turner are most curious and interesting, but, of course,

depend on the accompanying plates. Some most valuable mental philosophy

bearing on the production of art-works concludes Part VIII., which

is devoted to "Invention Formal," of which we quote the concluding

paragraphs:--

"Until the feelings can give strength enough to the will to enable it

to conquer them, they are not strong enough. If you cannot leave your

picture at any moment, cannot turn from it and go on with another while

the color is drying, cannot work at any part of it you choose with equal

contentment, you have not firm enough grasp of it.

"It follows, also, that no vain or selfish person can possibly paint,

in the noble sense of the word. Vanity and selfishness are troublous,

eager, anxious, petulant: painting can only be done in calm of mind.

Resolution is not enough to secure this; it must be secured by

disposition as well. You may resolve to think of your picture only; but,

if you have been fretted before beginning, no manly or clear grasp of

it will be possible for you. No forced calm is calm enough: only honest

calm, natural calm. You might as well try by external pressure to smooth

a lake till it could reflect the sky, as by violence of effort to secure

the peace through which only you can reach imagination. That peace must

come in its own time, as the waters settle themselves into clearness as

well as quietness: you can no more filter your mind into purity than you

can compress it into calmness; you must keep it pure, if you would have

it pure; and throw no stones into it, if you would have it quiet. Great

courage and self-command may to a certain extent give power of painting

without the true calmness underneath, but never of doing first-rate

work. There is sufficient evidence of this in even what we know of great

men, though of the greatest we nearly always know the least (and that

necessarily; they being very silent, and not much given to setting

themselves forth to questioners,--apt to be contemptuously reserved no

less than unselfishly). But in such writings and sayings as we possess

of theirs we may trace a quite curious gentleness and serene courtesy.

Rubens's letters are almost ludicrous in their unhurried politeness.

Reynolds, swiftest of painters, was gentlest of companions; so also

Velasquez, Titian, and Veronese.

"It is gratuitous to add that no shallow or petty person can paint. Mere

cleverness or special gift never made an artist. It is only perfectness

of mind, unity, depth, decision, the highest qualities, in fine, of the

intellect, which will form the imagination.

"And, lastly, no false person can paint. A person false at heart may,

when it suits his purposes, seize a stray truth here or there; but the

relations of truth, its perfectness, that which makes it wholesome

truth, he can never perceive. As wholeness and wholesomeness go

together, so also sight with sincerity; it is only the constant desire

of and submissiveness to truth, which can measure its strange angles

and mark its infinite aspects, and fit them and knit them into sacred

invention.

"Sacred I call it deliberately; for it is thus in the most accurate

senses, humble as well as helpful,--meek in its receiving as magnificent

in its disposing; the name it bears being rightly given even to

invention formal, not because it forms, but because it finds. For you

cannot find a lie; you must make it for yourself. False things may be

imagined, and false things composed; but only truth can be invented."

One of those cardinal doctrines by which we may learn the bearings of a

writer's system of truth is that of Ruskin's of the intimate connection

between landscape art and humanity.

"Fragrant tissue of flowers, golden circlet of clouds, are only fair

when they meet the fondness of human thoughts and glorify human visions

of heaven.

"It is the leaning on this truth which more than any other has been the

distinctive character of all my own past work. And in closing a series

of art-studies, prolonged during so many years, it may be perhaps

permitted me to point out this specialty,--the rather that it has been,

of all their characters, the one most denied. I constantly see that the

same thing takes place in the estimation formed by the modern public of

the work of almost any true person, living or dead. It is not needful

to state here the causes of such error; but the fact is indeed so, that

precisely the distinctive root and leading force of any true man's work

and way are the things denied him.

"And in these books of mine, their distinctive character, as essays on

art, is their bringing everything to a root in human passion or human

hope. Arising first not in any desire to explain the principles of art,

but in the endeavor to defend an individual painter from injustice, they

have been colored throughout, nay, continually altered in shape, and

even warped and broken, by digressions respecting social questions,

which had for me an interest tenfold greater than the work I had been

forced into undertaking. Every principle of painting which I have

stated is traced to some vital or spiritual fact; and in my works on

architecture the preference accorded finally to one school over another

is founded on a comparison of their influences on the life of the

workman,--a question by all other writers on the subject of architecture

wholly forgotten or despised.

"The essential connection of the power of landscape with human emotion

is not less certain because in many impressive pictures the link is

slight or local. That the connection should exist at a single point is

all that we need.... That difference, and more, exists between the power

of Nature through which humanity is seen, and her power in the desert.

Desert,--whether of leaf or sand,--true desertness, is not in the want

of leaves, but of life. Where humanity is not and was not, the best

natural beauty is more than vain. It is even terrible; not as the

dress cast aside from the body, but as an embroidered shroud hiding a

skeleton."

The volume, as a whole, will be found less dogmatic, calmer, more

convincing, and more directly applicable to artistic judgment, than any

of the others. There is the same love of mysticism and undermeanings,

but freighted with deeper and more central truths: a charming conclusion

to a fourteen-years' diary of such study of Art and Nature, so severe,

so unremitting, as never critic gave before.

_Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb._ By W.W. GOODWIN,

Ph.D. Cambridge: Sever and Francis.

Grammarians had once a simple way of disposing of the subject on which

Professor Goodwin has given us this elaborate treatise of three hundred

pages.

In the Greek Grammar of the Messieurs de Port Royal, which Gibbon

praises so highly in his charming autobiography, and which has passed

through several editions in England within the present century, we

are taught, that, "though the moods [in Greek] are not to be rejected

entirely, yet their signification is sometimes so very arbitrary, that

they are put for one another through all tenses." Lancelot himself

seems to have had a glimmering of the essential incredibility of this

statement; for, though he attempts to substantiate it by citing from

Greek authors a number of passages in which the Greek idiom happens to

differ from the Latin,--passages, however, which Mr. Goodwin would have

been glad to use, had they fallen in his way, to illustrate the regular

constructions of the language,--he feels it necessary to appeal to

the authority of the learned Budæus, the greatest of the early Greek

scholars. Strange as it seems that really accomplished Greek scholars

should have charged Plato and Demosthenes, speaking the most perfect of

tongues, with arbitrary interchanges of moods and tenses, yet the same

views continued to be presented in grammatical works down to the close

of the last century. The transition to the new school of grammarians was

made in 1792, by the publication of a Greek Grammar by Philip Buttmann,

which, in the greatly improved form which it afterwards received from

his hands, is familiar to all Greek scholars. In our frequent boasts of

the great strides that knowledge has taken in the present century, we

commonly have in mind the physical sciences; but we doubt whether in any

department of physical science the manuals in use seventy-five years

ago are so utterly inferior to those of the present day as are, for

instance, the remarks of Viger, and his commentators before Hermann, on

the syntax of the Greek verb, to the philosophical treatment of the same

points by Professor Goodwin.

This work is entitled, we think, to rank with the best grammars of the

Greek language that have appeared in German or English, in all the

points that constitute grammatical excellence; while its monographic

character justified and required an exhaustive treatment of its

particular topic, not to be found even in the huge grammars of Matthiæ

and Kühner. Indeed, not the least of its merits is this, that, in

addition to the excellent matter which is original with Professor

Goodwin, it furnishes to the student, American or English,--for we hope

to see its merits recognized on the other side of the Atlantic,--a

digest, as it were, of all that is most valuable on the subject of the

syntax of the Greek verb in the best German grammars, from Buttmann

to Madvig, enhanced, too, in value by being recast and worked into a

homogeneous system by an acute scholar and experienced teacher. One

excellence of the book we would by no means pass over, an excellence

which we are sure will be particularly appreciated by all who have used

translations of German grammars,--the precision both of thought and

expression by which it is characterized, which releases the student from

the labor of constructing the meaning of a rule from the data of the

appended examples. Not that Mr. Goodwin is chary of examples; on the

contrary, one of the most attractive and not least profitable features

of the book is the copiousness and freshness of the illustrative

quotations from Greek authors. These are as welcome as the brightness of

newly minted coin to the eye which, in consulting grammar after grammar,

has been condemned to meet under corresponding rules always the same

examples, till they begin to produce that effect upon the nerves which

all have experienced at the mention of the deadly upas-tree, or the

imminence of the dissolution of the Union.

We must not omit to speak of the typographical merit of the work,--and

especially of what constitutes the first and the last merit of books of

this class, the excellent table of contents, and the indexes, Greek and

English, which leave nothing to be desired in the way of facility of

reference, except, perhaps, an index to the quotations.

_The Law of the Territories_. Philadelphia: C. Sherman & Son.

The author of the two able essays contained in this volume will be

remembered by many of our readers under his assumed name of "Cecil."

The second, as he himself tells us, on "Popular Sovereignty in the

Territories," was published, as one of a series of essays on Southern

politics, in the Philadelphia _North American and United States

Gazette_. The first, we believe, has never been published before.

Our author, whom we may designate, without violating any confidence, as

Mr. George Sidney Fisher, devotes an elaborate preface, which is itself

a third essay, to discussing the invasion of Virginia by John Brown and

the Southern threats of secession, drawing from the foray of Harper's

Ferry a conclusion very different from that of the disunionists. In his

own words,--

"Disunion is a word of fear. Is it not

strange that it should have been as yet pronounced

only by the South? The danger of

insurrection and servile war belongs to the

nature of slavery. It is, perhaps, not too much

to assert that the safety and tranquillity of

Southern society depend on the fact that the

Northern people are close at hand to aid in

case of need,--that the power of the General

Government is ever ready for the same purpose.

Four millions of barbarians, growing

with tropical vigor, and soon to be eight millions,

with tropical passions boiling in their

blood, endowed with native courage, with

sinews strong by toil, and stimulated by the

hope of liberty and unbounded license, are

not to be trifled with. Take away from them

the idea of an irresistible power in the North,

ready at any moment to be invoked by their

masters, or let them expect in the North, not

enemies, but friends and supporters, which

even now they are told every day by these

masters they may expect,--and how soon

might a flame be lighted which no power in

the South could extinguish!"

Mr. Fisher treats of the "Law of the Territories" in two essays,--the

first considering more particularly "The Territories and the

Constitution," the second, "Popular Sovereignty in the Territories." The

first commences with a quotation so happy that it has all the effect of

original wit:--

"The wily and witty Talleyrand was once

asked the meaning of the word 'non-intervention,'

so often used in European diplomacy.

'It is a word,' he replied, 'metaphysical and

political, not accurately defined, but which

means--much the same thing as intervention!'

The same word has been frequently

employed, of late years, in our politics, with

the same difference between its professed

and its practical signification. It was introduced

for the first time in reference to the

government of the Territories, when it became

an object for the South to gain Kansas as a

Slave State. Two obstacles were to be overcome.

One was the Missouri Compromise,

which was a solemn compact between North

and South to settle a disturbing and dangerous

question; the other was a possible majority

in Congress, that, it was feared, might prohibit

slavery in the new Territory. Southern

politicians had at the time control of the government;

and they got rid of both difficulties

by repealing the Missouri Compromise in the

Kansas and Nebraska Bill. By necessary implication,

arising from the relation of the Territories

to the rest of the nation, by the language

of the Constitution, and by the uniform

construction of it and practice under it from

the earliest period of our history, the Territories

had been subjected to the absolute control

of the General Government. By the Kansas

and Nebraska Bill they were withdrawn

from that control. The principle of Popular

Sovereignty, it was said, applied to them as

well as to the States; and this bill declared

that the people of the Territories should be

perfectly free to choose their own domestic

institutions and regulate their own affairs in

their own way."

The means employed to carry out this plan and the ultimate failure of

the plan itself are sketched with a boldness and vigor that our limits,

much to our regret, forbid our reproducing. Mr. Fisher, however, fails

to notice the wretched plea put forth by the Democratic managers,

in favor of the recognition by Congress of the Lecompton

Constitution,--that it had been officially authenticated. All might be

wrong, but the official record pronounced it right; and behind that

record Congress had no authority to go. And this plea was advanced in

the face of overwhelming evidence tending to show that the officials,

for whose record so inviolable a sanctity was claimed, were appointed

for the express purpose of falsifying that record! If confirmation be

wanted, we need go no farther than the fate of Robert J. Walker, who was

eager to make Kansas a Slave State, but was so false to every principle

of Democratic integrity as to confine himself to legitimate means to

bring about that result,--a remissness for which he was promptly removed

by President Buchanan! Mr. Fisher pertinently says,--

"Two great facts were plainly visible through the flimsy web of attorney

logic and quibbling technicality, not very ingeniously woven to conceal

them. One of these facts was, that the people of Kansas were heartily

and almost unanimously averse to slavery; the other was, that the

Government was trying by every means in its power to impose slavery upon

them."

After describing the contemptuous rejection by the people of Kansas of

the pro-slavery constitution, Mr. Fisher proceeds with an analysis of

the Kansas-Nebraska fraud, so clear and so masterly that we must again

quote his own language, with an occasional condensation or omission.

"It was clear, therefore, that the principle of Popular Sovereignty,

introduced by the Kansas and Nebraska Bill, a principle before unknown

to the law and practice of our government, would not suit the South.

It appeared too probable that not only the people to inhabit all the

territory north of 36° 30', but also much territory south of it, would,

like the people of Kansas, reject slavery, if left to regulate their

domestic institutions in their own way. What, then, were Southern

politicians to do? Invoke the ancient and long exercised, but now denied

and derided power of Congress over the Territories? This might prove a

dangerous weapon in the hands of possible future Northern majorities. It

was obviously necessary to withdraw slavery alike from the control of

Congress and of the people of a Territory. Some ingenuity was required

for this. The doctrine that the Constitution extends to the Territories

(a doctrine broached before by Mr. Calhoun, but always defeated on the

ground that the Constitution, by its language and the practice under it,

was made for States only, and that the Territories were subject to the

supreme control of Congress,--a control frequently exercised, not only

independently of the Constitution, but in a manner incompatible with it)

was introduced, with other innovations, into the Kansas and Nebraska

Bill. The Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court followed, by which

the Constitution recognizes slavery as a national institution. It

recognizes slaves as mere property, differing in no respect from other

merchandise. The Territories belong to the nation. Every citizen has

equal rights to them and in them. Why, therefore, may not a Southern

man, as well as a Northern man, go into them with his _property_? What

right has Congress to place the South under an ignominious bar of

restriction? The Constitution declares that slaves are property; that

all the States and the people have equal rights. The Territories belong

to all. Therefore, under the Constitution, they should be enjoyed by

all.

"By this ingenious logic the Kansas and Nebraska Bill is made to

contradict itself. It first declares that the Constitution extends to

the Territories; in other words, slavery exists there by force of the

Constitution, without reference to the will of the people. It then says

that the people of the Territories shall be 'perfectly free to form and

regulate their domestic institutions in their own way.'

"The contradictions, duplicity, and absurdity of the law are obvious at

once. The first sentence announces a change in the settled principles

and policy of the Government; else why declare that the Constitution

'_shall_' extend to Nebraska, if it already extended there? Then comes

the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The reason given for this is,

that it is inconsistent with the non-intervention by Congress with

slavery, recognized in the Compromise of 1850. But that law declares

positively that Congress does not intervene, _because it is

'inexpedient'_ to do so; and gives the reason why it is inexpedient. The

_power_ of Congress _was asserted_ by Mr. Clay, who made the law, and

the terms of it were chosen for the very purpose of preventing any

inference being drawn from it against that power.

"It is remarkable, too, that the Bill, whilst declaring the _perfect_

freedom of the Territories, should still have left them subject to the

power of the President, who, as before, is permitted to appoint their

Governor, Judges, and Marshals, officers who are his agents, and without

whose sanction the acts of the Territorial Legislature can neither

become laws, nor be construed and applied, nor executed. So that the

will of the people may be defeated, should it happen to be opposed to

the will of the President: as was seen in the case of Kansas.

"Why," Mr. Fisher asks, "is the anomalous monster of Popular Sovereignty

to be introduced with reference to slavery? Is it because slaves are

'mere property'? Why, then, not subject all property, land included, to

popular control? Is it because the subject of slavery is an exciting

topic, a theme for dangerous agitation, to be checked only by placing

the subject beyond the power of Congress? The answer is, that Congress

cannot abdicate its power on the ground of expediency. If it may give up

one power, it may give up all. Nor can Congress delegate its power for

the same reason. Trust power, from its very nature, cannot be delegated.

To break down great principles, to set aside ancient usage, to abandon

legal authority, in order to appease the contests of parties, is too

great a sacrifice. No true peace can come of it; only suppressed and

adjourned war."

The natural inference from the extracts we have given would be that Mr.

Fisher was a member of the Republican party. But such is not the fact:

Mr. Fisher rests his hope upon a party "yet to be organized." "The

extreme Northern, or Free-soil, or Abolition party is only less guilty

than the extreme Southern and Democratic party." Which? Does Mr. Fisher

mean that "Northern," "Free-soil," and "Abolition" are synonymous terms?

And does any or do all of them mean the Republican party? Or, finally,

does Mr. Fisher shrink from the conclusions presented by his logic, and

is his vaguely convenient linking together of different words intended

to leave his position gracefully doubtful? And in that case, do the

Baltimore nominations, with their innocent unconsciousness, supply his

political needs? It is not easy to answer these questions. We begin now

upon the views of a Pennsylvania Oppositionist; and quicksilver defied

not more utterly the skill of Raymond Lullius than the doctrines of the

Philadelphia school perplex the inquiries of sharply defined New England

minds. The rudimentary state of Republican principles may nowhere else

be so clearly seen as in Pennsylvania. Four years of the Democratic

administration of her "favorite son" have done much to make her less

favored sons into good Republicans; but the State needs another

Democratic President. Mr. Fisher appears to much more advantage in

pulling down than in building up. We have hitherto seen only the keen,

fearless dissector of fraud and hypocrisy; we are now to contemplate a

circumspect alarmist, who dreads to call things by their right names

for fear of unpleasant consequences. He is such a master of English,

so judicious in the use of middle terms,--so shrewd a fencer

altogether,--that even his timidity cannot make him other than a

formidable opponent.

Mr. Fisher, believing that slavery receives ample protection from a fair

interpretation of the Constitution, holds that

"Congress has plenary power over the Territories, often exercised on

this subject of slavery. It may be said that Congress has on various

occasions prohibited slavery in the Territories. True; but with the

consent and coöperation of the Southern States. The people of all the

States have equal right in the Territories. To exclude the people of the

Slave States, therefore, _without their consent_, would be unequal and

opposed to the spirit of the Constitution."

Certainly it would. Who proposes to do it? No living man, woman, or

child. It is worth noticing, by the way, that the Republican party is

not committed to the doctrine of carrying out the principle of the

Wilmot Proviso. But supposing it were, Mr. Fisher's argument has

no force or direction, unless he can establish his suppressed

premise,--that the exclusion of slavery from the Territories is the

exclusion of "the people of the Slave States" from the Territories.

And to make that good, all Mr. Fisher's skill and ingenuity will

be required. Why so many Northern politicians should have weakly

surrendered this point is a mystery. Because the slaveholders (who are

not, Mr. Fisher, "the people of the Slave States," by any means, but a

small portion of them) are at home a privileged aristocracy, have they

any claim to the same position abroad? If so, on what does it rest? The

laws of the Southern States? They are now beyond their jurisdiction. The

common law? To that wise and beneficent law slavery is a thing unknown.

The Constitution? It is silent. There is no exclusion of the Southerners

even proposed. Let them come: but when they claim to carry with them

the right to hold a certain class of men as property because they

are recognized as property by certain local regulations elsewhere

prevailing, they must not complain, if such a claim be disallowed. The

Southerner's complaint, that he is accustomed to the institution of

slavery, is fairly met by the Northerner's retort, that he is accustomed

to the institution of freedom.

Now, which voice shall prevail? Neither party has any more right than

the other; and neither party has any right at all. The Territories are

in a state of wardship; and Congress is to decide as it thinks best for

their welfare, present and future; and if Congress thinks that a nation

prospers with free institutions and droops under slavery, then let

Congress admit the Territory as a Free State. True, there is some

inconvenience to the slave-holder; but from so abnormal a relation as

slavery some inconvenience must result. When admitted to be a necessary

evil, it is barely tolerable; when boastingly proclaimed to be a

sovereign good, it is fairly intolerable. And it is both criminal and

foolish to try to make good all the evils inseparable from slavery by

systematic injustice to other interests.

"Slavery has changed. When Southern

men consented to its prohibition, they hoped

and believed that the time would come when

it could be abolished altogether. They have

as much right to these as to their former opinions,

and to have them represented in the

Government."

Here Mr. Fisher hints at, rather than fully states, the grand retort of

the Southerners,--"Our fathers, you say, were opposed to slavery: very

good; but we are not: why should we be bound by their opinions?" A mere

misapprehension of the force of the argument. The Southerner of 1860 is

_not_ bound by the opinions of Madison and Jefferson; but the North

may fairly adduce the opinions of those men, who were framers of the

Constitution, not as binding upon their descendants, but as serving to

explain the meaning of disputed provisions in that Constitution. The

Constitution binds us all, North and South: then recurs the question,

What is the meaning of its provisions? and _then_ the contemporaneous

opinions of its framers come legitimately into play as an argument.

Of the Missouri Compromise Mr. Fisher says,--

"It may be said that this law was a violation

of the equal rights of the Southern people,

by excluding them from a large portion

of the national domain. The answer is, not

merely that this was done with their consent,

their representatives having approved the law,

but that the law did recognize their rights,

by dividing between them and the Northern

people all the territory then possessed by the

Government."

We are surprised that upon his own presentation of the case this simple

question does not occur to Mr. Fisher: Supposing the South and the North

to have had equal and conflicting rights in the national domain, and

supposing that there was need of some arbiter, and remembering that

Congress undertook the duties of arbiter and decided that the

division under the Missouri Compromise gave each section its rightful

share,--then, with what propriety can the South, after occupying its own

share, call for a portion in the share allotted to the North?

The second essay, on "Popular Sovereignty in the Territories," presents

comparatively few salient points. A very spirited and just history of

the working of the Administration schemes in Kansas, a restating of

some of the arguments against the Kansas-Nebraska Act set forth in the

preceding essay, and a remonstrance against the headstrong course of

Southern politicians are its most noticeable features.

"The Union, the Constitution, and the

friendship of the North: these are the pillars

on which rest the peace, the safety, the

independence of the South. The extraordinary

thing is, that for some years past the South

has been, and now is, sedulously employed in

undermining this triple foundation of its power

and safety. Its extravagant pretensions,

its excesses, its crimes, are rapidly cooling

the friendship of the North,--converting it,

indeed, into positive enmity. Its leading politicians

are ever plotting and threatening disunion.

disunion will he proffered to them from the North, not

as a vague and passionate threat, but as a positive

and well-considered plan, backed by a

force of public opinion which nothing can resist.

Ere long, the South is likely to be left

with no other defence than the Union it has

weakened and the Constitution it has mutilated

and defaced.

"The makers of the Kansas and Nebraska

law were clumsy workmen. They forgot to

provide for the case of an anti-slavery President.

They will, perhaps, learn wisdom by

experience.

"'To wilful men

The injuries that they themselves procure

Must be their schoolmasters.'

"Those who framed the Constitution and laid

the foundation of this Union understood their

business better. That Constitution was intended

to protect the South, and has protected

it. Southern politicians cannot improve

it. For their own sakes they had better

let it alone."

We have given enough to show that in discussing Mr. Fisher we are

dealing with two different men. The field is now clear for the great

political contest of 1860. Mr. Fisher may have allied himself before

this with the Republicans, or may look to have his anticipations

fulfilled by that third party who are as unconscious of wrong as

powerless to rectify it, "the world-forgetting, by the world forgot." We

wish him well through his troubles.

_A Dictionary of English Etymology._ By HENSLEIGH WEDGWOOD, M. A. Late

Fellow of Chr. Coll. Cam. Vol. I. (A-D.) London: Trübner and Co., 60

Paternoster Row. 1859. pp. xxiv., 507.

There is nothing more dangerously fascinating than etymologies. To the

uninitiated the victim seems to have eaten of "insane _roots_ that take

the reason prisoner"; while the illuminate too often looks upon the

stems and flowers of language, the highest achievements of thought and

poesy, as mere handles by which to pull up the grimy tubers that lie at

the base of articulate expression, shapeless knobs of speech, sacred to

him as the potato to the Irishman.

The sarcasms of Swift were not without justification; for crazier

analogies than that between Andromache and Andrew Mackay have been

gravely insisted on by persons who, like the author of "Amilec,"

believed that the true secret of philosophizing _est celui de rêver

heureusement_. It is only within a few years that etymological

investigations have been limited by anything; like scientific precision,

or that profound study, patient thought, and severity of method

have asserted in this, as in other departments of knowledge, their

superiority to point-blank guessing and the bewitching generalization

conjured out of a couple or so of assumed facts, which, even if they

turn out to be singly true, are no more nearly related than Hecate and

green cheese.

We do not object to that milder form of philology of which the works

of Dean Trench offer the readiest and most pleasing example, and which

confines itself to the mere study of words, to the changes of form and

meaning they have undergone and the forgotten moral that lurks in them.

But the interest of Dr. Trench and others like him sticks fast in words,

it is almost wholly an aesthetic interest, and does not pretend to

concern itself with the deeper problems of language, its origin, its

comparative anatomy, its bearing upon the prehistoric condition of

mankind and the relations of races, and its claim to a place among the

natural sciences as an essential element in any attempt to reconstruct

the broken and scattered annals of our planet. It would not be just to

find fault with Dr. Trench's books for lacking a scientific treatment

to which they make no pretension, but they may fairly be charged with

smelling a little too much of the shop. There is a faint odor of the

sermon-case about every page, and we learn to dread, sometimes to skip,

the inevitable homily, as we do the moral at the end of an Æsopic fable.

We enter our protest, not against Dr. Trench in particular, for his

books have other and higher claims to our regard, but because we find

that his example is catching, the more so as verbal morality is much

cheaper than linguistic science. If there be anything which the study of

words should teach, it is their value.

There are two theories as to the origin of language, which, for

shortness, may be defined as the poetic and the matter-of-fact. The

former (of which M. Ernest Renan is one of the most eloquent advocates)

supposes a primitive race or races endowed with faculties of cognition

and expression so perfect and so intimately responsive one to the

other, that the name of a thing came into being coincidently with the

perception of it. Verbal inflections and other grammatical forms came

into use gradually to meet the necessities of social commerce between

man and man, and were at some later epoch reduced to logical system by

constructive minds. If we understand him rightly, while not excluding

the influence of _onomatopeia_, (or physical imitation,) he would attach

a far greater importance to metaphysical causes. He says admirably

well, "La liaison du sens et du mot n'est jamais _nécessaire_, jamais

_arbitraire_; toujours elle est _motivée_." His theory amounts to this:

that the fresh perfection of the senses and the mental faculties made

the primitive man a poet.

The other theory seeks the origin of language in certain imitative

radicals out of which it has analogically and metaphorically developed

itself. This system has at least the merits of clearness and simplicity,

and of being to a certain extent capable of demonstration. Its

limitation in this last respect will depend upon that mental

constitution which divides men naturally into Platonists and

Aristotelians. It has never before received so thorough an exposition

or been tested by so wide a range of application as in Mr. Wedgwood's

volume, nor could it well be more fortunate in its advocate. Mr.

Wedgwood is thorough, scrupulous, and fair-minded.

It will be observed that neither theory brings any aid to the attempt

of Professor Max Müller and others to demonstrate etymologically the

original unity of the human race. Mr. Wedgwood leaves this question

aside, as irrelevant to his purpose. M. Renan combats it at considerable

length. The logical consequence of admitting either theory would be that

the problem was simply indemonstrable.

At first sight, so imaginative a scheme as that of M. Renan is

singularly alluring; for, even when qualified by the sentence we have

quoted, we may attach such a meaning to the word _motivée_ as to find in

words the natural bodies of which the Platonic ideas are the soul and

spirit. We find in it a correlative illustration of that notion not

uncommon among primitive poets, and revived by the Cabalists, that

whoever knew the Word of a thing was master of the thing itself, and an

easy way of accounting for the innate fitness and necessity, the fore

ordination, which stamps the phrases of real poets. If, on the other

hand, we accept Mr. Wedgwood's system, we must consider speech, as

the theologians of the Middle Ages assumed of matter, to be only

_potentiated_ with life and soul, and shall find the phenomenon of

poetry as wonderful, if less mysterious, when we regard the fineness of

organization requisite to a perception of the remote analogies of sense

and thought, and the power, as of Solomon's seal, which can compel the

unwilling genius back into the leaden void which language becomes when

used as most men use it.

There is a large class of words which every body admits to be imitative

of sounds,--such, for example, as _bang, splash, crack_,--and Mr.

Wedgwood undertakes to show that their number and that of their

derivative applications is much larger than is ordinarily supposed. He

confines himself almost wholly to European languages, but not always to

the particular class of etymologies which it is his main object to trace

out. Some of his explanations of words, not based upon any real or

assumed radical, but showing their gradual passage toward their present

forms and meanings, are among the most valuable parts of the book.

As striking proofs of this, we refer our readers to Mr. Wedgwood's

treatment of the words _abide, abie, allow, danger, and denizen_. When

he differs from other authorities, it is never inconsiderately or

without examination. Now and then we think his derivations are

far-fetched, when simpler ones were lying near his hand. He makes the

Italian _balcone_ come from the Persian _båia khaneh_, an upper chamber.

An upper chamber over a gate in the Persian caravanserais is still

called by that name, according to Rich. (p. 97.) Yet under the

word _balk_ we find, "A hayloft is provincially termed the _balks_,

(Halliwell,) because situated among the rafters. Hence also, probably,

the Ital. _balco_, or _pulcoy_ a scaffold; a loftlike erection supported

upon beams." As a _balcone_ is not an upper chamber, nor a chamber over

a gate, but is precisely "a loftlike erection supported upon beams," it

seems more reasonable to suppose it an augmentative formed in the usual

way from _balco_. Mr. Wedgwood's derivation of barbican from _bala

khaneh_ seems to us more happy. (Ducange refers the word to an Eastern

source.) He would also derive the Fr. _ébaucher_ from _balk_, though we

have a correlative form, _sbozzare_, in Italian, (old Sp. _esbozar_,

Port, _esboyar_, Diez,) with precisely the same meaning, and from a

root _bozzo_, which is related to a very different class of words from

_balk_. So bewitched is Mr. Wedgwood with this word _balk_, that he

prefers to derive the Ital. _valicam, varcare_, from it rather than from

the Latin _varicare_. We should think a deduction from the latter to the

English _walk_ altogether as probable. Mr. Wedgwood also inclines to

seek the origin of _acquaint_ in the Germ, _kund_, though we have all

the intermediate steps between it and the Mid. Lat. _adcognitare_.

Again, under _daunt_ he says, "Probably not directly from Lat. _domare_,

but from the Teutonic form _damp_, which is essentially the same word."

It may be plain that the Fr. _dompter_ (whence _daunt_) is not directly

from _domare_, but not so plain, as it seems to us, that it is not

directly from the frequentative form domitare.--"_Decoy_. Properly

_duck-coy_, as pronounced by those who are familiar with the thing

itself. '_Decoys_, vulgarly _duck-coys_.'--Sketch of the Fens, in

Gardener's Chron. 1849. Du. _koye_, cavea, septum, locus in quo

greges stabulantur.--Kil. _Kooi, konw, kevi_, a cage; _vogel-kooi_, a

bird-cage, decoy, apparatus for entrapping waterfowl. Prov. E. _Coy_,

a decoy for ducks, a coop for lobsters.--Forby. The name was probably

imported with the thing itself from Holland to the fens." (p. 447.)

_Duck-coy_, we cannot help thinking, is an instance of a corruption like

_bag o' nails_ from _bacchanals_, for the sake of giving meaning to a

word not understood. Decoys were and are used for other birds as well as

ducks, and _vogel-kooi_ in Dutch applies to all birds, (answering to our

trap-cage,) the special apparatus for ducks being an _eende-kooi_. The

French _coi_ adverbialized by the prefix _de_, and meaning quietly,

slyly, as a hunter who uses decoys must demean himself, would seem

a more likely original.--_Andiron_ Mr. Wedgwood derives from Flem.

_wend-ijser_, turn-irons, because the spit rested upon them. But the

original meaning seems to have no reference to the spit. The French

_landier_ is plainly a corruption of the Mid. Lat. _anderia_, by the

absorption of the article (_l'andier_). This gives us an earlier form

_andier_, and the augmentative _andieron_ would be our word.--_Baggage_.

We cannot think Mr. Wedgwood's derivation of this word from _bague_ an

improvement on that of Ducange from _baga_, area.--_Coarse_ Mr. Wedgwood

considers identical with _course_,--that is, of course, ordinary. He

finds a confirmation of this in the old spelling. Old spelling is seldom

a safe guide, though we wonder that the archaic form _boorly_ did not

seem to him a sufficient authority for the common derivation of _burly_.

If _coarse_ be not another form of _gross_, (Fr. _gros_, _grosse_,)

then there is no connection between _corn_ and _granum_, or _horse_ and

_ross_.--"_Cullion_. It. _Coglione_, a cullion, a fool, a scoundrel,

properly a dupe. See Cully. It. _cogionare_, to deceive, to make a dupe

of.... In the Venet. _coglionare_ becomes _cogionare_, as _vogia_ for

_voglia_.... Hence E. to _cozen_, as It. _fregio_, frieze; _cugino_,

cousin; _prigione_, prison." (p. 387.) Under _cully_, to which Mr.

Wedgwood refers, he gives another etymology of _coglione_, and, we

think, a wrong one. _Coglionare_ is itself a derivative form from

_coglione_, and the radical meaning is to be sought in _cogliere_, to

gather, to take in, to pluck. Hence a _coglione_ is a sharper, one who

takes in, plucks. _Cully_ and _gull_ (one who is taken in) must be

referred to the same source. Mr. Wedgwood's derivation of _cozen_ is

ingenious, and perhaps accounts for the doubtful Germ, _kosen_, unless

that word itself be the original.--"_To chaff_, in vulgar language to

rally one, to chatter or talk lightly. From a representation of the

inarticulate sounds made by different kinds of animals uttering rapidly

repeated cries. Du. _keffen_, to yap, to bark, also to prattle, chatter,

tattle. Halma," etc. We think it demonstrable that _chaff_ is only a

variety of _chafe_, from Fr. _écauffer_, retaining the broader sound of

the _a_ from the older form _chaufe_. So _gaby_, which Mr. Wedgwood (p.

84) would connect with _gäwisch_, (Fr. _gauche_,) is derived immediately

from O. Fr. _gabé_, (a laughing-stock, a butt,) the participial form of

_gaber_, to make fun of, which would lead us to a very different root.

(See the _Fabliaux, passim_.)--_Cress_. "Perhaps," says Mr. Wedgwood,

(p. 398,) "from the crunching sound of eating the crisp, green herb."

This is one of the instances in which he is lured from the plain path by

the Nixy _Onomatopoeia_. The analogy between _cress_ and _grass_ flies

in one's eyes; and, perhaps, the more probable derivation of the latter

is from the root meaning to grow, rather than from that meaning to eat,

unless, indeed, the two be originally identical. The A. S. forms

_coers_ and _goers_ are almost identical. The Fr. _cresson_, from It.

_crescione_, which Mr. Wedgwood cites, points in the direction of

_crescere_; and the O. Fr. _cressonage_, implying a verb _cressoner_,

means the right of _grazing_.--Under _dock_ Mr. Wedgwood would seem

(he does not make himself quite clear) to refer It. _doccia_ to a root

analogous with _dyke_ and _ditch_. He cites Prov. _doga_, which he

translates by _bank_. Raynouard has only "_dogua_, douve, creux,

cavité," and refers to It. _doga_. The primary meaning seems rather

the hollow than the bank, though this would matter little, as the same

transference of meaning may have taken place as in _dyke_ and _ditch_,

But when Mr. Wedgwood gives mill-_dam_ as the first meaning of the word

_doccia_, his wish seems to have stood godfather. Diez establishes the

derivation of _doccia_ from _ductus_; and certainly the sense of

a channel to lead (_ducere_) water in any desired direction is

satisfactory. The derivative signification of _doccia_ (a gouge, a tool

to make channels with) coincides. Moreover, we have the masculine form

_doccio_, answering exactly to the Sp. _ducho_ in _aguaducho_, the _o_

for _u_, as in _doge_ for _duce_, from the same root _ducere_. Another

instance of Mr. Wedgwood's preferring the bird in the bush is to be

found in his refusing to consider _dout_, to extinguish, (_do out_,) as

analogous to _don, _doff_, and _dup_. He would rather connect it with

_tödten, tuer_. He cites as allied words Bohemian _dusyti_, to choke, to

extinguish; Polish _dusic_, to choke, stifle, quell; and so arrives at

the English slang phrase, "_dowse_ the glim." As we find several other

German words in thieves' English, we have little doubt that _dowse_ is

nothing more than _thu' aus_, do (thou) out, which would bring us back

to our starting-point.

We have picked out a few instances in which we think Mr. Wedgwood

demonstrably mistaken, because they show the temptation which is ever

lying in wait to lead the theoretical etymologist astray. Mr. Wedgwood

sometimes seems to reverse the natural order of things, and to reason

backward from the simple to the more complex. He does not always respect

the boundaries of legitimate deduction. On the other hand, his case

becomes very strong where he finds relations of thought as well as of

sound between whole classes of words in different languages. But it is

very difficult to say how long ago instinctive imitation ceased and

other elements are to be admitted as operative. We see words continually

coming into vogue whose apparent etymologies, if all historical data of

their origin were lost, would inevitably mislead. If we did not know,

for example, the occasion which added the word _chouse_ to the English

language, we have little doubt that the twofold analogy of form and

meaning would have led etymologists to the German _kosen_, (with the

very common softening of the _k_ to _ch_,) and that the derivation would

have been perfectly satisfactory to most minds.--_Tantrums_ would look

like a word of popular coinage, and yet we find a respectable Old High

German verb _tantarôn_, delirare, (Graff, V. 437,) which may perhaps

help us to make out the etymology of _dander_, in our vulgar expression

of "getting one's dander up," which is equivalent to flying into a

passion.--_Jog_, in the sense of _going_, (to _jog_ along,) has a vulgar

look. Richardson derives it from the same root with the other _jog_,

which means to shake, ("A. S. _sceac-an_, to _shake_, or _shock_, or

_shog_.") _Shog_ has nothing whatever to do with shaking, unless when

Nym says to Pistol, "Will you _shog_ off?" he may be said to have shaken

him off. When the Tinker in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Coxcomb" says,

"Come, prithee, let's _shog_ off," what possible allusion to shaking is

there, except, perhaps, to "shaking stumps"? The first _jog_ and _shog_

are identical in meaning and derivation, and may be traced, by whosoever

chooses, to the Gothic _tiuhan_, (Germ, _ziehen_,) and are therefore

near of kin to our _tug_. _Togs_ and _toggery_ belong here also. (The

connecting link may be seen in the preterite form _zog_.) The other

_jog_ probably comes to us immediately from the French _choquer_; and

its frequentative _joggle_ answers to the German _schutkeln_, It.

_cioccolare_. Whether they are all remotely from the same radical is

another question. We only cited it as a monosyllabic word, having

the air of being formed by the imitative process, while its original

_tiuhan_ makes quite another impression.--Had the word _ramose_ been a

word of English slang-origin, (and it might easily have been imported,

like so many more foreign phrases, by sailors,) we have as little doubt

that a derivation of it from the Spanish _vamos_ would have failed to

convince the majority of etymologists. This word is a good example of

the way in which the people (and it is always the people, never the

scholars, who succeed in adding to the spoken language) proceed in

naturalizing a foreign term. The accent has gone over to the last

syllable, in accordance with English usage in verbs of two syllables;

and though the sharp sound of the _s_ has been thus far retained, it is

doubtful how long it will maintain itself against a fancied analogy

with the grave sound of the same letter in such words as _inclose_ and

_suppose_.--We should incline to think the slang verb _to mosey_ a mere

variety of form, and that its derivation from a certain absconding

Mr. Moses (who broke the law of his great namesake through a blind

admiration of his example in spoiling the Egyptians) was only a new

instance of that tendency to mythologize which is as strong as ever

among the uneducated. _Post, ergo propter_, is good people's-logic; and

if an antecedent be wanting, it will not be long before one is invented.

If we once admit the principle of _onomatopoeia_, the difficulty remains

of drawing the line which shall define the territory within which those

capable of judging would limit its operation. Its boundary would be

a movable one, like that of our own Confederacy. Some students, from

natural fineness of ear, would be quicker to recognize resemblances of

sound; others would trace family likeness in spite of every disguise;

others, whose exquisiteness of perception was mental, would find the

scent in faint analogies of meaning, where the ordinary brain would be

wholly at fault. In the original genesis of language, also, we should

infer the influence of the same idiosyncrasies. We were struck with this

the other day in a story we heard of a little boy, who, during a violent

thunder-storm, asked his father what that was out there,--all the while

winking rapidly to explain his meaning. Had his vocabulary been more

complete, he would have asked what that _winking_ out there was. The

impression made upon him by the lightning was not the ordinary one of

brightness, (as in _blitz_, (?) _éclair_, _fulmen_, _flash_,) but of

the rapid alternations of light and dark. Had he been obliged to make

a language for himself, like the two unfortunate children on whom King

Psarnmetichus made his linguistic experiment, he would have christened

the phenomenon accordingly.

Mr. Wedgwood has by no means carried out his theory fully even in

reference to the words contained in his first volume, nor does the

volume itself nearly exhaust the vocabulary of the letters it includes

(A to D). Sometimes, where we should have expected him to apply his

system, he refrains, whether from caution or oversight it is not easy

to discover. The word _cow_, which is commonly referred to an imitative

radical, he is provokingly reserved about; and under _chew_ he hints

at no relation between the name of the action and that of the capital

ruminant animal.[a] Even where he has derived a word from an imitative

radical, he sometimes fails to carry the process on to some other where

it would seem equally applicable, sometimes pushes it too far. For

instance, "_Crag_. 1. The neck, the throat.--Jam. Du. _kraeghe_, the

throat; Pol. _kark_, the nape, crag, neck; Bohem. _krk_, the neck; Icel.

_krage_, Dan. _krave_, the collar of a coat. The origin is an imitation

of the noise made by clearing the throat. Bohem. _krkati_, to belch,

_krcati_, to vomit; Pol. _krzakaé_, to hem, to hawk. The same root gives

rise to the Fr. _cracher_, to spit, and It. _recere_, to vomit; E.

_reach_, to strain in vomiting; Icel. _hraki_, spittle; A. S. _hrara_,

cough, phlegm, the throat, jaws; G. _rachen_, the jaws." (As _crag_

is not an English word, all this should have come under the head of

_craw_.) "_Crag_. 2. A rock. Gael. _creag_, a rock; W. _careg_, a stone;

_caregos_, pebbles." We do not see why the rattling sound of stones

should not give them a claim to the same pedigree,--the name being

afterwards transferred to the larger mass, the reverse of which we see

in the popular _rock_ for _stone_. Nay, as Mr. Wedgwood (_sub voce

draff_, p. 482) assumes _rac_ (more properly _rk_) as the root, it would

answer equally well for _rock_ also. Indeed, as the chief occupation

of crags, and their only amusement, in mountainous regions, is to pelt

unwary passengers and hunters of scenery with their _débris_, we might

have _creag, quasi caregos faciens sive dejiciens, sicut rupes a

rumpere_. Indeed, there is an analogous Sanscrit root, meaning _break,

crack_. But though Mr. Wedgwood lets off this coughing, hawking,

spitting, and otherwise unpleasant old patriarch _Rac_ so easily in

the case of the foundling _Crag_, he has by no means done with him.

Stretched on the unfilial instrument of torture that bears his name, he

is made to confess the paternity of _draff_, and _dregs_, and _dross_,

and so many other uncleanly brats, that we feel as if he ought to be

nailed by the ear to the other side of the same post on which Mr.

Carlyle has pilloried August _der starke_ forever. But we honestly

believe the old fellow to be belied, and that he is as guiltless of them

as of that weak-witted Hebrew _Raca_ who looks so much like him in the

face.

[Footnote a: An etymology of this kind would have been particularly

interesting in the hands of so learned and acute a man as Mr. Wedgwood.

It would have afforded him a capital example of the fact that

considerable differences in the form and sound of words meaning the same

thing prove nothing against the onomatopoeic theory, but merely that the

same sound represents a different thing to different ears. L. _Boare,

mugire_, E. _moo_; F. _beugler_, E. _bellow_; G. _leuen_, L. _lugere_,

E. _low_, are all attempts at the same sound, or, which would not affect

the question, variations of an original radical _gô_ or _gu_. For a

full discussion of the matter, admirable for its thorough learning, see

Pictet, _Les Origines Indo-Européennes_, Vol. I. Section 86.]

In the case of _crag_, Mr. Wedgwood argues from a sound whose frequency

and marked character (and colds must have been frequent when the

fig-tree was the only draper) gave a name to the organ producing it.

We can easily imagine it. One of these early pagans comes home of an

evening, heated from the chase, and squats himself on the damp clay

floor of a country-seat imperfectly guarded against draughts. The next

morning he says to his helpmeet, "Mrs. Barbar, I have a dreadful cold

in my--_hrac_! _hrac_!" Here he is interrupted by a violent fit of

coughing, and resorts to semeiology by pointing to his throat. Similar

incidents carrying apprehension (as Lord Macaulay would say) to the

breezy interiors of a thousand shanties on the same fatal morning, the

domestic circle would know no name so expressive as _hrac_ for that

fatal tube through which man, ingenious in illegitimate perversion,

daily compels the innocent breath to discharge a plumbeous hail of

rhetoric.

But seriously, we think Mr. Wedgwood's derivation of _crag_ (or rather,

that which he adopts, for it has had other advocates) a very probable

one, at least for more northern tribes. There is no reason why men

should have escaped the same law of nomenclature which gave names to the

_cuckoo_ and the _pavo_.[a] But when he approaches _draff_, he gets upon

thinner ice. Where a metaphorical appropriateness is plainly wanting to

one etymology and another as plainly supplies it, other considerations

being equal, probability may fairly turn the scale in favor of the

latter. Mr. Wedgwood is here dealing with a sound translated to another

meaning by an intellectual process of analogy; and no one knows better

than he--for his book shows everywhere the fair-mindedness of a thorough

scholar--the extreme difficulty of convincing other minds in such

matters. He seems to have been unconsciously influenced in this case by

a desire to give more support to a very ingenious etymology of the word

_dream_. His process of reasoning may be briefly stated thus: _draff_

and _dregs_ are refuse, they are things thrown away, sometimes (as in

German _dreck_, sordes) they are even disgustful; and as there is no

expression of contempt and disgust so strong as spitting, the sound

_rac_ transferred itself by a natural association of ideas from the act

to the object of it. He cites Du. _drabbe_, Dan. _drav_, Ger. _träbern_,

Icel. _dregg_, Prov. _draco_, Ger., Du. _dreck_, O. F. _drache,

drêche_, (and he might have added E. _trash_,) E. _dross_, all with

nearly the same meaning. We have selected such as would show the

different forms of the word. To the same radical Mr. Wedgwood refers G.

_trüjen_, _betrügen_, and this would carry with it our English _trick_

(Prov. _tric_, in Diez, Fr. _triche_). In our opinion he is wrong,

doubly wrong, inasmuch as we think he has confounded two widely

different roots. He has taken his O. Fr. forms from Roquefort (Gloss.

Rom. I. 411,) but has omitted one of his definitions, _coque qui

enveloope le grain_, that is, the husk, or hull. Mr. Wedgwood might

perhaps found an argument on this in support of our old friend _Rac_ and

his relation to huskiness; but it seems to us one of those trifles, the

turned leaf, or broken twig, that put one on the right trail. We

accept Mr. Wedgwood's derivative signification of _refuse, worthless,

contemptible_, and ask if all these terms do not apply equally well to

the chaff of the threshing-floor? It is more satisfactory to us, then,

to attribute a part of the words given above to the Gothic _dragan_,

(L. _trahere_, G. _tragen_,) to drag, to draw, and a part to Goth.

_thriskan_, to thresh. The conjecture of Diez, (cited by Diefenbach,)

that the Italian _trescare_ (to stamp with the feet, to dance) should

be referred to the same root, is confirmed by the ancient practice of

threshing grain by treading it out with cattle. We might, indeed, refer

all to one root, by deriving _dross_ (a provincial form of which is

_drass_) through the O. Fr. _drache_, (as in O. Fr. _treche_, Fr.

_tresse_, E. _tress_,) but we have A. S. _dresten_, which is better

accounted for by _therscan_. The other forms, such as _drabbe_, _dregg_,

and _dragan_, the _b_ and _v_ being analogous to E. _draggle, drabble,

draught, draft_, all equally from _dragan_. We have a suspicion that

_dragon_ is to be referred to the same root. Mr. Wedgwood follows

Richardson, who follows Vossius in a fanciful etymology from the Greek

[Greek: derkomai = blepein] to see. Sharpness of sight, it is true, was

attributed to the mythologized reptile, but the primitive _draco_ was

nothing but a large serpent, supposed to be the boa. This sense must

accordingly be comparatively modern. The eagle is the universal type of

keenness of vision. The reptile's way of moving himself without legs is

his most striking peculiarity; and if we derive _dragon_ from the root

meaning to drag, to draw, (because he draws himself along,) we find it

analogous to _serpent_, _reptile_, _snake_.[b] The relation between

[Greek: trechein] and _dragan_ may be seen in G. _ziehen_, meaning both

to draw and to go. Mr. Wedgwood says that he finds it hard to conceive

any relation between the notion of _treachery_, _betrayal_, (_trügen_,

_betrügen_,) and that of drawing. It would seem that to _draw_ into

an ambush, the _drawing_ of a fowler's net, and the more sublimated

_drawing_ a man on to his destruction, supplied analogies enough. The

contempt we feel for treachery (for it is only in this metaphysical way

that Mr. Wedgwood can connect the word with his radical _rac_[c]) is a

purely subsidiary, derivative, and comparatively modern notion. Many,

perhaps most, kinds of treachery were looked upon as praiseworthy in

early times, and are still so regarded among savages. Does Mr. Wedgwood

believe that Romulus lost caste by the way in which he made so many

respectable Sabines fathers-in-law against their will, or that the wise

Odysseus was a perfectly admirable gentleman in our sense of the word?

Even in the sixteenth century, in the then most civilized country of the

world, the grave irony with which Macchiavelli commends the frightful

treacheries of Cæsar Borgia would have had no point, if he had not taken

it for granted that almost all who read his treatise would suppose him

to be in earnest. In the same way _dregs_ is explained simply as the

sediment left after _drawing off_ liquids. _Dredge_ also is certainly,

in one of its meanings, a derivative of _dragan_; so, too, _trick_ in

whist, and perhaps _trudge_. Indeed, all the words above-cited are more

like each other than Fr. _toit_ and E. _deck_, both from one root, or

the Neapol. _sciù_ and the Lat. _flos_, from which it is corrupted.

[Footnote a: The German _pfau_ retains the imitative sound which the

English _pea_-cock has lost, and of which our system of pronunciation

robs the Latin.]

[Footnote b: And to _worm_, (another word for _dragon_,) if, as has been

conjectured, there be any radical affinity between that and _schwärmen_,

whose primitive sense of crawl or creep is seen in the _swarming_ of

bees, and _swarming_ up a tree.]

[Footnote c: That is, unless he takes the _rag_ in _dragan_ to be the

same thing, which he might support with several plausible analogies,

such as E. _rake_, It. _recare_, etc.]

But the same subtilty of mind, which sometimes seduces Mr. Wedgwood into

making distinctions without a difference and preferring an impalpable

relation of idea to a plain derivative affinity, is of great advantage

to him when the problem is to construct an etymology by following the

gossamer clews that lead from sensual images to the metaphorical and

tropical adaptations of them to the demands of fancy and thought. The

nice optics that see what is not to be seen have passed into a sarcastic

proverb; yet those are precisely the eyes that are in the heads and

brains of all who accomplish much, whether in science, poetry, or

philosophy. With the kind of etymologies we are speaking of, it is

practically useful to have the German gift of summoning a thing up from

the depths of one's inward consciousness. It is when Mr. Wedgwood would

reverse the order of Nature, and proceed from the tropical to the direct

and simple, that we are at issue with him. For it is not philosophers

who make language, though they often unmake it.

Mr. Wedgwood's most successful application of his system may be found,

as we think, under the words, _dim_, _dumb_, _deaf_, and _death_. He

might have confirmed the relation between dumbness and darkness from the

acutest metaphysician among poets, in Dante's _ove il sol tace_. We have

not left ourselves room enough to illustrate Mr. Wedgwood's handling of

these etymologies by extracts; we must refer our readers to the book

itself. Apart from its value as suggesting thought, or quickening our

perception of shades of meaning, and so freshening our feeling of the

intimate harmony of sense and spirit in language, and of the thousand

ways in which the soul assumes the material world into her own heaven

and transfigures it there, the volume will be found practically the most

thorough contribution yet made to English etymology. We are glad to hear

that we are to have an American edition of it under the able supervision

of Mr. Marsh. Etymology becomes of practical importance, when, as the

newspapers inform us, two members of a New York club have been fighting

a duel because one of them doubted whether Garry Baldy were of Irish

descent. Any student of language could have told them that Garibaldi is

only the plural form (common in Italian family names) of Garibaldo, the

Teutonic Heribald, whose meaning, appropriate enough in this case, would

be nearly equivalent to Bold Leader.

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