scientifically correct. One question, then, arises back of these fancies; this question, namely, Why should firmament be the word to express that which is solid, or circle what is circular, or man man?

I think that our only recourse is to suppose a radical connection between the senses; that the sight, or touch, or associations of an object suggest the sound which most fitly represents that object, and the form, perhaps, of the letter which is, as it were, tap-root of the word. God geometrizes, said Plato; and since that note was sounded the beautiful coördination of all thingsof mind and body, and their varied faculties: eye gathering seven colors of its spectrum, ear gathering seven notes of its gamut, and the like analogues-has been the theme of every poet who has followed. Things exist as poetry before they exist as science; and this identity of the senses, a sequence to the fundamental unity of all things, has long been familiar to poetry, whose office is to recognize unity under diversity. Wordsworth describes a shaking leaf as making "eye-music;" Madame de Stæl a cathedral as "frozen music"-Coleridge having before called it a "petrified religion;" in which phrases one sense is made the complete symbol of another. We doubt not that it will one day be considered far from absurd that many have described the noise of thunder as black, and that a blind man said that he imagined red to be like the sound of a trumpet. We would suggest, then, that whatever prominent traits, or characteristics, or habits objects may have, furnished their nominative sounds. There is a hiss, in nearly all languages, in the word for a serpent-snake, anguis, schlange, sarf, sarpa, etc.; the s being the hissing letter, and of imitative serpentine shape; thence, by derivation, the words which include, by enlargement, the sneaking (snake) and creeping (serpens) habits of the animal. An illustration of a name derived from the eye may be gathered from the old Italian writers, who affirm that the Latin word for man, 'omo, is derived from the form of the human face-each eye being an O, and the sides of the face with the nose resembling an M.

But the imitative origin of words would be rendered probable by the imitative origin and shape of letters themselves. And it is quite certain that the nearer we get to the primitive alphabets, the more we observe their descriptive character. We will take,

for an example, the Hebrew, which includes the whole Syriac family, and also the Greek-the latter being but modifications of it:

1., alaph, Greek A, alpha, signifies in the ancient Chaldaic tongue a ship, but in the Hebrew a bullock, which among the Hebrews bore burdens, as ships did with the Chaldees. It is probable that the letter was in shape originally intended to be a compromise between an ancient ship and an animal with a burden on its back.

2., beth, Greek B, beta, is a house, like which, though toppled over, it looks.

3. 】, gimel, Greek г, gamma, a small bridge in the ancient Arimaic language, and camel in Hebrew.

4., daleth, Greek A, delta, from deleth, a door, and in shape an open door.

5., hai, signifying here it is. This letter seems in its shape to refer to the house beth with the door open in one corner, when compared with the second letter.

These five letters present a related series of images: one starts from the ship to the house, he passes a small bridge in order to reach it, and having opened the door, here he is in it. In the next six the image is changed to the in-door habits of the people. 6. 1, vov, a nail, which it resembles.

7. ¡, sayin, a club, to which the likeness is plain.

8., heth, fire-tongs; so in shape.

9., teth, Greek E, chi, the fist; the resemblance to the closed hand is evident.

10., yod, Greek I, iota, the handle of a pan, evidently.

11., kaph, Greek K, kappa, a plate.

After the man is in the house, he hangs his arms or club on the nail, takes the fire-tongs with his fist, and lays hold of the handle of the pan, then takes his meal from a plate.

12., lamad, Greek A, lambda, the cane or switch.

13., mem, Greek M, mu, the water-the resemblance being,

however, rather to the mast and spread sail.

14. J, nun, Greek N, nu, the fish.

15. D, samech, Greek E, sigma, thick.

16. , agin, the eye.

17. 5, peh, Greek 4, phi, the mouth open, and catching something.

The fisher takes his switch or rod, goes to the water to catch fish, he catches a thick or large one through the eye, mouth, or ear-hole, etc., etc.; telling plainly that the alphabet of the Hebrews originated on the banks of a river where fishing was the common employment. The alliance of the Greek alphabet with it is obvious, the ordinary tradition being that Cadmus carried it to Greece. The only ground for this is that Cadmus resembles kedem, the Hebrew word for east; but the hypothesis of the Arimaic and Hebraic origin of the Greek alphabet is not to be confused with that fancy. Pliny informs us that the letters were brought from Assyria; Diodorus mentions Syria as the fatherland of the alphabet, and Manetho declares that the second Hermes found in the Syriadic land the antediluvian pillars with the inscriptions of the first Hermes, which he had buried under ground. We are of the opinion of Dr. Wise, the learned author of the " History of the Isrælitish Nation," that these three lands are used synonymously by these writers, for the region along the Euphrates in the south-west of Asia. Thus their alphabet preserves a record of the original locality, and the employments of a great people, where all other trustworthy records fail, and history becomes mythical.

The principle of the imitative character of letters and sounds, as giving the key-notes of words, although its actual proof, a posteriori, is rendered impossible by our remoteness from the simple forms of language, which grow complex as life grows complex, is nevertheless rendered antecedently probable by the well known sympathies of sound and sense, which are continually arresting our attention in literature. The finest words and sentences call forth pictures and sonatas. Shakspeare's

"Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth,"

is Haydn's Kinder-sinfonie in a line. Shudderingly do we read,

"Grinned horribly a ghastly smile."

So the very beat and metre of Virgil's famous line causes a horse

to gallop along a frozen plain, even to the eye of one ignorant of the language in which it is described:

"Quadrupedante putrem sonitu, quatit ungula campum."

Or, take the mere mechanical effect of certain words: What a shiver is in cold-what a mystery in geist, ghost. How properly does the word form, implying limitation, end with a letter which closes the lips firmly together! The rolling along of the voice necessary for sounding the letter r, associates by imitation with the objects or actions it best expresses-roar (Sax. rarien), roll (rollen, rouler, ruilha, etc.), reel, river. An evil-minded philologist might derive the word baby from Babel, "signifying confusion;" and, though we have always deprecated Lamb's toast "to the memory of the much maligned but really good King Herod," we must, nevertheless, confess to the relationship between Babel and baby, which, with such words as babble, blab (Latin, balbus, fabula; German, plappern), are imitative of a child's first lip-noises, and when used concerning adults, indicate childish practices and propensities.

The doubt which here arises may be stated thus: If this be the true theory of the word, how is it to be explained, that various races of men should have adopted such entirely different words for the same objects? Why is it, that what one calls a woman, another calls femina, another gune, another frau? These differences do not affect the theory that each object has its name written in its nature, but are to be attributed-1st, to the many different aspects in which any one thing may be viewed; 2d, to the different temperaments and conditions of the various races and nations which tend to place them at different points of view. Thus, in the first regard, a tree, for example, may be thought of as wood, or vegetable, or a particular one, or as hard, or round, or tall, or beautiful, or medicinal. A utilitarian nation, whose living came hard, might think of its fruit or useful timber; a scientific nation might think of it botanically; an imaginative people might think of its beauty or symbolism; and, of course, each name would be as distinct as if the tree were not only thought of in different associations, but were intrinsically different. We have but to apply this principle to primitive and figurative speech, to see its action, as a matter of fact. And it is at once seen to be an inevitable one when we take into consideration our second reason; namely, the

condition which tend to If, as Jean Paul Richter

varieties of national temperament and place races at different points of view. has said, "Providence has given to the French the empire of the land; to the English that of the sea; to the Germans that of the -air!" it must follow, that whatsoever these would describe, they must describe from their several stand-points. There are many familiar words which illustrate the permanent operation of this law in word-formation. The English, for instance, used the word consider, literally to sit down with a subject; the Germans express the analogous act of the mind by überlegen, to be down over a subject; the Greeks said oxExtoμai, I shade my eyes in order to look steadily at a subject. Now, any one will find the more he ponders these three forms of expression for the same thing that they are faithful representatives of the respective national temperaments. So the use of the English occur to express mental reception (ob and curro), in which it is implied that an idea runs against, or to meet the mind, may be compared with the German einfallen, in which the superior introversion of the Teuton finds that the idea falls into him. Compare also the English imagination with einbildungskraft, a word not only metaphysically perfect, but replete with poetry.

To see this fully, we have only to remember that these distinctions must have been equally operative in the infancy of language. It is frequently the case, however, that two totally distinct races, which could never be traced to any common origin or temporary intercourse, have been arrested by the same aspect of an object, in which cases their words are radically identical; a notable instance of which is found in the name given to one of the finest American rivers by the Indians, Potomac; which is almost literally the Greek word for river, roraμos (comp. Latin, potare). These identities would doubtless be much more numerous, if it were not for the arbitrary and immethodical innovations made upon the natural form of words by those vandals, Ignorance, Affectation and Slang. The very roots of words are often irretrievably lost. To take one from a mass-who would imagine that the common word wig is derived from the Greek anos, hair? What two words could be more unlike? Yet this cos-hair, wool, or felt-became in Rome the pileus, a hair-cap given to slaves when freed. The Spanish got thence piluca; by the natural change of liquids, it became in