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 schaukeln, 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 imita tive 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 onomatopaia, 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; oth

ers, 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 Psammetichus 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.* 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

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 go or gu. For a full discussion of the matter, admirable for its thorough learning, see Pictet, Les Origines Indo-Européennes, Vol. I. § 86.

'Crag. 2.

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, kreati, to vomit; Pol. krzakaé, to hem, to hawk. The same root gives rise to the Fr. cracker, to spit, and It. recere, to vomit; E. reach, to strain in vomiting; Icel. hraki, spittle; A. S. hraca, 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.) 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 debris, 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.

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

on from the root meaning to drag, to draw, (because he draws himself along,) we find it analogous to serpent, reptile, snake.* The relation between Tрéxεv 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, (trugen, 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. Wedgword can connect the word with his radical rac†) 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.

But the same subtilty of mind, which sometimes seduces Mr. Wedgwood into making distinctions without a difference and preferring an impalpable relation of

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.

†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.

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.

The Physiology of Common Life. By George Henry Lewes, Author of "Seaside Studies," "Life of Goethe," etc. In Two Volumes. Vol. II. New York. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 410. $1.00.

Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856. From Gales and Seaton's Annals of Congress; from their Register of Debates; and from the Official Reported De bates, by John C. Rives. By the Author of "The Thirty Years' View." Vol. XIV. New York. Appleton & Co. 8vo. pp. 747. $3.00.

The Young Farmer's Manual: Detailing the Manipulations of the Farm in a Plain and Intelligible Manner. With Practical Directions for laying out a Farm, and erecting Buildings, Fences, and Farm Gates. Embracing also the Young Farmer's Workshop: giving full Directions for the Selection of Good Farm and Shop Tools, their Use and Manufacture, with Numerous Original Illustrations of Fences, Gates, Tools, etc., and for performing nearly Every Branch of Farming Operations. By S. Edwards Todd. New York. Saxton, Barker, & Co. 12mo. pp. 459. $1.25.

Ritchie's Illustrated Catalogue of Philosophical Instruments. Boston. E. S. Ritchie. 8vo. pp. 84. 25 cts.

The Kellys and the O'Kellys. A Novel. By Anthony Trollope, Author of " Dr. Thorne," etc. From the Last London Edition. New York. Rudd & Carleton. 12mo. pp. 432. $1.25.

A History of New York, from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty; containing, among Many Surprising and Curious Matters, the Unutterable Ponderings of Walter the Doubter, the Disastrous Projects of William the Testy, and the Chivalric Achievements of Peter the Headstrong, the Three Dutch Governors of New Amsterdam: being the Only Authentic History of the Times that ever hath been or ever will be published. By Diedrich Knickerbocker. The Author's Revised Edition. Complete in One Volume. New York. Putnam. 12mo. pp. 472. $1.50.

The Confessions of Augustine. Edited, with an Introduction, by William G. T. Shedd. Andover. Warren F. Draper. 12mo. PP. Xxxvi., 417. $1.25.

History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent. By George Bancroft. Vol. VIII. Boston. Little, Brown, & Co. Svo. pp. 475. $2.25

Quaker Quiddities; or, Friends in Council. A Colloquy. Boston. Crosby, Nichols, Lee, & Co. 16mo. pp. 48. 25 cts.

History of Genghis Khan. By Jacob Abbott. With Engravings. New York. Harper & Brothers. 16mo. pp. 335. 60 cts.

Danesbury House. By Mrs. Henry Wood. New York. Harper & Brothers. 12mo. pp.

282. 75 cts.

The Little Beauty. By Mrs. Grey, Author of "Passion and Principle," "Old Dower House," etc. Philadelphia. Peterson & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 626. $1.25.

Cicero on Oratory and Orators. Translated or edited by J. S. Watson. New York. Harper & Brothers. 16mo. pp. 379. 75 cts.

A Smaller History of Greece, from the Earliest Times to the Roman Conquest. By William Smith, LL. D. Illustrated by Engravings on Wood. New York. Harper & Brothers. 18mo. pp. xxiv., 248. 60 cts.

Class-Book of Botany. Being Outlines of the Structure, Physiology, and Classification of Plants. With a Flora of All Parts of the United States and Canada. By Alphonso Wood, A. M. New York. Barnes & Burr. 8vo. pp. 174. 75 cts.

Manual of Geology: Designed for the Use of Colleges and Academies. By Ebenezer Emmons, State Geologist of North Carolina, late State Geologist of New York, Professor of Natural History and Geology in Williams College, etc., etc. Illustrated with Numerous Engravings. Second Edition. New York. Barnes & Burr. Svo. pp. 297. $1.00.

Elements of English Composition, Grammatical, Rhetorical, Logical, and Practical. Prepared for Academies and Schools. By James R. Boyd, A. M., Author of "Annotated Editions of English Poets," of "Elements of Logic," of an Improved Edition of "Kames's Elements," etc. New York. Barnes & Burr. 12mo. pp. 406. 75 cts.

Elements of Analytical Geometry and of the Differential and Integral Calculus. By Charles Davies, LL. D., Professor of Higher Mathematics, Columbia College. New York. Barnes & Burr. 8vo. pp. 194. $1.00.

Natural History. For the Use of Schools and Families. By Worthington Hooker, M. D., Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in Yale College, Author of " Human Physiology," "Child's Book of Nature," etc. New York. Harper & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 382. $1.00.