"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 deg. 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 cooeperation 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: Truebner 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 rever 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 AEsopic 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 necessaire, jamais arbitraire; toujours elle est motivee." 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 Mueller 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 motivee 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 _baia 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. _ebaucher_ 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. _ecauffer_, retaining the broader sound of the _a_ from the older form _chaufe_. So _gaby_, which Mr. Wedgwood (p. 84) would connect with _gaewisch_, (Fr. _gauche_,) is derived immediately from O. Fr. _gabe_, (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, cavite," 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 _toedten, 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 tantaron, 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, (?) eclair, 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. krzakae, 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 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.

[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 go or gu. For a full discussion of the matter, admirable for its thorough learning, see Pictet, Les Origines Indo-Europeennes, 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. traebern, Icel. dregg, Prov. draco, Ger., Du. dreck, O. F. drache, dreche, (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. truejen, betruegen, 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, (truegen, betruegen,) 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 Caesar 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. sciu 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 schwaermen, 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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