"A WORD fitly spoken "-a happy expression-has a charm for even the rudest peoples; and polished nations early discover in their talk and in their books a favoritism in the use of words possessing suggestive qualities entirely independent of their philological definitions. The instinct that prompts this use is probably one of the sources of language itself. The simpler of these words are onomatopes or imitations of sounds, requiring little art,-and are beneath the dignity of scientific classification. (Buzz, hiss, whiz, splash, slush, hum, wheeze, sneeze, roar, gurgle, jingle, are more or less onomatopical.) But the meagre and savage art which produced these simple imitations was precursory and prophetic of a later and more delicate art in the use of a complex and ever-varying suggestiveness, which gives voice to the same instinct in the presence of all the facts and fancies which this brightest age remembers and conceives,-a suggestiveness that is made to reach beyond mere sounds to the finest modes and qualities of surface, distance, motion, lustre, fibre, density, concentration, humor, solemnity, contempt, a suggestiveness whose analysis would be found taking all the words to pieces, and fitting to each letter or sound a peculiar character which it has won out of all the observed phenomena of life. These characters, which are beyond the compass of all reputed science-which, indeed, are known only in the poet's art-this article will show the ambition to indicate, though it may not define.

But before testing upon the consciousness of the reader my intuition of the individual qualifications of the letters, I desire to restrict his anticipation by warning him of the delicacy of the differences he will be called to appreciate, of the breadth of grasp from which I conceive the roots of these flowers of thought to suck in the juices

which enliven their odors and their hues, and of the apparent hopelessness of any one man's efforts to resolve, determine, and classify in full the fluctuant, evanescent, whimsical effects with which we shall have to do.

These characters of the letters or sounds, as I conceive them, are accidental-not generic, or identical in all languages and among all peoples. This is a study of vernaculars. The effects I refer to are so thin and fine that the gross discrepancies of races overbear them. They are as sensitive and mercurial as poetry itself. For all purposes of this essay, a Scotchman talking in his throat and a Frenchman puttering with the tips of his lips are as dissimilar as a horse and an ass. Neither can be a popular wit in the language of the other; neither has facial muscles for the humor of the other's dialect. Any account of the wonderful luxuriance of the growth of languages (of which there is a fabulous number) requires the consideration of differences even less than theirs. A little obstruction is said to turn the tide of trade in a street, but a less one will vary the language of a nation. Languages are disposed to lie upon the world in groups which resemble one another; but if we will undertake to prove the character or effect of a sound identical in several dialects (even of the same group), we shall reduce its vernacular significance as we increase its general applicability. verbal root may be traced with care until similar shades of meaning shall be found in Visigothic, Almannic, Saxon, Scandinavian, and Slavonic; but if the student should then begin to fancy that he has found a generic principle of language, let him follow the same sound into Hebrew, Syriac, Chaldaic, and Arabic, and he will conclude that nine tenths of any original language sprang out of the ground whereon it was first spoken, and from roots too shallow to

affiliate with those of other tongues through the thick bases of mountains, or under the bottom of the sea. He who would discover the origin of language must not be scornful of trifles; he must have no theory to exemplifyno axe to grind. And no great and manly writer of any nation will prune the prickling, cactus-like originality of his own vernacular to cousin any country under the sun.

Indeed, we cannot be too sensible of the meanness of the origin of language, for either the advantage of philology or the respect due to our own words. It is necessary to our assurance to dwell here for a little.

If we admit that man was progressive, either as a distinct genus or as a culmination by "selection" of the manlier specimens of the monkey-tribes, we shall readily admit that he must have had originally a language which flowed instinctively and easily according to the formation of his vocal organs, as does that of any other animal. As the subjects of his experience accumulated, his dialect increased, and he gave names to things, for qualities and modes, according to the dictates of a natural sense of fitness. In this stage his only pride in the invention of language was shown in imitation; onomatopes abounded. It was the age of Eden, nakedness, and simple truth. But as he advanced into the era of self-consciousness the "fall by knowledge" affected his utterance as it did his heart and life. The dignity of the naming of things thrust itself into his conceit, and he became arbitrary and idolatrous of distinctions which he had himself created; he threw the authority of language back of himself, connived at its nativity, and humored it as a curiosity. Soon came the era of the invention of letters; and then, after a few ingenuous manifestations, the building of Babel began. Surely (he said to himself), a book should be a mysterious thing-as far as possible from vulgar apprehension. The written language was whimsically made to differ from the spoken; although the art of spelling with acknowledged sounds and let

ters must have been always a very simple one, the words were constructed outlandishly-silent letters thrown in for no purpose but to twist and torture them out of countenance and hide their vulgar origin.

If the reader should doubt the existence of so childish an impulse as here seems to have manifested itself, let me assure him the introduction of silent letters into original words came down very late into the best days of Greece,

and the impulse is still extant. Men, like children, still "play" at life. The astonishing feat of putting a sentiment into just fourteen lines is an evidence of it. Seven or eight dictionaries, differing upon the pronunciation and even the spelling of native words, comprise another evidence of it. Surely, lexicographers should but represent the people; they should not invent language; that is the vocation of the poet and the artisan. Yet take a single example of their method: the fills of a cart are called in Saxon (probably by some pedant) thills; every person familiar with horses, either in England or America, calls these shafts fills; Shakespeare calls them fills (see Troilus and Cressida, Act iii. sc. 2), showing clearly they were so called in his day; yet the lexicographers "derive from the Saxon." So of whippletree; they spell it whiffletree, to the utter disgust of all teamsters-deriving from weifelen, to whiffle about-which probably had nothing to do with the matter, as the evener is a comparatively modern invention. Why should a traveller come from Central Africa, where books are unknown, and say there is a lake called Tchad? Truly man has found out many inventions! And after the invention of Letters, all the motives of pride, craft, charlatanism, superstition, all the differences of organic formation, all the psychological, climatical, geological, and historical differences of the world, began pouring their conflicting and distracting effluences into language, and have so continued, until it has become a thing inscrutable as the heart of man who made it, as well adapted (as a diplo

matist fairly inferred) to the concealment of thought as to its expression.

The difficulty, then, in the way of theorizing the forces which I imagine the letters to exert to-day, in English, in our latitude, in our stage of culture, &c., &c., is that the best expression is ever due to the fullest knowledge, or intuition, or inspiration, of all the various phenomena of the world at the moment it is delivered,-to the true estimate of the comparative age and value of things,-in short, to the universality of experience. I am ready to believe no bard ever wrote a line that was not poetry to him; but the experience of many has not been in harmony with that of a sufficient number of people to make their impressions considerable. And essentially the basis of wit fluctuates and extends. Every new genius destroys the old balances and standards. Yet the essence we would determine rises like perfume from the whole process of the growth and decay of things, and is affected by considerations the faintest and remotest,-as dainty and difficult of apprehension as would be the scent of a grain of mummydust from Petra rising out of a cart-load of sweepings from the pavement of Pall Mall, London, England. The only key to all poetry is the Book of Life. But if I have succeeded in conveying my meaning, the reader will look leniently on the ambition of the present essay as an appeal to his consciousness that shall prove us jointly in harmony with the genius which, in every age, according to its own circumstances, is efficient in throwing out original language, and especially in enlightened times is apt in the selection of language poetical and impressive to the general sense.

I assert, then, that the sounds represented by the letters of the alphabet have a special aptness in suggesting the qualities opposed to them in the following schedule; and that the poetry, the proverbs, the slang, and the common talk of our people approve this assertion :

O....... Solemnity, nobility, devotion, volume, ....Voluptuousness.

T......... .Roughness, vibration.

gr........Grit.
5...... Moisture.

sh........Confusion.

u........Crudity, absurdity, humor.
V........Vehemence.

z.........Haze, dreamy confusion.

It would require a volume of quotation to fairly illustrate the happiness of the letters in suggesting the qualities here indicated for them; but I hope by a few examples to so force their genius upon the reader's memory that he will habitually observe it. And I will say, for his encouragement, that I made this schedule fifteen years ago, and that I have met nothing since to jostle its arrangement. He will directly see, too, that these convictions are by no means singular. Burns, Swedenborg, and Pope, have occasionally manifested the same; and, philologically rather than poetically speaking, Dr. Alexander Murray, of Edinburgh, reduced the whole Caucasian group of languages to nine roots, to his own satisfaction at least. As for what has been said of the obscurity and meanness of the origin of language in general, I would cordially refer the reader to "Language, and the Study of Language," by Professor Whitney, of Yale College.-We will try the vowels firstly.

A. "Far, far away, over the calm and mantling wave "-thus begins the boy's romance. He is possessed by the poetry of the ocean-of vastness and space. The word ocean is seldom used except in expression of rolling and dashing; but the wave, the main, the vast waters, the watery waste, or plain, are more popular. Lake, straight, vale, chase, race, trail, trace, away, give distance and line. Seen nearer, long a gives effect to slate,

holiness and adoration. Solemnity and nobility are its general effects. All things noble, holy, devotional,-or sober, sombre, slow, dolorous, mournful,-or old, lone, glorious,-or even bold, portly, pompous, find their best expression in the o-sound. Jove, Jehovah, Lord of glory, lift up the adoring soul. O! lo! ho! behold! are interjections which nations use with little variance.

"O sad Nomore! O sweet Nomore!"
"Oh! Rome, my country, city of the soul,

The orphans of the heart must turn to thee." "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!" "Their shots along the deep slowly boom." "The lowing herds wind slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way." That o gives volume, may be seen in the fact that most people think a boulder is a large stone; but, philologically, a boulder need not be bigger than a pea.

U, gutteral, or flat, is a humorous savage that cannot be described except in his own words,- -a huge, lubberly, blubbering, blundering dunderhead,-a numskull and a dunce, ugly, sullen, dull, glum, rugged, clumsy, gullible, dumpish, lugubrious,-a mumbler, a stumbler, a bungler, a grumbler, a fumbler, a grunter, a thumper, a stumper, a tumbler, a stunner,-a nudge, a trudge, a drudge, he lugs, tugs, sucks, juggles, -he is up to all manner of bulls,-a fusty, musty, crusty, disgusting brute, his head is a mug, his nose a snub, or a pug, his ears are lugs, his breasts dugs, his bowels guts, his victuals grub, his garments duds, his hat is a plug, his child is a cub,-—his smallest diminutive is chubby, or bub; at his best he is bluff, gruff, blunt; "his doublet is of sturdy buff, and though not sword, is cudgel proof;" budge he will not, but he will drub you with a club, or a slug, or a nub, or a stub, or a butt, or pelt with mud; he is ready for a muss, or a fuss; and should you call him a grudging curmudgeon he gulps up "ugh! fudge! stuff! rubbish! humbug!" in high dudgeon; he is a "rough," a "blood-tub," and a "bummer," a "rum 'un," and a tough customer generally;

he has some humor, more crudity, but no delicacy,-a creature whose voice is seldom heard in walks of refinement and devotion. Of all nations I should take him for a Dutchman.

Yet u, long, seems to give force to the true, the pure, the beautiful, the good; and rude and crude are used with much emphasis in the opposite direction, partly owing to the force of r. Mother would seem to use u flat, but the Ŏ or ah is more evident,-and the dreamy monotony of m and the soft th fit the word to its use; but "Ma" is better. The devotional o flat in father, is becoming too strong for young America, and he nicks and reduces it by familiar pa, pap, and dad.

Ou, diphthong, is an upward curve: thus in round, bough, mountain, bow down, mound. Milton hits the rolling swagger of the gaudy cock who

"To the stack or the barn-door Stoutly struts his dames before." "Three gaudy standards flout the pale blue skies."

I, o, u, in combination, make a fine curve, the true "line of beauty;" a, o,

u make the same:

"And false the light on glory's plume."

"Of Love's and night's and ocean's solitude."
"The wide old wood from his majestic rest."
"In all that proud old world beyond the deep."

Oi, diphthong, strikes me forcibly in the word coil.

D is a solid, compact, heavy letter; thus in wad, sod, clod, load, plod, dogged, rugged, leaden, dead. The report of a short and heavily-loaded pistol is well caught in explode.

"Earth's cities had no sound nor tread, And ships were drifting with the dead

To shores where all was dumb." "Morena's dusky height Sustains aloft the battery's iron load."

The metals seem to me well named; gold, silver, iron, lead-especially lead. Tin is good, in thin shape as it is used.

D, initial, has strong philological connections in all the European languages, but its poetic force seems less to me. Some very efficient swearing can be done with d and g hard, which well