And then he discovers that the true word is har, a message, and bringing. Now, the meaning of the word harbinger-the person sent forward to provide and mark out lodgings-is as certain as any in the language. There has always been, and is to this day, an officer in the royal household with the title of harbinger, whose duty it was in old times to precede the court, and prepare and mark the lodgings of the several persons. The quotations in which Mr. Talbot sees not a vestige of this meaning, seem to us to prove its accuracy. None of them relate to any message, and all of them imply a precursor. But we will add one more, which places the matter beyond all doubt: 'Love's harbinger has chalked upon my heart This house is wholly taken up for Flavia.'-Albumazar. The silly objection that it would be degrading a poetical word is not worth answering: is the word angel degraded because it originally meant messenger? 'MEALY-MOUTHED. This word has created great perplexity to the etymologists. Perhaps it is a term of Greek origin, viz., μɛλiμvlos (a person) of honied speech.'-p. 191. But now, metaphor for metaphor, why is not mealy-mouthed as good as honey-mouthed?-and indeed Mr. Talbot himself, in his frequent fashion of having two strings to his bow, discovers on second thoughts that the true derivation is not from Attica, but from Iceland! 'If it be a word of northern origin, I would remark that the Icelandic word for adulation is fagur mæli, from fagur (fair), and mæli (speech); and in Danish it is something similar. Therefore it is possible that the Danes may have introduced the terms fair-maly and fair-mæly-mouthed, of which our adjective may be an abbreviation.'-Ib. A toss up-Hymettus or Hecla ! 'Puss-the name indifferently of the Cat and the Hare. Why should animals so distinct have the same name? Two languages were fashionable in mediæval Britain--Latin and Norman French: many people spoke a little of both. A hare was called by those who spoke Latin, Lepus. It was not long, we may guess, before the first syllable, le, came to be mistaken for the French article, and Lepus became Le pus.'--p. 456. This grave and valuable addition to etymological science is not equally meritorious in a logical point of view, for though it accounts so satisfactorily for the hare being called Le puss, it does not explain the original difficulty of why the cat was called by the same name! Is it worth while to ask why this worshipper of the undiluted Teutons overlooks the important fact that puss for cat, so far from being peculiar to the descendants of the mediæval Britons,' is universal from Rotterdam to Memel? 'QUIBBLE QUIBBLE-perhaps from the Danish tvivl, a doubt, which is related to the German zweifel.'-p. 42. We have great tvivls and zweifels about this derivation, and are quite satisfied with old Johnson's quidlibet. 'RANSOM-evidently shortened from re-emption [a buying back], for which we generally say redemption, inserting the letter D for the sake of euphony.'-p. 41. WE generally insert the letter D for the sake of euphony.' Indeed? Did Mr. Talbot never hear of the Latin verb redimo, to redeem, with redemptio and all its derivatives in all languages? WE, forsooth! 'SAUCY. This is a word of very difficult etymology.' One of the easiest in the language. 'Johnson would derive it from the Latin salsus, salted—that is to say, witty;-but in older writers it often means contemptuous, insolent, arrogant. I have a notion that saucy may be a corruption of the French sourcil, in Latin supercilium, an eyebrow, which has exactly this sense.' Johnson is clearly right, and Mr. Talbot and his eyebrow ridiculously wrong. Saucy is neither witty nor supercilious, but simply sharp, flippant, piquant-and is, whether in the French and English or in the Italian or Spanish form, derived from the root which we see in the Latin sel-salt, the first seasoning or adventitious element of flavour to food. Horace uses the word salsus as we do saucy for troublesome, impertinent (1 Sat. ix. 65). "TO TEST the qualities of a thing, from the same root as to taste, and the French tâter, formerly taster.'—p. 466. The Latin testis-a witness-a test-a testifying or testimony, is too clear and simple for Mr. Talbot's taste. ROMEO means, in Italian, a pilgrim, properly a pilgrim to Rome: but is it not connected with the Latin comic name Dromio? Juliet is properly the diminutive of Julia, but it has apparently united itself with another name, Juliette or Joliette, the diminutive of Jolie, pretty.'— p. 403. We wish Mr. Talbot had told us how ROMEO comes to mean a pilgrim to Rome. Is it from to roam, by metaplasm roma-or Romeo quasi Romam eo? Seriously, can Mr. Talbot suppose his readers to be ignorant that this is an oldish as well as a foolish guess—and that Romeo is the familiar contraction of Romualdo, the famous Lombard name, which, though sometimes derived from the Teutonic, may perhaps have been a corruption of Romulus, but never could have meant a pilgrim? As to Juliette, we know not how nor why she should have united herself with any other name. Giulietta has as much to do with jolie as Bessy with Bessarabia. 'CATHERINE 'CATHERINE-from the Irish Kathleen, which is a diminutive of Kate.'-p. 193. 6 Just as rational as if he had said, Patricius-from the Irish Paddy, which is a diminutive of Pat.' A hundred pages later he discovers indeed that Catherine is perhaps from the Greek xalapa-pure, chaste' (p. 339); but luckily for the amusement of his readers, he has allowed his first conjecture to stand. 'PEGGY.-I do not think Peggy has any claims to be considered as the diminutive of Margaret. It is merely the Danish word for girl, viz. Pige.'-p. 299. Why, then, are not all girls called Pigs or Pegs? Molly and Bessy should be equally Peggy. And thus he proceeds : 'As also Madge, Maggie, Meggie, Meg, is nothing else than the German magd--a maid; and therefore easily confused with Margaret.' -p. 300. Why, then, are not all maids called Madge? Molly and Bessy should be equally Madge; and after all, Madge (properly a contraction of Magdalene) having been thus confused' with Margaret, Mr. Talbot leaves us in doubt whether we should pin our faith to Danish pige or German magd. 'BOB. Similarly I believe that Bob was not originally the diminutive of Robert, but merely '-as if that were an easier solution- the Teutonic bub, or bube, meaning a boy.'--p. 300. Why, then, are not all boys called Bobs? We beg pardon for having given so much space to this incoherent and contradictory boobyism. We presume that Mr. Talbot's incapacity for anything like rational etymological inquiries must be evident to every reader, to whatever etymological school he may belong; whether he thinks the classic tongues accompanied the Roman arms and interspersed their roots amongst the Northern; or that, at some still earlier period, the Northern influenced the Classical tongues; or, finally, that the leading features of some aboriginal language mixed themselves in the variety of diverging dialects. We also appeal to the reader who may not have amused himself with these intricacies, and who judges of what is placed before him by the mere light of common sense, whether he has ever before seen such a parade of originality coupled with such a pertinacity in borrowing-such a labyrinth of ignorance and negligence, such a confusion of ideas, such a clumsiness of execution, and altogether such a nothingness of result, as in Mr. Fox Talbot's English Etymologies? ART. ART. VIII.-The Macaulay Election of 1846, containing Comments on the Macaulay Rejection of 1847. By John Robertson. Edinburgh, 1847. IT T is demanded, it seems, by a large section of the Liberal party that Parliament should, for the sake of admitting Jewish members, cease to declare itself a Christian assembly. It is comfortable to think that this demand is not made on any plea of expediency-the prevailing motive of modern statesmen-but on principle. There is nothing in the present aspect of the question to frighten Lord John Russell or even Sir Robert Peel. We are threatened with no danger to the commonwealth if it be not granted; no Jewish volunteers have taken up arms to enforce it; the lion of Judah is roaring in another direction; and although Mosaic gold has produced in the City a parallel to the Clare election, no Hebrew association denounces civil war as the penalty, if the doors of the House are not thrown open to the besieging Israelites. No; it is a great principle' which we are called upon to affirm-a principle long obscured (we are told) by bigotry and superstition, and now to triumph over this last fragment of prejudice, this last vestige of intolerance, which vanishes before the universal enlightenment of our happy age. What, then, is this principle for whose final establishment our Liberals are so zealous? It shall be stated in the words of its cleverest advocate: It is because men are not in the habit of considering what the end of government is, that Jewish disabilities have been suffered to exist so long. We hear of essentially Protestant governments and essentially Christian governments-words which mean just as much as essentially Protestant cookery or essentially Christian horsemanship. Government exists for the purpose of keeping the peace; for the purpose of compelling us to settle our disputes by arbitration instead of settling them by blows; for the purpose of compelling us to supply our wants by industry instead of supplying them by rapine. This is the only operation for which the machinery of government is peculiarly adapted-the only operation which wise governments ever propose to themselves as their chief object. If there is any class of people who are not interested, or who do not think themselves interested, in the security of property and the maintenance of order, that class ought to have no share of the powers which exist for the purpose of securing property and maintaining order; but why a man should be less fit to exercise those powers because he wears a beard, because he does not eat ham, because he goes to the synagogue on Saturdays instead of going to the church on Sundays, we cannot conceive.'-Macaulay's Essays, vol. i. p. 296. The principle, then, which is to receive its final triumph and complete development in a Judaizing parliament, is that the end of of government has nothing to do with religion or morality; that 'an essentially Christian government' is a phrase meaning just as much as essentially Protestant cookery' or 'essentially Christian horsemanship;' that government exists solely for purposes of police -and that therefore-(to quote the words of Lord J. Russell himself the other day on the London hustings),—'a man's religious opinions ought not to affect his civil privileges.' But the misfortune is that the proposition involved in this great principle is both philosophically untenable and historically false. First, it is historically false; for since the world began no government ever existed which contemplated merely these physical ends,-the suppression of pickpockets by a good police, and of rioters by a constabulary force. Even the moralists of heathendom took far higher views of the purposes of government and the duties of legislators. Hear Persius: 'Rem populi tractas? Quo fretus? Dic hoc, magni pupille Pericli. Et potis es nigrum vitio præfigere Theta.'-iv. 10. And Aristotle still more strongly:Ἐπεὶ δὲ πολίτου καὶ ἄρχοντος τὴν αυτὴν ἀρετὴν εἶναι φαμεν καὶ τοῦ ἀρίστου ἀνδρὸς, ταῦτ ̓ ἂν εἴη τῷ νομοθέτη πραγματευτέον, ὅπως ἀνδρὲς ἄγαθοι γίγνωνται, καὶ διὰ τίνων ἐπιδευμάτων, καὶ τί τὸ τέλος τῆς ἀρίστης ζωής.—Polit. vii. c. 13. To say that essentially Protestant governments' and ' essentially Christian governments' are phrases as unmeaning as Protestant cookery' or 'Christian horsemanship,' is nonsense-nonsense, too, not so successfully veiled with rhetorical artifices as might have been anticipated from this practised hand. What! was not Oliver Cromwell's-was not William III.'s a Protestant government? Have not all the monarchs who decorate themselves with the titles of Most Catholic, Most Faithful, Most Christian, administered essentially Roman Catholic governments? Have not all governments, of whatever form, within what all the world calls Christendom, been essentially Christian governments? Does not the very word Christendom mean Christian government? Had not Christianity made part and parcel of every system of government in the civilised world prior to the American and French revolutions?-Nay, do not even these two apparently exceptional cases tend to contradict Mr. Macaulay's doctrines and to establish ours, both in fact and principle? For is it not the fact that, though the anarchists and atheists of France trampled on the cross, they were compelled to admit that mankind could not be governed without some moral rule, some religious tie, |