is the cause of its supremacy) "of every | creature's best," of the finer and nobler essences of all other races of mankind, we must expect to find a rare richness and variety of phrase in this matter. The Englishman "has been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps;" his dialect is "the alms-ture of life. And this doing is so universal basket of wit," and makes up in eclecticism, vigor, and abundance far more than it loses in apparent originality. We say apparent, because in reality no tongue was ever so individual as English:--though the rough materials are borrowed from a hundred sources, yet such is the assimilative or digestive energy, that the most discordant aliments are as immediately identified with its own independent existence, as the beef-steak which yesterday gave roundness to the hinder symmetry of a prize ox becomes to-morrow part and parcel of the proper substance--the ich of the Yorkshire farmer. In truth, the very caprices of our idiom, orthography, and pronunciation, which make foreigners "stare and gasp," are but so many proofs of the perfection and completeness of our language. It is the noble secular oak whose bark is rugged and furrowed with a thousand excrescences, and whose limbs are contorted into fantastic curves and angles; but it is from the oak that we hew out the knees of mighty victories and Agamemnons, while the village child sends the smooth and regular dandelion swimming down a rivulet to perish in two inches of water. It, we say, is the degree to which caprices and peculiar idioms, grammatical exceptions, &c., are seen in any given tongue that forms the best measure and scale of its worth and beauty: in Greek these eccentricities are infinitely more numerous than in Latin; in French, Italian, or Spanish, than in Irish or Tongatabooze.

questionably have made "How do you do?” the chorus or burthen of Rule Britannia. To do! Surely this contains the whole essence of productive existence, national or individual. To do! It is, the Law and the Prophets, the theorick and practick, the whole contexamong us, it is such a completely recognized and accepted fact, that we do not ask a man, as the dreaming, pipe-compelling, beer-bemused Germans do, "was machst du?”— what dost thou? but only how you do it? Do you must; there is no question about that. The only thing is to know how you do it. Again, let us think for a moment upon the value and extent of the sister-phrase, "How are you?" Observe the wonderful practicality of it, so closely united with the widest universality. It comes to the point at once, straight as a dart; and yet, if you take the trouble to follow it out a little, whither does it not lead you? 'How are you?" in indeed the question. All knowledge and science, all reason, thought, imagination, is nothing else but the effort of the blinded Cyclops feeling about the walls of his cavern: all merely a struggling to find out this and no other thing, namely, how we are. Perhaps, when a few more hundred years have carried us a few steps farther onward toward pure intelligence, men will cast aside their lumbering tools of dialects-their syllogisms, their illustrations, their definitions, the rubbish of the schools, the "rags and tatters," as Milton calls them, "dropped from the overworn shoulders of Time," and formulize all their inquiries, metaphysical, political, physiological, in this one comprehensive question"How are we?"-Happy if the advance of knowledge in that twenty-ninth or thirtieth century shall enable its Brougham or Whewell to answer, “ Pretty well, I thank you."

One

We may search through the whole map from Archangel to Van Diemen's Land-we A man were owl-blind, we think, who in may follow the history of human speech from the "Hoo's a' wi' ye?" of the kindly Scot Adams first aleph, beth, ab, to the last could not perceive the mixture of national number of the "Fonetic Nuz,"--for it is pawkiness with hospitable cordiality. now dead--we may decipher the Cuneiform sees in the mind's eye the canny chield, who inscriptions and learn to be as fluent in Zend would invite you to dinner three days in the as Borrow can patter Zincali; but it will be week, but who would look twice at your bill impossible to find anything finer, deeper, before he discounted it. Just as complete is than John Bull's How are you? and How do the Irish peasant's "Long life to your Honor you do? They are the Calpe and Abyla of -may you make your bed in glory!" wheresalutation. The How do you do? is suffi- in is plainly reflected the violent and exagcient to account for Trafalgar, Waterloo, gerated enthusiasm of the inborn character Steam-engine, Railway, Exeter Hall, Times-the common phrases of their everyday life Newspaper, Punch itself; and if Thomson had known what he was about, he, living before the abolition of the Navigation Laws and the Colonies was dreamt of, would un

being a better warrant of their Oriental origin than any Ogham chronicles, or agri somnia of their addle-pated Vallanceys. In this little phrase we find engrossed, so that

being hard upon the Pope.

"Good bye," though radically the same thing as "God be with ye," is yet become widely different in its modern effect and meaning. It has followed the general fate of human things, or, as the temporis acti men would pathetically lament—

he who runs may read, the very essence of ston winds up a dispatch to Count Nessela people endowed with a peculiar vivacity rode. But if we are justified in our fears and impressionableness of feeling, and which that the human race may be growing less has been long modified by a religion address-religious for good, it is but fair to allow that ing itself rather to the senses and fancy than it is far less fanatical in the persecuting line. to the reason. But this is not the time for Therefore, when a jolly helmsman showers certain flagrant anti-benedictions upon you for not getting out of his way, it would be unjust to take his sulphurous words au pied de la lettre, or to suppose that he would really feel any satisfaction in seeing you simmering, as Heinrich Heyne so pleasantly fancies, " on the infernal hob, with a little imp perpetually poking the fire under your pipkin.' What is sauce for goose is decidedly sauce for gander; and, consequently, if we only observe with a measured regret that Good bye has now become a mere expression of secular well-wishing, a synonyme of portez vous bien, then omne quod exit in-eyes should be considered with a somewhat softened reprehension.

The beautiful has vanished and returns not—–
The fair humanities of old religion;

for it should be kept in mind that all forms
of salutation were originally prayers, and in
most cases bear very markedly the precatory
structure of expression: but, as time ad-
vances, this inevitably gives way to the mere
enunciation of a wish, even when the ancient
form of words has been retained. In short,
it is we fear true that human nature goes on
constantly secularizing. Chaucer's Host ac-
cuses the Persoune of being a Lollard-i. e.
hereticus comburendus-simply because the
good man reproves him for "shotting his dis-
course:" "what eileth the man so sinfully to
swere?" says the worthy priest, to the great
wrath of Harry Baily. If we compare this
touch of Father Geoffrey with that dictum
of Mrs. Adams in Joseph Andrews, which
asserts that Scripture out of church is wicked
and blasphemous, we shall, alas! have a clear
notion of the gradual working of civilization
from the fourteenth to the eighteenth cen-
tury.

Those nations which, from circumstances of position, government, or whatever else, have continued stationary and unprogressive, will be found to have retained the pure ancient prayer form--as is proved by the abundant addresses to Allah throughout the East, the incessant invocations of the Virgin or the Saints among people of the Roman and Greek churches; whereas we "smarter" Protestants, if we investigate the particular shade of meaning attached by ourselves to "God bless you,' Adieu," "Good bye," &c., must acknowledge that, though the litanic form has been retained, yet the idea meant to be conveyed has become altogether a mere matter of pure good wishes--the religious nuance imperceptible; so that the phrase is now little more than the "most obedient humble servant" at the bottom of a dunning letter, the Quaker's "friend," or the "distinguished consideration" wherewith Viscount Palmer

The change, so well marked in the phrase we have been considering, by the gradual corruption of God into Good, must have begun very early, as in the old greeting, Give ye good den, the same word is entirely suppressed, the original sense being, "May God give ye good even." Dr. Johnson said one day at the club, that he thought "the time would come when men would grow weary of preparation, introduction, and connection, in writing, and would come to treat all subjects apophthegmatically," so that books would resemble Bacon's fragments: and this most desirable brevity seems to have been more nearly attained by the English than by any other nation on earth; for we are not contented with suppressing half the letters of our syllables, and half the syllables of our words, but we are gradually abolishing half the words of our sentences; so that, if we go on as we have begun, our language will in time become, not merely the mode of speech, par excellence, for saying "Many things in few words," but a kind of stenology, or algebraical condensation of thought, a pemmican of ideas. To this consummation have already approached among us, on the one hand, the little children-for many solid and permanent changes of language originate in the mouths of babes and sucklings--the formula having become contracted, throughout the nurseries of the United Kingdom, into "bye, bye,!"--and, on the other hand, among our scrip-men and stock-brokers, who are reported to bid each other farewell, when doing is over for the day, in the short, pastoral, and euphonious ejaculation "ta-ta!"

The polite old salutation of these realms | appears to have been generally, "Save you, Sir!" which bears marks, in the evident suppression of the word "God," of having been primarily of the true precatory form, which had gradually merged-probably under the influence of the Puritans, about the beginning of the seventeenth century-into the mere votal or wishing state: but it is to be noted that our present universal "how do you?" is of Plantagenet standing-a fact which proves that the nation early arrived at that pitch of energy and mental vigor which placed it in the van and forepost of

civilization.

vague and uncharacteristic salutations as these could not be a creative people; but history plainly shows that all they ever had of valuable in their institutions, their literature, and their social existence, has been borrowed or imported-in ancient times from Byzantium, more recently from Germany, France, or England.

The old Slavonic writings are filled with indications of a very all-pervading religious feeling, often of course degenerating into ultra-credulous bigotry; of a profound sentiment of loyalty, sometimes falling into slavishness; and of a strong taste for show and splendor, corrupting into absurd ostentation Mr. Dickens remarks that the sign vocal and babyish etiquette; lastly, frequent traces in America for starting a coach, steamer, of a certain devil-may-careishness-which are railway-train, &c., is, "Go a-head!" whereas each and all prominent features of the Rusamong us, on like occasions, the ritual form sian character in the present day. Witness is, "All right!"--and he goes on to say that their greetings:-e. g. "rab vash"-your these two expressions form a perfect embod- slave: "kholóp vash"-your serf; with the iment of the respective moods of the na- multitude of sonorous forms of compliment, tions. This is true; the phrases are vivid as Milostivui Gosudár"-Gracious Lordminiatures of the individuals John Bull and and so on. But a very curious example of Uncle Sam; and we hope yet again to see the change which often takes place in the the day when we might even adopt "All meaning of expressions originally religious right" for the motto of our political or cor- may be found in the common exclamation of porate escutcheon, with as much propriety" Bogs tobói!"-God be with thee; which as the Yankee Heralds' College (if they had one) might at this moment inscribe "Go a-head!" beneath that fast fowl, the annexing and squinting Eagle-with its one eye on Cuba, and the other on Quebec.

ancient benediction now has rather the signification of Devil take you! Slavonic fatalism will be found mirrored in the usual "how do ye do?" of the Russians: they say kak pojiváete?"" how do you live on?"-a phrase which may be taken as the very opposite pole to our manly, vigorous, condensed

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how are you?" But perhaps a still more pithy contrast is, that where the old Greek said xaps-rejoice, the usual Slavonic formula is protschai !=pardon!

The Slavonic race appears to have always been deficient in originality. It resembles the yellow branch of the great Man-Tree-Chinese, Malays, and so forth-in its submissiveness, governableness, and extraordinary tendency to imitation; producing nothing of itself, but aping the creeds, the arts, The Poles are not only Slavons, but have the fashions, and what sages call the civiliza- for many ages kept up a close communication of other peoples, with peculiar facility. tion with the West of Europe (principally It is wanting in what Burns calls "the stalk from their belonging to the Roman Catholic of carle-hemp in man." Hastily imbibing church), so that we cannot expect to find the Christian religion from emasculated Con- much originality among them. At the same stantinople, the main branch of this unsolid time, among one class-the petite noblesse, but lively and attractive race soon surpassed or szlachtic"-there exists one expression their models in cumbrous superstition and (used in speaking to a superior) which must barbarous childishness of ceremonial, and be regarded as the very crown, top, and pergave an example, during two centuries and a fection of the half-oriental genius of Slavonhalf, of almost brutish submission to their ism. It is "do nog upadam!" literally, "to Mongol invaders. Their ordinary salutation your feet we fall!" Among the poorer -“ mir”—peace—was taken directly and classes we also find a strong tinge of religi without change from the Biblical shalúm-osity; as in the following, which gives the salem--or salaam!--and the more modern usual interchange of compliments. Visitor. greeting, still used throughout the whole vast 'Niech bedzie Panbog pochwalomy!"= extent of the Russian empire, is "zdrástvui" The Lord God be praised!--Host. "No Be well! It is needless to go into proofs wieki wiekow, amen!"In sæcula sæculothat a people contented with such very rum, amen! They also say "Jak sie masz?”

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