culty of mastering the vocabulary of a new tongue is greatly overrated; and they show, too, how absurd is the boast of every new dictionary-maker that his vocabulary contains so many thousand words more than those of his predecessors. This may, or may not, be a merit; but it is certain that there is scarcely a page of Johnson that does not contain some word-obsolete, un-English, or purely scientific — that has no business there; while Webster and Worcester cram them in by hundreds and thousands at a time; each doing his best to load and deform his pages, and all the while triumphantly challenging the world to observe how prodigious an advantage he has gained over his rivals. We are accustomed to go to the dictionary for the meaning of words; but it is life that discloses to us their significance in all the vivid realities of experience. It is the actual world, with its joys and sorrows, its pleasures and pains, that reveals to us their joyous or terrible meanings-meanings not to be found in Worcester or Webster. Does the young and light-hearted maiden know the meaning of "sorrow," or the youth just entering on a business career understand the significance of the words "failure' and "protest"? Go to the hod carrier, climbing the manystoried building under a July sun, for the meaning of "toil"; and, for a definition of "overwork," go to the pale seamstress who "In midnight's chill and murk With the emblems woven there!" Ask the hoary-headed debauchee, bankrupt in purse, friends, and reputation, with disease racking every limb, for the definition of "remorse"; and go to the bedside of the invalid for the proper understanding of "health." Life, with its inner experience, reveals to us the tremendous force of words, and writes upon our hearts the ineffaceable records of their meanings. Man is a dictionary, and human experience the great lexicographer. Hundreds of human beings pass from their cradles to their graves who know not the force of the commonest terms; while to others their terrible significance comes home like an electric flash, and sends a thrill to the innermost fibres of their being... To conclude,-it is one of the marvels of language, that out of the twenty plain elementary sounds of which the human voice is capable, have been formed all the articulate voices which, for six thousand or more years, have sufficed to express all the sentiments of the human race. Few as are these sounds, it has been calculated that one thousand million writers, in one thousand million years, could not write out all the combinations of the twenty-four letters of the alphabet, if each writer were daily to write out forty pages of them, and if each page should contain different orders of the twenty-four letters. Another remarkable fact is that the vocal organs are so constructed as to be exactly adapted to the properties of the atmosphere which conveys their sounds, while at the same time the organs of hearing are fitted. to receive with pleasure the sounds conveyed. Who can estimate the misery that man would experience were his sense of hearing so acute that the faintest whisper would give him pain, loud talking or laughter stun him, and a peal of thunder strike him deaf or dead? "If Nature thunder'd in his opening ears, And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres, CHAPTER II. THE MORALITY IN WORDS. Genus dicendi imitatur publicos mores. . . alius animo color.-SENECA. Non potest alius esse ingenio, The world is satisfied with words; few care to dive beneath the surface.PASCAL. Words are the signs and symbols of things; and as in accounts, ciphers and symbols pass for real sums, so, in the course of human affairs, words and names pass for things themselves.-ROBERT SOUTH. Woe to them that call evil good, and good evil.-ISAIAH V, 20. HE fact that a man's language is a part of his charac THE ter, that the words he uses are an index to his mind and heart, must have been noted long before language was made a subject of investigation. "Discourse," says Quintilian, “reveals character, and discloses the secret disposition and temper; and not without reason did the Greeks teach that as a man lived so would he speak." Profert enim mores plerumque oratio, et animi secreta detegit. Nec sine causa Græci prodiderunt, ut vivat, quemque etiam dicere. When a clock is foul and disordered, its wheels warped or cogs broken, the bell hammer and the hands will proclaim the fact; instead of being a guide, it will mislead, and, while the disorder continues, will continually betray its own infirmity. So when a man's mind is disordered or his heart corrupted, there will gather on his face and in his language an expression corresponding to the irregularities within. There is, indeed, a physiognomy in the speech as well as in the face. As physicians judge of the state of the 62 body, so may we judge of the mind, by the tongue. Except. under peculiar circumstances, where prudence, shame, or delicacy seals the mouth, the objects dearest to the heart,— the pet words, phrases, or shibboleths, the terms expressing our strongest appetencies and antipathies, will rise most frequently to the lips; and Ben Jonson, therefore, did not exaggerate in saying that no glass renders a man's form and likeness so true as his speech. "As a man speaks, so he thinks; and as he thinketh in his heart, so is he." - If a man is clear-headed, noble-minded, sincere, just, and pure in thought and feeling, these qualities will be symbolized in his words; and, on the other hand, if he has a confused habit of thought, is mean, grovelling and hypocritical, these characteristics will reveal themselves in his speech. The door keeper of an alien household said to Peter, “Thou art surely a Galilean; thy speech bewrayeth thee"; and so, in spite of all masks and professions, in spite of his reputation, the essential nature of every person will stamp itself on his language. How often do the words. and tones of a professedly religious man, who gives liberally to the church, prays long and loud in public, and attends rigidly to every outward observance, betray in some mysterious way,- by some impalpable element which we instinctively detect, but cannot point out to others,the utter worldliness of his character! How frequently do words uttered volubly, and with a pleasing elocution, affect us as mere sounds, suggesting only the hollowness and unreality of the speaker's character! How often does the use of a single word flash more light upon a man's motives and principles of action, give a deeper insight into his habits of thought and feeling, than an entire biography! How often, when a secret sorrow preys upon the heart, |