temporal, contemporary tend, attend, distend, extend, tent, extent, intense. Subsequent, properly denotes that which follows immediately. The force of immediately is given by the sub. This word reminds me of a defect in the English language; we have no adjective equivalent to the adverb after, no adjective which denotes the relation of afterwards simply, apart, that is from the question, whether the sequence is near or remote. Commonly, subsequent is so used. Simulation and dissimulation, both from simulo, I feign, or put on a character, differ thus: simulation signifies pretending to be what you are not; and dissimulation concealing what you are. They have both the same purpose, namely, to produce a false impression, to mislead; and so are both wrong. "Hide thee, thou bloody hand, Thou perjured, and thou simular of virtue; Thou art incestuous."-Shakspeare, “Lear.” The way in which a metaphor may cloak a moral misdemeanour is exemplified in the following quotation, where dissimulation is made to seem almost a virtue by reference to the propriety of keeping your own hand unseen while playing at cards: "Simulation and dissimulation are the chief arts of cunning; the first will be esteemed always by a wise man unworthy of him, and will be therefore avoided by him in every possible case; for to resume my Lord Bacon's comparison, simulation is put on that we may look into the cards of another; whereas dissimulation intends nothing more than to hide our own."--Bolingbroke. Our word sort comes to us from the Latin, sors, through the French, sorte, which means kind or species with special reference to quality, as is exemplified in the phrase "of what sort?" From this idea of quality is derived the application of the word as found in "to sort," "to assort." "And when my careful eye I cast upon my sheep, I sort them in my pens, and sorted so I keep."-Drayton. "An adjective is by nature a general and in some measure an abstract word, and presupposes the idea of a certain species or assortment of things, to all of which it is equally applicable." Smith, "Formation of Languages.' Sparse is a word not often used but convenient. It is specially applicable when in the thing spoken of the idea of sprinkled or scattered, the notion "here and there," the notion " up and down,' the notion "in different parts," "confusedly,' ""without order implied or intended: these are cases in which our term rare does not meet the want: "There are doubtless many such soils sparsedly through the nation." -Evelyn. Contiguous differs from both adjacent and near. Near, conveys the common idea of proximity. But that which is near does not touch, whereas the idea of touching is essential in contiguity. But contiguity implies not merely that A touches B but also that B touches A; but a thing is adjacent when it lies up to another thing, whether it touches that other thing or not. As in many cases the differences here are very much differences of conception, you may conceive and so speak of that which is adjacent as being also contiguous, though things so lying can scarcely be thought of as being near; yet may proximity be predicated of them, inasmuch as proximus means next, that is nearest, the one thing of a series which comes next or nearest to another. It may happen that the next is also contiguous, or actually touching. Two parishes are near each other; two districts of those two parishes are adjacent; two limits of those two districts are actually contiguous. EXERCISES IN COMPOSITION. Words with their proper Prepositions. mando, I consign Denounce against (a person)} nuntius, a messenger Defraud of, Demand of, or (a thing), Depend on, Deprive of, pendo, I hang rogo, I ask scando, I climb destitutus, deprived Make an abstract of the narrative which ensues, and then report it by word of mouth to children or friends. If you prefer, give the substance of it in a letter to a correspondent. Take care in any case not to copy or transcribe : CHARLES EDWARD ENTERING HOLYROOD. On the 13th September the little army of Charles crossed the Forth, and, animated by every fear, the terrified men of Edinburgh made a show of standing to their colours. But this parade was not fated to last long. On the 16th, the Prince's advanced guard were at Kirkliston, within a few miles of the city, where the consternation increased every moment, until the volunteers began to bribe with sixpences every soldier they met to take their arms to the castle. The arrival of the Prince was awaited by the Whigs with doubt and dismay, and by the Jacobites (at the head of whom was the Provost) with an exultation which they took very little pains to conceal. Certain commissioners were sent to Gray's Mill, to treat with the Highland chiefs for delivering the keys of the city on the best terms. Of what passed at the conference nothing is known, but, by a preconcerted arrangement (it is supposed) between them and the Prince, the city was surprised next morning at four o'clock. A soldier of the city guard, sentinel at the Netherbow, stopped a hackney coach that approached his post. "Open the Port!" cried the driver, "for I behove to get out." "You cannot," replied the sentinel, "without an order from Provost Stuart." "Provost Coutts hath ordered me to be let out," replied the driver, whipping up his horses. The soldier still remonstrated, when James Gillespie, under-keeper of the Port, said-"Let out the coach instantly, for I have an order to that effect." "Oh, sir, 'tis well; you have the keys of the Port and must answer for it," replied the soldier, and pulled back the ponderous gate in the arch between the towers. The moment the coach passed out, a Highlander sprang in, and in the twilight, grasped the sentinel, and wrested his musket from him. It was the chieftain of Lochiel; and immediately the whole Clan Cameron, nine hundred strong, with swords drawn and banners displayed, all clad in their native tartan, marched up the High-street with twelve pipers before them, making the lofty houses ring, and awakening the terrified citizens with the stirring air of "We'll awa to Shirramuir, And haud the Whigs in order." About mid-day, the main body of the Highland army, making a circuit by the ancient Tower of Merchiston, marched west by the Grange Loan, a narrow road, between old walls and aged trees, and thus avoiding the castle guns, arrived in the King's Park, where the young Prince-arrayed in the national garb, which displayed to advantage his tall and handsome figure, and wearing on his left breast the Order of the Thistle-was received with acclamation by the people. Surrounded by his Highland guardall veterans of Sheriffmuir and Glenshiel, men verging on eighty years of age, and distinguished by snow-white beards and Lochaber axes-the Prince approached the great gate of the palace, and there he paused; for, at that moment, a twenty-four pound shot, fired from the castle, struck the front wall of James V.'s Tower, near the window that lights the state apartments of Queen Mary. It dislodged several stones, and they fell together into the court. In this incident there was something so peculiarly insulting to The descendant of the Stuarts when standing on the very threshold <f their desolate palace, that a simultaneous groan burst from the spectators; a shout of acclamation followed, and the Prince again approached the gate, but again paused, and looked round hm irresolutely, for there was no Lord Keeper, no Earl Marischal, no Great Chamberlain, no Master of the Household, to usher him into ancient Holyrood, till a gentleman sprang from the crowd, raised his hat, and drawing his dress-sword, led the way to the state apartments, while another shout of applause burst from the people. In absence of his father, the Prince was proclaimed Regent of Britain by the heralds, at the cross, around which Lochiel, with his Camerons, and several ladies on horseback with drawn swords, acted as guard; the first for safety, the last for honour and enthusiasm. The Highlanders stayed within their camp, or, when in the city b.haved themselves with the utmost order and decorum; no outrages were committed, and no brawis of any kind ensued. -Memorials of the Castle of Edinburgh, Pp. 225-228. LATIN STEMS. I may now give an instance or two of curious etymologies. Husband is said to be house-band, the band and bond of the house This view indicated in the couplet― "The name of the husband what is it to say? Of wife, and the househo'd, the band and the stay." Tusser, "Points of Husbandry.” Tariff, a fixed scale of duties levied on imports, comes, it would seem, from Tarifa, the Moorish name of a fortress standing on a promontory, on which, as it commanded the entrance of the Mediterranean, a custom-house was erected. A saunterer is one who whiled away his time in La Sainte Terre, the Holy Land, after the first enthusiasm of the crusades had gone off, and pilgrimages became a sort of religious fashion for the idlers of the day. A pollroon, from the Latin, pollice truncus, deprived of his thumb, is one who through fear has cut off his thumb rather than go to war: such mutilations are still not unknown. From poltroon, in French poltron, some derive to palter and paltry. The word post may well claim a place among etymological curiosities. Post coming from the Latin, positus, placed, may signify a stock placed in the ground, a post; or such a stock (or something like a post), with a hole in it to receive letters; hence, a post or post-office: it may also be applied to a military station, because a person or persons are posted, that is, placed at the particular spot to keep and defend it. Ilence it is easy to see how the epithet may be applied to horses or carriages, as post-horses, post-chaise, and posting-house, because at that house horses and carriages were placed for hire. And as persons travelling from posting-house to posting-house would naturally, as being away from home, and intent on some business, probably business of an urgent nature, make all possible speed, so to post and to travel post-haste, came to signify rapid travelling. And thus a post, a wholly stationary immoveable thing, came by natural deviation and easy steps to represent the utmost speed in travelling known before the laying down of railways. If we fix our eye on the etymology of words we shall in some cases become aware of marked incongruities. What for instance shall we say of calling a weekly newspaper a Journal (jour, F. a day)? Nay, here is lying before me a Journal of Sacred Literature which makes its appearance every three months. So a journeyman is one who works under a master, though to appearance he is a day-labourer. To adjourn, is properly to hold meetings from day to day, whereas now it signifies to break up an assembly, or to fix some time in the future for coming together again : "An adjournment is no more than a continuance of the session from one day to another, as the word itself signifies.”—Blackstone. False spelling has been the parent of false etymology. A country-dance is not a dance in the country, but a contre danse, a dance where each one stands opposite to his partner in the long line of couples; the French term contre signifying opposite. Shamefacedness and shamefaced, have properly nothing to do with the face or countenance, but are misspellings under a false notion for shamefastness and shamefast, like steadfast and steadfastness. Hurricane is, in origin, whatever it may be in fact, totally innocent of hurrying away the canes of the sugar plantations in the West Indies, and comes to us from our Gallic neighbours, who, borrowing an oriental term uracan, to describe an oriental storm or tornado, designate it ouragan. The alligator, or crocodile of the New World, was very appropriately designated by the Spaniards who first saw it, el largato, that is, the lizard, the lizard, the largest lizard, the type of the lizard species. In time the article el, the, blended with the noun and formed alligator. We have a similar combination in Eldorado, the gold country. In Ben Jonson, who writes aligarta, we see the word in the process of its transformation. For this word, Dr. Johnson could find no etymology, and Sir T. Herbert made it to be a compound of German and Spanish. |