POETRY: The Broken Crucible, 413.-The Gold King; The Grass Withereth, 420.—The Death of Infants, 423.

SHORT ARTICLES: Female Doctors, 403.-Gov. John Jay, 404.-Peace Society, 414.—A Fork, 429.

TERMS.-The LIVING AGE is published every Satur- Agencies. We are desirous of making arrangemens, by E. LITTELL & Co., corner of Tremont and Brom-in all parts of North America, for increasing the circulads., Boston; Price 123 cents a number, or six dollars tion of this work--and for doing this a liberal commission a year in advance. Remittances for any period will be will be allowed to gentlemen who will interest themselves thankfully received and promptly attended to. To in the business. And we will gladly correspond on this insure regularity in mailing the work, orders should be subject with any agent who will send us undoubted referaddressed to the office of publication, as above. Clubs, paying a year in advance, will be supplied as follows:

Or all the Periodical Journals devoted to literature and science which abound in Europe and in this country, this bas appeared to me to be the most useful. It contains indeed the exposition only of the current literature of the English language, but this by its immense extent and comprehension includes a portraiture of the human mind in ne utmost expansion of the present age. J. Q. ADAMS.

LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 342.-7 DECEMBER, 1850.

From the Quarterly Review.

1. The Handbook of Travel-Talk; a Collection of
Dialogues and Vocabularies, intended to serve
as Interpreter to Travellers. By the Editor
of the Handbooks of Germany, France, and
Switzerland. 12mo. 2d Edition. 1850.
2. The Royal Phraseological English-French_and
French-English Dictionary. By J. CH. TAR-
VER, French Master, Eton. 2 vols. 8vo.
1845-1850. Pp. 1670.

THE motto of this useful manual of Travel-
Talk is Bacon's famous saying—“ He that travel-
leth into a country before he has some entrance
into the language, goeth to school and not to trav-
el."
We hope the editor means gradually to ex-
tend his work, and, having profited by what he
has done, shall be happy if in the following
remarks he finds anything either of encouragement
or of suggestion.

Lavater has laid down that the character of a

man may be detected not less clearly-nay, often much more so—in the most trifling gestures, in the ordinary tone of his voice, in the way he takes a pinch of snuff, or mends a pen, than in great actions, or when he is under the influence of the stronger passions, which indeed obliterate

nice distinctions:

Love levels ranks; lords down to cellars bears,
And bids the brawny porter walk up stairs.

peace, the summum bonum, the prime want and wish in such countries and under such conditions of life. A pastoral people is always warlike; and throughout the Bible this is the invariable blessing which forms the staple of salutation. Shalúm! We trace the ruling idea in the very name of Jeru-salem.

We plainly see that when their language was crystallizing they must have been a people whose hand was against every man and every man's hand against them; and the Bedouins of the present day have precisely the same characIn some Hebrew modes of greeting we also see ter, embodied and eternized in the same salutation. is an under-tone that speaks of a land dropping and strong traces of a gross sensuous character; there rivers of milk and honey, oil and butter, more running over with fatness-a gurgling of luscious than in ten German tables-d'hôte. "No marvel," says Carlo Buffone, "that that saucy, stubborn generation were forbidden pork; for what would that durst murmur at their Maker out of garlick they have done, well pampered with fat griskins,

and onions?"

habits of those tribes among whom it was first in-
Islam probably made but a small change in the
troduced; and consequently we shall find little in
these phrases. The same religious tone con-
tinues, modestly conbined with an incipient tinge
of fatalism. 66
May your morning be good!" says
the Arab: "May God strengthen your morning!"
Perhaps thou shalt be fortunate."
"God grant
thee his favors!"

66

If we allow that these little things may afford the true index of individual character, it follows that they must be the faithfullest signs of national char"If God will, thou art well!" acter also; and thence comes it that the best If God will"-here the fatalist does not even venhistory of a people is to be found in its dictionary. ture to put up a prayer, but only asserts the fact. Let us take a particular class of words and phrases" If God will, all the members of thy family enjoy -a very ordinary and limited one-and we are

much deceived if we shall not find a mass of characteristic traits daguerreotyped, the more strikingly because involuntarily, in the commonest forms of salutation.

In

good health."

Here we have the reclusion of women indicated in an unmistakable manner. The pride, gravity, and laconism of the Ottoman. are no less faithfully depicted. His salutations. generally include a sort of saving clause, as, “ If God will," or the like; but they breathe strong proofs of confidence as to the success of the peti tion. The Turks are not a people

in Fortunæ qui casibus omnia ponunt, Et nullo credunt mundum rectore moveri, Natura volvente vices et lucis et anni;

Observe the tone that predominates in those of the East; what an air they breathe of primeval simplicity, what condensed documents they are of the external nature and the state of society. them we clearly mark the ceremonious politeness of half-savage peoples, among whom a word or look is instantly requited by stroke of ataghan or and it must assuredly give no small dignity to thrust of lance-exactly as was found among the social intercourse when the most lofty and solemn red men of the great western prairies; for it is an truths are thus brought into contact with the old observation that no purest-blooded aristocrat of familiar speeches of common life. "Be under the the most refined court, not even Louis Quatorze in guard of God;" "My prayers are for thee;" all his glory, could be more perfectly well-bred "Forget me not in thy prayers.' than a Huron chief. The immobility too of the however, seem formal and colorless when compared region is well reflected, for these little phrases will to the torrent of hyperbolical compliment poured be found nearly identical over an immense expanse forth as a matter of course by the fluent and facile and through a vast duration. They are almost all Persian. The same difference may be discerned based upon a religious feeling; and convey in the as between the Englishman and the Frenchman. form of a prayer a wish that the person may enjoy | The only trace of tender or poetical feeling we

VOL. XXVII. 28

Their phrases,

66

have noted in a tolerably copious list of Turkish | burning quotidian tertian." May your shadow complimentary greetings is the following: "Thy never be less!" beside being a most picturesque visits are as rare as fine days"-which, moreover, expression, stereotyped in human speech-human evidently dates from a period long prior to their speech, that only firm, solid, unfluctuating thing descent upon the serene shores of Roumelia. | (except a whig ministry perhaps)—is also a neat "Peace be upon thee!" says the Persian-not formula for the respect Orientals entertain for fat. with thee, as among us in the olden time, but upon thee, as though it were to drop visibly,

like the gentle dew from heaven, Upon the place beneath.

"How is the state of thine honor?"

Not only does it typify, as in some indestructible Babylonian frieze, a burning climate, where violent light and strong shadow are before the eyes of man from the cradle to the grave-a climate where the fan and the parasol have become emblems and insignia of sovereign rank, like our sceptre (originally the staff-the accompaniment of old age, and hence of wisdom and authority) but it marks the honor and glory attached to obesity in a climate where none but the rich and great can reach (by having plenty to eat and little to do) the envied pinnacle of twenty stone. Thus we are told of the Hindoos, in Major Williamson's Oriental Sports, (chap. xv.,) that the possessor of a jolterhead "is a happy individual, who passes his life surrounded by the warmest demonstrations of respect and veneration." But why quote for readers all fresh from Morier, Fraser, Lane, Kinglake, Layard, and the "Milordos Inglesis" of yesterday? How deliciously sumptuous is the greeting of the Chinese-" Have you eaten your rice? Is your stomach in good order?" What people could generate such a phrase but timid, frowsy, formular inhabitants of the Central Flowery Land? Could it have taken root in Aberdeen or Kentucky?

"Is thy exalted high condition good?" Glory to God by thy benevolence!" "I make prayers for thy greatness!" "May thy shadow not be removed from our head!" May thy shadow never be less!" Is it possible to be conceived by one who has any touch of what Sir Thomas Browne calls "the dueteroscopie or second-sight of things," that these perpetual shadows, and the rest of the supeller of Oriental Novels-(alas, for Hajji Baba!) -can be mere matter of accident? Could a foggy, shivering Frieslander say, May your shadow never be less? Observe, also, the immense part played in the Oriental world by the idea of paternity a part which begins in the very infancy of mankind-which was carried by the Jews in particular to a great height, as each man flattered himself that he might be the father, or at least ancestor, of the Messiah-and you will see, in the still hourly employment and sacrosanct veneration of that idea, a relic of the first generations-a leaf from the groves of Eden, a lock of wool from the But all these phrases must have been private sheep of Abel. There are even whole tribes and property before they became common; they must nations who take their names of individuals from have happily conveyed a reality before they grew this idea of paternity-a man not calling himself to be merely conventional forms of speech. In the son, but the father, of so-and-so. Consider, other words, they were invented by a man of geif this method were to be generally adopted, what nius in every case, and bear the impress of gea change would take place in the personal nomen- nius-i. e., of a concentration of the thoughts and clatures of half the world; we should have no sentiments of the age into a focus of vivid brilmore Morisons or Hudsons, Fitzherberts or Fitz-liancy. A proverb has been happily defined, by a clarences—no more O'Connels or O'Briens-Mac- living statesman, "the wit of one man, the wisNabs or MacGregors-the Ivanovitches and Gav-dom of many.' All the picturesque metaphor, riloffs and Jellachichs would be rooted out from the bold and striking condensation, the lightningamong the orthodox Slavonic peoples; there would like pointedness of that exquisite form of lanbe no more Islandic Olafsons and Sigmundsens; guage which we call Slang, has no other origin nay, there would have been no Atreides, no but this: nay, all that is worthy to be called lanPeleides. In the desert, men of A. D. 1850 call guage (which sometimes makes up but a moderthemselves, not the son of their father, but the ate part of the dictionary) has no other source, or father of their son. One class of the population modus existendi. Look at the slang of any trade among us, it must be confessed, might be far from or profession, and we shall see that every word of displeased were this mode to be introduced; it it is literally a "word that burns"-the indewould singularly gratify young couples in the flush structible vesture of a thought. The high-tobyand glory of" their first." But "Thou hast ex-man or cracksman-(Cracksman! what a poem in alted my head!”—“ May thy horn be lifted up!" -would never do in Cheapside. In Egypt they have a form of salutation which stamps and fixes a feverish climate to the life: "How goes the perspiration? Do you sweat copiously?" and this, as father Rabelais says, pour cause, seeing that in those regions, if you do not continue in the diaphoretic mood, meltingly alive to the torrid fervency of the sun, you run a great risk of melting away altogether of exhaling-of dying, in short, in "a

two syllables!)-who invented the word swag; the sailor ("in many a tempest had his berd he shake") who first talked of his ship's fore-foot, or qualified the vessel as she; the first boxer who in a commonplace head beheld a nob―the head

*So Mr. G. C. Lewis tells us in his book "On the Influence of Authority."We name our author, and he will be no offence in adding that we believe he means should have named his statesman-but we hope there Lord John Russell.

being viewed simply as the subject of knocks, fib-| books from Gronovius to Grote. In Homer, one bing, and evil-entreatment, and thus by a stretch does not meet with much variety of greeting: inof transcendental metaphysic abstraction reduced deed, forms could hardly have flourished at such a to its lowest terms, detached from all associations time. Everybody appears to be acquainted with but those of fisticuffs-or, even more wondrous- everybody else in the throng of the onslaught as ly perhaps, a conk; the first bibliomaniac who perfectly as so many Tipperary boys at a factionspoke of "tall copies," of "foxing" and "crop- fight; for they almost always prelude their enping;" this man, of whatever breed or degree, counter with a little chaffing, to the same effect as was a poet. Let no dainty objector whisper that the "Come out, ye thief o' the world, till I bate such words are common, vulgar, familiar, and can- the skin aff the ugly bones of you!" We say to not be poetical. Daisies are common; the sea is the same effect, for the Homeric heroes use, even common; men, women, and children are exceed- in their most excited moments, language which ingly common, at least in some parts of the never loses a character of majesty, still further world, and yet we believe they are allowed by heightened by the sonorous recitative of the dithe best judges to be not only poetical, but the vine hexameter. The comedy-writers, no less very stuff and matter of all poetry. They are than the great Mæonian, afford innumerable exwhat the Lord Chamberlain Polonius wished his amples of chaffing, often of a truly rich, imaginson to be, ative, and altogether Hellenic luxuriance: but we must not allow our pen to linger in these " shady spaces." As to the Neo-Greeks having lost all distinctive nationality, they of course have not preserved anything really original in lanThe Greek salutation seems to have been sub-guage. Theirs is a vile piebald jargon, with just ject to few changes; but this circumstance, which so many traces remaining of the glorious speech may at first sight appear against us, seeing that of old as to make the contemplative more keenthe Greeks were so capricious a generation, so ly feel its degradation; like a baker's oven piled mobile, imaginative, and composed of such a num-up of ruined stones, among which glances out ber of tribes, will on examination furnish an ad- here and there some broken bit of Phidian basditional buttress. The Hellenic race, notwith- relief put in upside down. The Greeks of Otho standing the multitude of internal nuances, was say ti zaves? what dost thou ?-a phrase which essentially one and indivisible." evidently could by no possibility have grown up indigenously among such a chattering, cheating,

Familiar, but by no means vulgar. Indeed, their very commonness prevents them from ever being vulgar: for what is vulgarity but the effort to be something not common?

66

States have degrees as human bodies have: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter- and the Grave and no hope seems so vague and visionary as that of making, by any combination of circumstances, an exception to the common lot, or of reviving a dead nationality. What is true of the individual is true of the mass of individuals; and what is true of the body of a man is no less true of his mind, and consequently of his language, the completest incarnation of his mind. Alas, the noble

A strongly graven line bounded them from the Bagbago on every side; they were as completely one people unprofitable people. Our wise old poet, Lordthrough a common patriotic pride and a highly | Brooke, saysdeveloped civilization, as the Jews were by an elaborate scheme of social distinctions and the intensity of religious pride and scorn. Hence it was quite natural that they should all agree in using one and the same form for the expression of those general sentiments which constitute the groundwork of intercourse. And what a word of greeting was it that they selected-or rather, that grew up among them like a tree-Xugs rejoice, be glad! What a people that must have been! Yes, from the cradle to the grave, in the agora or in the vineyard, in the torch-lighted thalamus or on the battle-field, every moment of the Greek's existence was filled with joy, with joy and grace-zugis. Think of him who

tongue

is dead :

The learned Greek, rich in fit epithets, Blessed in the lovely narriage of sweet words. The salute of the primitive Romans, like their social character, their manners, their institutions, was founded upon the idea of bodily strength, vigor, aptitude for war with them virtue (virtus, manhood) was synonymous with being frigoris et famei patiens"-their ideal man was

66

Sternitur, et dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos; of the Spartan; who "smiles in dying;" remember the luxury of beauty which pervades and saturates every image, every word of their poets, whose very storms are set to music, like some Patriæ idoneus, utilis agris, tempest-chorus of Handel or Beethoven; with Utilis et bellorum et pacis rebus agendis. the oldest of whom the crooked beak of the ca- "Salve," "vale"-be healthy, be strong! Surereering ship cuts musically through the billows-ly this is as perfect a portrait as zuigs, as Shabillows so deeply amethyst, and set off with such lúm. What a people that must have been, where dazzling foam, that we seem to be sailing in fairy- virtue signified manliness, and valor (literally land :

:

Εν δ' ἄνεμος πρῆσε μέσον ίστιον, ἀμφὶ δὲ κύμα
Στειρη πορφύρεον μεγάλ' ἔαχε, της Ζουσης.
We are not sure whether this single word zatge
be not a better key to the people than all the sage

strength) at the same time value and courage; a man's whole value being in the measure of his valor. These are a pair of convertible terms, whose existence forms the best commentary on Was not the poet the elder history of Rome.

right when he cried out, in that noble rapture, and this line of the poet gives us a perfect anticTu regere imperio populos, Romane, caveto: ipation of the famous dictum of Madame Du DefParcere subjectis et debellare superbos? fand, who asserted that all happiness and misery, For true valor, virtue, manliness, consists quite as all virtue and vice, depend simply upon the state much in sparing the overthrown as in warring- of our digestion. This, indeed, is more profound down the proud. A people with such words fa- than it seems; and the connexion between "pulmiliarly in their mouths could not help being chrè concoquere" and "nihil timere," is so close, dominant. What a tone of frank gravity, of delicate and mysterious, that the only aim of half rough military bluntness, there is in all their old- the metaphysical and political treatises that have er language! One man meets another, by whose ever been published is to trace the bond which side he may have stood when the savage-eyed, unites them. The French theorem just quoted shaggy-haired Gaul was hurled back in the full fury was promulgated at a time when the whole surof his shrieking onset from the steady line of the face of society, nay, the very foundations of right Legion, and he says to his-not friend or "brud- and wrong, were heaving and cracking; and it er," but-fellow-citizen, "be healthy," "be was received with some alarm by the few. On strong." But, observe, as they declined from the the whole, it was a merry sort of a time-pleas"barbata simplicitas," how their salutations grew ant but wrong; and was admirably formulized by more and more ingenious :Madame Du Barri (Madame's own existence being nothing else but an intense individualization of the epoch) in her "après nous le déluge!"-a mot to the full as picturesque as the equally renowned exclamation of Tiberius:

Occurrit quidam, notus mihi nomine tantùm, Arreptâque manu: Quid agis, dulcissime rerum?— Suaviter, ut nunc est, inquam, et cupio omnia quæ vis. This dulcissime rerum, something like the "my dear creatures " and "childs" of Congreve's and Έμου θανόντος γαια μιχθήτω τυρι ! Farquhar's fops, is a shrewd argument of degen- After the final extinction of constitutional liberty eracy: a Roman of the days of Camillus, who and order in Rome, when slavery and conquest should have used a phrase of such effeminate turn, went hand in hand, and marched with such coloswould have been pulled up before the Censor and sal strides over the prostrate world, there was swinged for corrupting the morals of the Quirites. We too hear occasionally, "Oh you sweet, dear little thing!" but it is said only to a baby, and it is but young ladies of sixteen who say it. On the other hand, the Quid agis? = what dost thou? -is evidently a good deal older than the Dulcissime rerum, and characteristic of the true manners -direct straight-forwardness and indomitable activity. "Pretty well, as times go," answers poor Horace, "and I am your most obedient;" dying to get rid of the unmerciful toga-holder. Cupio omnia quæ vis is far from being a badly devised phrase for the purpose of showing a man politely to the door; but it bears strong marks (as indeed does the very idea of showing a man to the door at all, nay, even the abstract notion and entelechy of a bore) of being the product of an advanced civilization.

reigning throughout society precisely the same selfish levity, the same desperate laissez aller, the same want of earnest belief, and neglect of everything but momentary pleasure and profit, as characterized the state of Europe, but especially France, just before the tremendous eruption of the long-confined volcano. The locomotive was spinning along, sure to go off the rails at last, and all they had to do was to keep the wheels well greased in the mean time. The greatest blessing of life was then "a good stomach and a bad heart." The Romans, it may be remarked, had another form of salutation, used the first thing in the morning and the last at night-the last too at a funeral, as in those lovely lines of Catullus to his brother's

memory:

Nunc et in æternum, Frater, ave atque vale!—

being the sacramental words used when the corpse was burning on the pile, and the mourners circled around it thrice in sad procession crying out the final adieu. What can be the original meaning of the word? It seems we must wait for that until Etruria finds a Rawlinson; but if we knew its pedigree who doubts that we should find it as characteristic as salve or vale?

The Romans, in the plump days of Horace, had grown to be a singularly idle, quidnunc, gaping, lounging tribe; but they continued to attach an inordinate value to health, inasmuch as a fit of illness kept them at home amid the gloom and discomfort of their miserable lodgings, and deprived them of the darling pleasure of lazzaroning away their mornings at the audiences of their patron, at the bath, or in the fish-market. Thus the very effeminacy of their present life contributed to keep up the old salve, vale, and other corporeal good wishes, which had been invented as an expression of military courage, and of a read-researches which the full discussion of such a subiness to plough or fight with equal energy for the good of Rome, to devote oneself with Decius to the Infernal Gods, or sup on "turnips roasted in

a Sabine farm :"

Bene nam valetis omnes,
Pulchrè concoquilis, nihil timelis:

In the languages derived from the Latin, or rather from the corrupted Latin called Romanz, we can see the same delicacy of shading; but if we were able to make all the collections and

ject requires, we should be obliged to write, not an article, but an Encyclopædia. We must content ourselves with a few indications. The Genoese in the middle ages used to say Sanità e guadagno = Health and gain; a phrase combining the two elements of their character in such perfection