helping him to a notion of 'good' and 'bad' apart from his nurse's definition; but in process of time he finds himself in possession of a large vocabulary, the offspring of the world's thought, wisdom, and genius, which, as he avails himself of it, may, either guide him to the comprehension of the deepest, purest truths;-the very words themselves, if duly weighed, so many trains of thought worked ready to his hands, facilitating study and clearing the mind for still further attainments :— or, if adopted without reflection, simply lead him astray into regions beyond his powers: the habit which he thus acquires of misapplying the most delicate vehicles of thought with all their infinite shades of meaning only plunging him into deeper confusion of ideas, while at the same time it beguiles him into vanity, rash assertion, and the whole train of evils which follow upon the use of high-sounding words to which the mind cannot give substance. Avoiding this error, and still shrinking from the labour of thought, he may indeed confine himself all his days, though not by a conscious exercise of choice, to the circumscribed range of terms and symbols which satisfied his childhood, or which are forced upon him by his calling in life; but this paucity of words betrays the absence or total neglect of the higher powers of the intellect, which cannot grow without words to embody them. The man without a clear comprehension of the words he uses, and a tolerably full vocabulary, is in no proper sense educated or formed. He can neither think deeply, nor express himself forcibly, nor converse accurately, nor appeal effectually to the reason of others, nor touch their feelings. For all this, correct and expressive language is absolutely necessary: even religion must be invested with true and powerful words to be duly apprehended; while all acknowledge its influence in enlarging, refining, and elevating the language of those who have had no other teacher, so that, when roused by the occasion, the ignorant can be eloquent, and having learned sacred truths through divine words, can apply those words with convincing force and propriety.

A careful study of words, then, is one of the main helps that education can give to the intellect, and no intellect, however clear, can work without this training. For though a good understanding, unaided by formal instruction, can arrive at an accurate comprehension of that branch of language which comes within nearest reach and most familiar practice, and can use it with powerful effect, no penetration can of itself give clear insight into terms beyond this range; therefore, the deepest thinkers are always most anxious to impress upon others—not the ignorant and thoughtless only, but their most enlightened readers -the necessity of study and agreement upon the terms and

words to be used in the subject on which they are entering. Keenly discriminating themselves-feeling the force of every slight deviation of meaning-none are so alive to the danger others run of separating words from the ideas connected with them, and of the magnitude of the evils which may result from any confusion on this point. Although,' says Bacon, 'we think we govern our words, yet certain it is that words, as a Tartar's bow, do shoot back upon the understanding of the wisest, and mightily entangle and pervert the judgment; so as it is almost necessary in all controversies and disputations to imitate the 'wisdom of the mathematicians in setting down in the very 'beginning the definitions of the words and terms, that others ' may know how we accept and understand them, and whether 'they concur with us or no. For it cometh to pass for want of 'this, that we are sure to end there where we ought to have 'begun, which is in questions and differences about words.' In another place, drawing from the reflection of the inability of men to comprehend accurately, and in the same sense, many of the words they use,-originated, as these words were, by the higher class of intellects for subtle and delicate uses above the discrimination of the vulgar,—the following charitable and consolatory inference: A man that is of judgment and understanding shall 'sometimes hear ignorant men differ, and know well within ' himself that those who so differ mean the same thing, and yet 'they themselves would never agree; and yet if it come so to 6 pass in that distance of judgment which is between man and man, shall not we think that God above, that knows the hearts, 'doth not discern that frail men in some of their contradictions 'intend the same thing, and accepted both ?'

South, after a masterly definition of what words ought to be, falls into an opposite strain from the dispassionate philosopher, and one more congenial to his caustic humour, showing the mischief which unavoidably follows from the misapplication or confusion of them. The generality of mankind is wholly and ' absolutely governed by words and names, without, nay, for the 'most part, even against the knowledge men have of things. 'The multitude, or common rout, like a drove of sheep or an 'herd of oxen, may be managed by any noise or cry which their 'drivers shall accustom them to. . . . As for the meaning of the 'word itself, that may shift for itself; and as for the sense and 'reason of it, that has little or nothing to do here; only let it 'sound full and round, and chime right to the humour which is at present agog (just as a big long rattling name is said 'to command even adoration from a Spaniard), and no doubt, 'with this powerful senseless engine the rabble-driver shall be ' able to carry all before him, or to draw all after him, as he

'pleases; for a plausible insignificant word in the mouth of an expert demagogue is a dangerous and dreadful weapon.'

To the same purport, but in graver language, Mr. Trench quotes Hooker as saying, 'The mixture of those things by speech which by nature are divided is the mother of all error.' Locke has devoted two chapters to the abuse of words, and the evil of using them without distinct ideas, or of applying them sometimes to signify one idea and sometimes another. A defi'nition,' he says, is the only way whereby the precise mean'ing of moral words can be known.' And the study which is here demanded for the right comprehension of questions in morals and philosophy is by masters of style held as essential to a proper enjoyment of works of fancy and imagination. Addison holds that a man cannot enter into a good metaphoric description without previous accurate knowledge of language; For, to have a true relish and form a right judgment of a description, a man should be born with a good imagination, ' and must have well weighed the force and energy that lie in 'the several words of a language, so as to be able to distinguish I which are most expressive and significant to their proper ideas, ' and what additional strength and beauty they are capable of receiving from conjunction with others. The fancy must be 'warm to retain the print of those images it hath received from outward objects, and the judgment discerning to know what expressions are most proper to clothe and adorn them to the 'best advantage. A man who is deficient in either of these respects, though he may receive the general notion of a descripItion, can never see distinctly all its particular beauties; as a person with a weak sight may have the confused prospect of a palace that lies before him without entering into its several parts, or discerning the variety of its colours in their full glory ' and perfection.'

It is for want of this careful self-cultivation that the reading of men in general does them so little good-affects them so little one way or another. It is because they see things and receive ideas in the dim misty way here described; because they have no powers of discrimination to exercise, no nice judgment to be satisfied, no taste by which to measure the efforts of others, and are mainly influenced in the absence of these more healthful impulses by a vague curiosity and a desire to be amused; content to be startled, diverted, horrified, by means which they do not analyse, and to the nature of which they are indifferent. Mr. Trench has done good service to literature as well as to morals, by his very interesting little volume bearing on this subject, and addressed ultimately, through his original hearers, to the class in whom want of thought and choice in their reading

is most excusable, as being a subject on which too little has hitherto been taught them, and with whom the pressure of other pursuits tells against hard reading of any kind. The present volume on 'The Study of Words,' consists of six lectures, first read by Mr. Trench to the pupils of the Winchester training-school, and still bearing traces of oral delivery, in some inaccuracies of style, but composed on so simple and popular a plan, as certainly to engage and sustain the attention of those readers not yet exercised in severer studies, for whom he designs them; while the most critical and experienced will find matter worthy of an attentive perusal. A popular work on this subject is a want supplied; and it was because Mr. Trench felt this want, that he has given his lectures a wider publicity, as he explains in his preface:

'Had I known any book entering with any fulness, and in a popular manner, into the subject matter of these pages, and making it its exclusive theme, I might still have delivered these lectures, but should scarcely have sought for them a wider audience than their first, gladly leaving the matter in their hands, whose studies in languages had been fuller and riper than my own. But abundant and ready to hand as are the materials for such a book, I did not; while yet it seems to me that the subject is one to which it is beyond measure desirable that their attention who are teaching, or shall have hereafter to teach others, should be directed; so that they shall learn to regard language as one of the chiefest organs of their own education and that of others. For I am persuaded that I have used no exaggeration in saying, that in many a young man "his first discovery that words are living powers, has been like the dropping of scales from his eyes, like the acquiring of another sense, or his introduction into a new world;"-while yet all this may be indefinitely deferred, may, indeed, never find place at all, unless there is some one at hand to help him and to hasten the process; and he who so does will ever after be esteemed by him as one of his very foremost benefactors.'-Preface, p. iv.

It is certainly a great step gained, when the mind does think over the words it meets with or which it uses; and that truly deserves the term education which sets the thoughts naturally and without effort into this current. Making the mind not merely a recipient of facts, but competent to weigh and judge, apt at subtle distinctions, able to penetrate under the surface into the full meaning of what is presented to it. And Mr. Trench is right, that even to the very young this study might be made interesting-as there is no better test of a child's intellectual progress than its accurate use of the words at its command. And,' as he says to the future schoolmasters whom he is addressing,

as you will not find, for so I venture to promise, that this study of words will be a dull one when you undertake it yourselves, as little need you fear that it will prove dull and unattractive when you seek to make your own gains herein the gains also of those who may be here after committed to your charge. Only try your pupils, and mark the kindling of

the eye, the lighting up of the countenance, the revival of the flagging attention, with which the humblest lecture upon words, and on the words especially which they are daily using, which are familiar to them in their play, or at their church, will be welcomed by them. There is a sense of reality about children, which makes them rejoice to discover that there is also a reality about words, that they are not merely arbitrary signs, but living powers; that, to reverse the words of one of England's "false prophets," they may be the fool's counters, but are the wise man's money ; not like the sands of the sea, innumerable disconnected atoms, but growing out of roots, clustering in families, connecting and intertwining themselves with all that men have been doing and thinking and feeling, from the beginning of the world till now.'-P. 24.

This fact, perfectly understood, even before the mind can go any way towards proving it, is knowledge-and that best kind of knowledge which leads to thought and a respectful sense of other men's labours. The boy learns that there is something to be known even about the simplest and most familiar words, which all men do not know; and that a word could not be changed at random for one possessed of no history or derivation, without so far degrading the language and the speaker who uses it; of which the records of slang afford abundant evidence. A thought which may well lighten the task of acquiring a foreign tongue, assisting him, by some sense of the utility of his labours, through the many toilsome hours the acquisition of a dead language may cost him; which he is too often encouraged to consider waste of time, and the acquisition of barren words as opposed to living knowledge, not only by his own superficial questionings but by other superficial thinkers, who have neither his youth nor his weariness of his task as an excuse for the shallowness of the argument. It is something to realize that be cannot fully understand the meaning of his own tongue and the force of its terms without this labour, and that if all abandoned it, its history would fall into oblivion. Bearing on this subject, Mr. Trench has some good illustrations.

'But seek, I would further urge you, to attain a consciousness of the multitude of words which there are, that, now used only in a figurative sense, did yet originally rest on some fact of the outward world, vividly presenting itself to the imagination; a fact which the world has incorporated for ever, having become, as all words originally were, the indestructible vest ure of thought. If I may judge from my own experience, I think there are few intelligent boys in your schools, who would not feel that they had gotten something, when you had shown them that to "insult" means properly to leap as on the prostrate body of a foe; "to affront," to strike him on the face; that to succour" means to run and place oneself under one that is falling, and thus support and sustain him; to "relent," (connected with "lentus," not "lenis,") to slacken the swiftness of one's pursuit; "to reprehend," to lay hold of one with the intention of forcibly pulling him back from the way of his error; that to be "examined" means to be weighed. They would be pleased to learn that a man is called "supercilious" because haughtiness with contempt of others expresses

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