The following are interesting illustrations of the truth of this melancholy fact: Moffat, in his Missionary Labours and Scenes in South Africa, gives us a very remarkable example of the disappearing of one of the most significant words from the language of a tribe sinking ever deeper in savagery; and with the disappearing of the word, of course, the disappearing as well of the great spiritual fact and truth whereof that word was at once the vehicle and guardian. The Bechuanas, a Caffre tribe, employed formerly the word "Morimo," to designate "Him that is above," or, "Him that is in heaven," and attached to the word the notion of a supreme Divine Being. This word, with the spiritual idea corresponding to it, Moffat found to have vanished from the language of the present generation, although here and there he could meet with an old man, scarcely one or two in a thousand, who remembered in his youth to have heard speak of "Morimo;" and this word, once so deeply significant, only survived now in the spells and charms of the so-called rain-makers and sorcerers, who misused it to designate a fabulous ghost, of whom they told the absurdest and most contradictory things. And as there is no such witness to the degradation of the savage as the brutal poverty of his language, so is there nothing that so effectually tends to keep him in the depths to which he has fallen. You cannot impart to any man more than the words which he understands either now contain, or can be made intelligibly to him, to contain. Language is as truly on one side the limit and restraint of thought, as on the other side that which feeds and unfolds it. Thus it is the everrepeated complaint of the Missionary, that the very terms are wholly, or nearly wholly, wanting in the dialect of the savage, whereby to impart to him heavenly truths, or indeed, even the nobler emotions of the human heart. Dobrizhoffer, the Jesuit Missionary, in his curious History of the Abipones, tells us that neither they nor the Guarinies, two of the principal native tribes of Brazil, possessed any word in the least corresponding to our “thanks.” But what wonder, if the feeling of gratitude was entirely absent from their hearts, that they should not have possessed the corre sponding word in their vocabularies? Nay, how should they have had it there? And that this is the true explanation is plain, from a fact which the same writer records, that although inveterate askers, they never showed the slightest sense of obligation or of gratitude, when they obtained what they sought; never saying more than, "This will be useful to me," or, "This is what I wanted."-P. 18. Another cause for the decay of this language is given by Dobrizhoffer, not bearing on our author's argument, but curious in itself, and illustrative of the way in which uncivilized dialects may change and lose themselves; perplexing and confounding all inquiry into their source. These Abipones, and other kindred tribes speaking originally the same language, had the custom of abolishing the name of every one who died. Thus, as every one took his name from some visible object, a new name for this object must necessarily be substituted for the old one. These new titles being, it may be supposed, arbitrary, and not spreading beyond the use or knowledge of the tribe itself, it is easy to understand how soon languages originally alike, must lose all other resemblance but that of construction. Whether these savages had exhausted all the good names in their his torian's time, we know not, but they had certainly begun with the bad ones; one of their leading heroes being entitled Chief, or Lord Liar. Nomine suo dignissimus, as Dobrizhoffer says. Even in our own country, in the lower classes, those who, from neglect, intemperance, and different forms of vice, are sunk lowest in the scale, this same decay of language may be observed. We believe that a searching inquiry into the actual vocabulary of many of our fellow-citizens would astonish even those prepared to be surprised by its miserable scantiness and poverty, and its lack of all power to express abstract or spiritual ideas. The desolation never can be ascertained in its real extent. Children drawn from the courts and alleys of crowded, neglected neighbourhoods to be taught and instructed, betray something of the evil. Their total ignorance of all words of dignity or elevation is a serious obstacle to their receiving ideas of that character. No one can tell how little the simplest truth can work its way into a mind weighed down by a low and degraded phraseology. For as it is the tendency of language, as it enlarges and refines itself, to give secondary meanings to words, to raise them from the literal to the figurative, and to apply to the actions and operations of the mind terms originally applied to bodily actions and visible objects, till the figurative meaning supersedes the literal in our minds, and of words whose flight leads us up to heaven, we do not remember that their nest was on the ground,-so in the degradation of language, an opposite order prevails. It resorts again to literal meanings and takes visible objects for its sole mode of expressing even spiritual things. Instead of embracing the idea, the vulgar are engrossed with the physical objects connected with it, they cannot get beyond what they see, and hear, and touch : having yielded to the tyranny of the senses, they are now their prey, and are confined within their range. Examples must be inadequate, and what is worse, they must be vulgar.—But as a faint illustration of our meaning: The teacher of a Sunday school has occasion to administer a reproof. He is grave and affectionate, he seeks to bring mind to bear on mind, to wake the conscience, to appeal to the feelings, to lift the intellect into a higher region of thought. The rebuke is not ill taken, not sullenly or in bad temper, but the culprit on reporting the occurrence, through no intentional disrespect, simply because he knows no other form of expression, says he has had a 'jawing,' and the reprover hears it whispered round that 'he's been "jawing " Dick Thompson;' this being the received word for clamorous upbraidings in scenes where, perhaps, wholesome reproof is little heard; and descriptive of the distortions of passion on the countenance, not of any mental operation: for in all cases where In body and spirit mingle, the tendency of the vulgar is to confine themselves to the consideration of the body. Thus death is always alluded to by them as it concerns the body, with eager appreciation of every circumstance bearing on this body's decay and dissolution. A lady in a mouring dress knocks at the door of a woman of this class where she has often visited. Mourning, of course, is associated with the idea of death. With the thoughtful of every degree, this is a complex idea. They think of loss, of the grief of the survivor, of a spirit departing to a new world, till the vast range of sympathies opened out for the dead and the living throw into the background the thought of dissolution and the grave. Not so with the observer here. her the sight of a black gown raises no images but those of mortality-a coffin, a mound of loose earth, the sexton with his mattock standing by an open grave. No feelings are awakened of tenderness, compassion, or mystery; only curiosity to know who can be the subject of these terrors, suggesting at once the startling question put to her visitor without preface or delay, 'Have you buried one of your children?' Even in the religion of the vulgar, where some ideas have been received of a future life, some knowledge of Christian truths, still the body represents the soul, and as their minds cannot or will not follow the soul's workings apart from it, they confound the aspirations of the heart with their outward manifestation. Ejaculations, which should be regarded simply as natural expressions of strong inward feeling, become the very thing to be desired for itself, and a person's salvation is considered secured, if, in the article of death, he has hallooed,' or, as it is familiarized, hollared a deal.' There is no awe in the vulgar mind,-we use this term 'vulgarity' to describe a state of mind, not a condition of life, though of course, those scenes where it can find freeest development are our present concern, and furnish our instances -no care to distinguish between the noble and the base, the sublime and the familiar; everything is reduced to the lowest standard; as where a hired nurse could find no more appropriate or elevating figure to express the tranquil departure of an old woman under her charge, though speaking gravely, and with an intention to convey a correct idea, than that 'she died as easy as an old shoe.' Yet, dull as the mind must be and dead to impressions, to resort to such a comparison, she could not have said this but from utter want of appropriate words and an ignorance that there were such. But we have dwelt long enough on a point which cannot be proved without some breach of rule and propriety. Such of our readers as have any experience of the dialect of the lowest classes, could readily add to our list of examples from a vocabulary which has never yet found its way into dictionaries or any respectable publication; a vocabulary rich enough in its own line, but from which every term expressive of dignity or elevation is excluded. It is time to draw our remarks to an end, though many interesting and suggestive portions of these lectures yet remain untouched. Their popular character is sustained throughout. The thoughtful reader, whatever his previous ignorance, is never carried beyond his depth, while the illustrations are so well chosen that he will, perhaps, be surprised to find himself warmly interesting in a subject which he had previously set down as dull and repulsive. It is, however, to be regretted that the style and composition,-we presume from carelessness,-are too often suited neither to the subject of the book nor its readers. The subject of words cannot be far separated from their right placing; Mr. Trench calls them jewels; we wish he had, in many cases, been more careful about their setting. It is a point in which clearness of style is more than commonly essential, for the reader is, as a first step, put into a critical frame of temper, and being called upon to criticise words, the next step is to criticise wording. Being led to think of our old masters of language, we cannot but sometimes institute comparisons between their classical accuracy, their clear order, the 'sweet tune' of their sentences even in prose, their majestic march, with the shambling gait, the mere getting along of some moderns. Our progress through some of the sentences in this little work reminds us more of a walk through a ploughed field than of a march of any kind or to any tune: its ups and downs being in very fair analogy with the alternations of assertion, and qualifying parentheses, which seems to form the system of their composition. The excuse no doubt is, that the lectures were at first orally delivered, and that a good reader can make anything he pleases of his own style; but we still cannot comprehend how Mr. Trench, who has shown in his verse a power of charming the ear as well as the understanding, could suffer such sentences as the following to pass from his pen to the press. As where he quotes The Spectator's' complaint of the introduction of new slang words, and then says: 'In regard of "mob," abbreviated as we see from "mobile," the multitude swayed hither and thither by each gust of passion or caprice, this. which that writer plainly hardly expected, while he confessed it possible, has actually taken place.'—P. 125. Again, in accounting for the gradual decay of language amongst savages, we have the following sentence, which we suspect would defy the parsing powers of the most practised of his auditors :: When wholly letting go the truth, when long and greatly sinning against light and conscience, a people has thus gone the downward way, has been scattered off by some violent revolution from that portion of the world which is the seat of advance and progress, and driven to its remote isles and further corners, then, as one nobler thought, one spiritual idea after another has perished from it, the words also that expressed these have perished too.'-P. 17. It may seem fastidious or querulous to be thus critical in the order of sentences, with whose matter we so fully agree; but accuracy of style is so essential to the life of books, and even to their present utility, that we cannot see a good book suffer from an awkward and careless style without a protest. We will conclude with the following happy example of the rich fulness of means which lies in single words, which it is one of Mr. Trench's points to prove :— 'Let me illustrate that which I have been here saying somewhat more at length by the word "tribulation." We all know in a general way that this word, which occurs not seldom in Scripture and in the Liturgy, means affliction, sorrow, anguish; but it is quite worth our while to know how it means this, and to question the word a little closer. It is derived from the Latin "tribulum," which was the threshing instrument or roller, whereby the Roman husbandmen separated the corn from the husks; and "tribulatio in its primary significance was the act of this separation. "But some Latin writer of the Christian Church appropriated the word and image for the setting forth of a higher truth; and sorrow, distress and adversity being the appointed means for the separating in men of whatever in them was light, trivial, and poor, from the solid and the true, their chaff from their wheat, therefore he called these sorrows and griefs 'tribulations,' threshings, that is, of the inner spiritual man, without which there could be no fitting him for the heavenly garner." 'Now in proof of my assertion that a single word is often a concentrated poem, a little grain of gold, capable of being beaten out into a broad extent of gold-leaf, I will quote in reference to this very word "tribulation," a graceful composition by George Wither, an early English poet, which you will at once perceive is all wrapped up in this word, being from first to last only the expanding of the image and thought which this word has implicitly given : "Till from the straw, the flail the corn doth beat, And then we shall; and that is my desire."'-P. 7. |