conviction that it depends, under heaven, upon men now alive, whether in a century, or even less, the Church Catholic in the Principality shall exist as a living teacher, or whether politicians shall be wrangling over the carcase of her revenues. How sad

the latter result would be to every Christian mind, how full of danger and contagion to the Church in England, and how fatal to the social welfare of the Principality itself-how Wales might, like Ireland, dash itself in fretting against the rock on which whoever stumbles is broken-we need not explain at large. For the sake of that very interesting country and the fragments of a noble race which still retain it as their inheritance, we would deprecate alike any negligence, and any bitterness, which might precipitate such an evil.

ART. III.-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. 2nd Edition. 1850.

2. The Royal Phraseological English-French and French-English Dictionary. By J. Ch. Tarver, French Master, Eton. 2 vols. 8vo. 1845-1850. Pp. 1670.

THE

THE motto of this useful manual of Travel-Talk is Bacon's famous saying-'He that travelleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school and not to travel.' We hope the editor means gradually to extend 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.

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 character also; and thence comes it that the best history of a people is to be found in its dictionary. Let us take a particular class of words and phrases-a very ordinary and limited one-and we are much deceived if we shall not find a

mass

mass of characteristic traits daguerreotyped, the more strikingly because involuntarily, in the commonest Forms of Salutation.

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. In 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 thrust of lance-exactly as was found among the Red Men of the great Western prairies; for it is an old observation that no purest-blooded aristocrat of the most refined court, not even Louis Quatorze in all his glory, could be more perfectly well-bred than a Huron chief. The immobility too of the region is well reflected, for these little phrases will be found nearly identical over an immense expanse and through a vast duration. They are almost all based upon a religious feeling; and convey in the form of prayer a wish that the person may enjoy 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 crystallising 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 character, embodied and eternised in the same salutation. In some Hebrew modes of greeting we also see strong traces of a gross, sensuous character: there is an under-tone that speaks of a land dropping and running over with fatness—a gurgling of luscious rivers of milk and honey, oil and butter, more than in ten German tables-d'hôte. 'No marvel,' says Carlo Buffone, that that saucy, stubborn generation were forbidden pork; for what would they have done, well pampered with fat griskins, that durst murmur at their Maker out of garlick and onions?'

Islam probably made but a small change in the habits of those tribes among which it was first introduced; and consequently we shall find little in these phrases. The same religious tone continues, modestly combined with an incipient tinge of fatalism. May your morning be good!' says the Arab; May God strengthen your morning!' Perhaps thou shalt be for'God grant thee his favours!' If God will, thou art 'If God will’—here the fatalist does not even venture to put up a prayer, but only asserts the fact. 'If God will, all the members of thy family enjoy good health.' Here we have the reclusion of women indicated in an unmistakeable manner.

tunate.'

well!'

The

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 petition. The Turks are not a people

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

and it must assuredly give no small dignity to social intercourse when the most lofty and solemn truths are thus brought into contact with the familiar speeches of common life. 'Be under the guard of God;'My prayers are for thee;' 'Forget me not in thy prayers.' Their phrases, however, seem formal and colourless when compared to the torrent of hyperbolical compliment poured forth as a matter of course by the fluent and facile Persian. The same difference may be discerned as between the Englishman and the Frenchman. The only trace of tender or poetical feeling we have noted in a tolerably copious list of Turkish complimentary greetings is the following: Thy visits are as rare as fine days-which, moreover, evidently dates from a period long prior to their descent upon the serene shores of Roumelia. 'Peace be upon thee!' says the Persian-not 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.

6

'How is the state of thine honour?' '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 deuteroscopie or second-sight of things,' that these perpetual shadows, and the rest of the supellex 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 sheep of Abel. There are even whole tribes and nations who take their names of individuals from this idea of paternity-a man not calling himself the son, but the father,

son.

father, of So-and-So. Consider, if this method were to be generally adopted, what a change would take place in the personal nomenclatures of half the world: we should have no more Morisons or Hudsons, Fitzherberts or Fitzclarences-no more O'Connells or O'Briens-MacNabs or MacGregors-the Ivanovitches and Gavriloffs and Jellachichs would be rooted out from among the orthodox Slavonic peoples; there would be no more Islandic Olafsons and Sigmundsens: nay, there would have been no Atreides, no Peleides. In the desert, men of A.D. 1850 call themselves, not the son of their father, but the father of their One class of the population among us, it must be confessed, might be far from displeased were this mode to be introduced: it would singularly gratify young couples in the flush and glory of 'their first.' But Thou hast exalted 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 burning quotidian tertian.' 'May your shadow never be less!' beside being a most picturesque expression, stereotyped in human speech-human speech, that only firm, solid, unfluctuating thing (except a Whig ministry perhaps)-is also a neat formula for the respect Orientals entertain for fat. 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 honour 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 jolter-head '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?

But

But all these phrases must have been private property before they became common; they must have happily conveyed a reality before they grew to be merely conventional forms of speech. In other words, they were invented by a man of genius in every case, and bear the impress of genius-i. e. of a concentration of the thoughts and sentiments of the age into a focus of vivid brilliancy. A proverb has been happily defined by a living statesman, the wit of one man, the wisdom of many.'* All the picturesque metaphor, the bold and striking condensation, the lightning-like pointedness of that exquisite form of language which we call Slang, has no other origin but this: nay, all that is worthy to be called language (which sometimes makes up but a moderate part of the dictionary) has no other source or modus existendi. Look at the slang of any trade or profession, and we shall see that every word of it is literally a 'word that burns'-the indestructible vesture of a thought. The high-toby-man or cracksman-(Cracksman! what a poem in 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 nobthe head being viewed simply as the subject of knocks, fibbing, and evil-entreatment, and thus by a stretch of transcendental metaphysic abstraction reduced to its lowest terms, detached from all associations but those of fistycuffs-or, even more wondrously perhaps, a conk; the first bibliomaniac who spoke of' tall copies,' of 'foxing' and 'cropping;' this man, of whatever breed or degree, was a poet. Let no dainty objector whisper that such words are common, vulgar, familiar, and cannot be poetical. Daisies are common; the sea is common; men, women, and children are exceedingly common, at least in some parts of the world, and yet we believe they are allowed by the best judges to be not only poetical, but the very stuff and matter of all poetry. They are what the Lord Chamberlain Polonius wished his son to be,

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?

The Greek salutation seems to have been subject to few changes; but this circumstance, which may at first sight appear against us, seeing that the Greeks were so capricious a generation, so mobile, imaginative, and composed of such a number of tribes,

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