which they used as a term of endearment. Some days later, when they were again at play, and shouting Andromache, their father asked them, 'Which is Andromache?' The younger answered with an exuberance of satisfaction: 'Johnnie's calling me Andromache!' Their father replied, 'If Johnnie calls you Andromache, I'd call him Polyhymnia!' At this, Johnnie (a boy of six years old) towered up like a pillar of moral indignation, and in a tone of mingled disdain and deprecation, said: 'Augh! Nobody COULDN'T be called THAT, I'm sure!'

A boy of five years old was asked, 'Do you know where your cousin Johnnie is at school?' No! I don't know; where is he?' 'At Honiton.' 'At Hon-t-iton? Isn't that

a funny place; I call it?'

Here it will be observed the place is judged of by the sound of its name; there is no distinction between the name and the thing.

In the minds of children and savages the word and the thing are absolutely identified. If they are able to grasp the name, they seem to have a satisfaction analogous to that which the mature mind tastes in the fullest description or analysis.

I was staying in the house of a friend, where the youngest child was a brave, bold, golden-locked boy, under three years old. As I was dressing in the morning he came into my room, and we had a long and varied conversation. One of the topics was broached and disposed of somewhat in the following manner :- Are Mabel and Trixey coming to-day?' he asked. 'I'm sure I don't know. Who are Mabel and Trixey?' Thereat he took up a strong and confident attitude, and with a tone which at once justified himself and refuted me, he said: 'They ARE Mabel and Trixey; that's their NAMES!'-the last clause a perfect bar

of remonstrative music; as much as to say, 'You surely are satisfied with that!'

This is very delightful in a child, as all truly childish things are. But in more advanced stages of human life, when childishness is formulated into a sort of wisdom of the ancients, then it gradually assumes a less agreeable aspect. We no longer admire this identification of the word with the thing, when an eastern doctor or charmer writes a good word on a slip of paper and makes of it a pill for his patient. Here the childish conception of speech has stagnated into a fetichism which is at the root of incantations and verbal charms.

The following most significant record of native talk in the Aru Islands is from The Malay Archipelago, by Alfred Russell Wallace (1869):

Two or three of them got round me, and begged me for the twentieth time to tell them the name of my country. Then, as they could not pronounce it satisfactorily, they insisted that I was deceiving them, and that it was a name of my own invention. One funny old man, who bore a ludicrous resemblance to a friend of mine at home, was almost indignant. "Unglung!" said he, "who ever heard of such a name?—anglang-angerlang-that can't be the name of your country; you are playing with us.' Then he tried to give a convincing illustration. My country is Wanumbai anybody can say Wanumbai. I'm an orang-Wanumbai; but, N-glung! who ever heard of such a name? Do tell us the real name of your country, and then when you are gone we shall know how to talk about you." To this luminous argument and remonstrance I could oppose nothing but assertion, and the whole party remained firmly convinced that I was for some reason or other deceiving them.'--ch. xxxi.

This is a very significant narrative, and I have authority from Mr. Wallace to add that it is a literal and faithful record. He says it was written down on the spot the day after it occurred, and is strictly accurate as far as I could reproduce the words and tone of it in English '.'

1 Communicated to me through the Rev. George Buckle, to whom also I owe many other acknowledgments.

The notion that by the possession of the name of the country they would have the wherewithal to talk of their visitor after his departure, is an excellent illustration of the germination of the Myth as expounded by Professor Max Müller in the Oxford Essays of 1856.

All these are instances of the inability of man, in the earlier stages of his career, to assume the mastery over language. His mind is enthralled by it, and is led away after all its suggestions.

We are told by Professor Jowett that the Greek philosopher, 'the contemporary of Plato and Socrates, was incapable of resisting the power of any analogy which occurred to him

and he was helpless against the influence of any word which had an equivocal or double sense 1.'

It may be imagined that we, in our advanced condition of modern civilisation, are now completely masters over language, but an investigation of the subject might produce an unexpected verdict. Philology is one of the most instrumental of studies for investing man with the full prerogative over his speech, for its highest office is to enable him to comprehend the relation of his words to the action of his mind, and thus to render the mind superior to verbal illusions.

Those who think that the sounds of nature first suggested language to man, hold a theory of language which may be compared to that theory of music by which music is derived from the cataract in the mountains, the wind in the trees, or the sound of the ocean on the shore. It appears to me that there is nothing in inward or outward experience

1 The Dialogues of Plato, vol. ii. p. 505,

to justify such a theory. Music and language alike must have come from within, from the greatest depths of our

nature.

Man's conscious work upon language in fitting it to express his mind, is the least part of the matter. The greater part is worked out unconsciously. And long eras pass after the perfecting of its processes, before intellectual man awakes to perceive what he himself has done. This only proves from what a depth within his own nature this power of speech is evolved; only proves what a mystery man is to himself: and it casts a doubt over the prospect of our ever tracing a scientific path up to those springs which fancy calls the Origin of Language.

For me, the poet speaks most appropriately on this theme, because he speaks most vaguely, most wonderingly and most inquiringly :—

'Ye wandering Utterances, has earth no scheme,

No scale of moral music, to unite

Powers that survive but in the faintest dream
Of memory?-O that ye might stoop to bear
Chains, such precious chains of sight

As laboured minstrelsies through ages wear!
O for a balance fit the truth to tell
Of the Unsubstantial, pondered well!'

To make a path from the visible, ponderable, and substantial, to that which is invisible, imponderable, and spiritual, with no other material than vocal sound to erect a bridge from matter to mind,-tempering it in the finest filtered harmonies that can be appreciated by the sentient, emotional, and intellectual nature of man;-this seems to be the task and function of human speech.

Of its origin we can only say, it is of the same root with that poetic faculty whereby man makes nature echo his sentiments; it is correlated to the invention of music, whereby

dead things are made to discourse of human emotions; it is a peculiar property of that nature whose other chief and proper attributes are the power of Love, and the capacity for the knowledge of GOD.