THE SCHOOLMASTER AT THE EXHIBITION.

(Continued from page 196).

BEFORE passing on to the consideration of other features of our subject, we are tempted to make one more observation on excellence in taste, believing that it is important for the youthful mind to be habituated to a contemplation of the beautiful in art, and to a discrimination of what really merits the epithet. The conceptions of art should be associated with the dictates of utility or of nature. Caprice will not evolve the manifestations of beauty. There is a natural fitness in the character of effective ornament; and this natural fitness must be kept in view as a standard to which the productions of art should indicate a constant reference,—as a mirror in which imagination should always seek the reflexion of her designs. In architecture, for example, we should see no portion of an edifice out of keeping with the main design,-not a pillar or a buttress introduced merely for the addition of ornament, but in a position warranted by some apparent necessity of support. In poetry, too, and in music, we should observe how excellence has been attained and reputation won through conformity to nature. The principal personage in Addison's tragedy of Cato does no more than declaim the words of Addison; the hero in Shakespeare's tragedy of Hamlet utters the natural sentiments of the Prince of Denmark. The one dramatist puts language in the mouth of a performer, who is made artificially to describe himself; the other speaks as if he not merely sympathised, but was identical with a man who is prompted by the feelings of his heart and the circumstances of his situation. Conformity to nature has given to all our great poets their resistless power. And, in like manner, by the compositions of the great masters in musical science we are deeply interested, because they have not merely given accurate attention to technical laws, but developed relations of sound expressive of natural series of emotions, causing us to realize effects similar to those of graphic literary description or appeal.

That principle of correct taste which we are now commending is found abundantly exemplified within the Crystal Palace. The Royal Cradle with its emblems of repose, and the Kenilworth Buffet by which the aged oak is made to record scenes connected with the locality in which it grew; these, and a thousand other productions of artistic skill interest the imagination by their suggestiveness of appropriate sentiment, and by exciting the sympathy so necessary to a lively appreciation of the works of art. Examples are, however, here and there met with, in which meretricious ornament gives evidence that the artist was prompted by a fancy regardless of nature's models; and, in such cases, the want of significance or of harmony will occasion disregard or provoke disapproval. Let it be considered, moreover, that the cultivation of respect for natural propriety in the material productions of taste is closely connected with a generally useful discipline both of mind and heart; and that the disposition to appreciate true artistic beauty will be found to facilitate the cultivation of a tendency towards excellence of a nobler kind,-spiritual and moral.

VOL. IX.-NO. VII.

G

But the great lesson to be learned from the Exhibition of Industry is prominently declared in its name. The Crystal Palace should be regarded as a monument designed to honour the Divine appointment of industry. We know that not even in paradise was human industry dispensed with, and that even after creative power had manifested how absolutely unnecessary was the intervention of human instrumentality to preserve or improve the stores of nature, there was, nevertheless, assigned to man the occupation of a labourer, and the continuance of beauty and utility was made dependent on his watchful and persevering care. We now, indeed, find the appointment of industry considerably altered in its conditions, Labour is now associated with some degree of painfulness, while the necessity of it is more urgent than it was originally, And were it not that our food and clothing must be provided by our toil, a vast amount of bodily exercise in which the human race are daily occupied would cease.

Labour is not delighted in or willingly endured. For a very long period in the earlier history of the world, the doom of toil was shunned by all who could get rid of it, and transferred to a class who were considered as thereby the most degraded. It was indeed the exceptional practice of some eastern nations, that children even of high birth should be taught some species of handicraft; but this was a prudential custom, intended to provide that, in case of inherited riches taking to themselves wings and fleeing away, there might remain an inalienable source from which a livelihood could be procured. Generally, a large portion of our world's history exhibits mankind disdaining labour, and endeavouring to escape from it. And though we are addressed by ordinations of our Creator, imposing on us the duty of working for our support; though, likewise, it has been everywhere abundantly proved that industry is a means of great moral benefit; the disposition to indolence is still extensively prevalent, and in many instances unconquerable even by the severest evidences of its importance or necessity. But what a powerful enforcement does the Palace of Industry contribute to those lessons of industry which the schoolmaster should specially endeavour to inculcate. From the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, have the nations of the earth sent forth testimony of their desires and their efforts to procure honour for the various branches of mechanical skill and mercantile traffic; and a temple has been erected to enshrine the offerings of industrial enterprise, a temple whose walls and roof are everywhere permeated by the light of Heaven, as if the universal Sun should have special dignity in presiding over the collected contributions of all climates and nations. Honour to industry, then, is the import of the Palace of Industry; an enthronement is here made of that which was once deemed indicative of social meanness; the source of true temporal greatness being proclaimed and exalted in the sight of all men, and a noble and persuasive encouragement given to the appreciation and maintenance and im. provement of industrious habits. Let it not be said that the main tendency of the whole is mammonizing. It may be looked at with the regards of a worldling, for like all good things it admits of the perversion of abuse; but it is calculated to promote a reverential remembrance of the Divine institution of labour, and to impress

on our minds a recognition of the fact that the institution is for human benefit, moral as well as physical. When the decree went forth "In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread," it was not so much a decree against man, as for his defence against the moral evil of which idleness is the prolific parent. Labour is a preventive and remedial severity, denying opportunity of much sinful indulgence, and disciplining the heart in the practice of contentment. And then the leisure afforded by its stated intermissions brings agreeable repose, while the leisure engrossed by habitual idleness produces nothing but discomfort. Labour continually qualifies us for the experience of pleasure. Sloth continually incapacitates us for enjoyment.

The worth of the materials fashioned by the hand of industry, and presented to our view in the Crystal Palace, is a consideration in some respects separable from that of industry itself; but it is important also. The man who for the dexterity which he had acquired in a childish performance was rewarded with a bushel of peas, was appropriately censured for an expenditure of industry on what was neither elegant nor useful. Much more should we condemn those whose skill and energy are given to the promotion of injurious or dishonourable purposes. So that, we say the consideration of the materials and products of industry, as well as industry itself, is important. And the infinite diversity of useful and proper channels in which industry may operate is a thought powerfully stimulated by a survey of the contents of the Crystal Palace. There we see what the ingenuity of man can do with the rock and with the forest, with the deep treasures of the earth, and with the heaving waters of the broad sea. There we see the means whereby he vindicates dominion over the inferior living tribes, the artifices of his preeminent faculty of reason, by which he overpowers the strongest, and outruns the swiftest, and derives advantage from the feeblest. There we see the issues at which gradual improvement has arrived in the accommodations of dress and dwelling, of sustenance and enjoyment. The Exhibition makes us listen to a thousand voices,-from the dark recesses of the ocean and of the mine, from the arid tracts of the desert and the cloud-capt summits of the mountains,-proclaiming that man has been there in the exercise of industry, and has found rich rewards of his inquiries and experiments. Nature herself is a contributor to this temple, and man is her delighted messenger. She has allowed him her fires and her vapours for the manufacture of his machines and for the transport of his commodities; and taking upon herself more and more of the toil of production, she has thereby multiplied and facilitated and improved the production.

Thus by little and little does the Creator reveal to us the wonderful uses and applications of the world's contents. Have our efforts to serve Him, for whose glory all things were created, been in any reasonable proportion to the benefits he has conferred upon us? As His goodness abounds towards us, does the honour we render to Him abound also? Shall the Palace of Industry be an accumulation of gifts destined to indicate but a small portion of the measure of earth's ingratitude to heaven? Let it be far otherwise. Let us use this world as not abusing it. Let us not only receive thankfully God's

temporal gifts, and cultivate industriously the resources of earthly improvement He has placed at our disposal, but let us gratefully appreciate His spiritual blessings, and apply our hearts above all things to the pursuits of that heavenly wisdom, whose chief results are reserved for the adorning of a more glorious than earthly temple, in which they who have been fellow-workers with God shall everlastingly enjoy the rewards of righteousness.

(To be continued.)

ON LATIN ETYMOLOGY.

No. XI.

WHEN a simple verb, as often happens, disappears from a language, and its office is performed by some secondary verb deduced from it, lexicographers in their ignorance of the previous existence of such simple verb, or else in their fear to allude to it, are apt to treat other derivatives from the simple word as descended from the secondary word which has supplanted it. One such false step usually leads to others, and accordingly to patch up an unfounded theory, violence is done to the laws of derivation. Thus it is a common practice to say that potus is the participle of potare. Zumpt, for example, even in the last edition of his Grammar, as translated by Dr. Schmidt, with his latest corrections and additions, tells us (p. 150) that "the supine of poto usually instead of potatum is potum, whence potus . . . having been drunk and having drunk." Lünemann, improving upon this, commences his article on the verb poto thus:-" Poto, potavi, potatum und contr. potum, are." The fact of his considering potum as contracted from potatum is the more extraordinary as he immediately gives us the parenthesis: (von Tów, i.e. ívw). Thus he admits the existence of a primitive verb To-drink; and yet not merely does he deal with potum as a contraction from potatum, but under the heads potilis, potio, potor, potus -ūs, he regularly refers to poto as the parent. His consistency in error fails him however under poculum, which he rightly deduces from a root wo-w. We fully admit that To- is a verb for which there is no authority in the existing Greek authors, but when we find Tony for an aorist and εwкa for a perfect, we unhesitatingly affirm that o- or po- may be assumed as the basis whence come in Greek που τηρ, πο-της, πο-σις, and in Latin the words po-ta-re, po-culum, po-tilis, po- tio, po-tor, po-tus -a -um, and po-tus -us; the more so as we are already familiar with these suffixes, as in the words agita-re, veh-i-culum, fer-culum, fer-tilis, sec-tilis, ac-tio, vec-tio, sec-tio, ac-tor, vec-tor, sec-tor, &c.

A similar error occurs in the mode of treating censum and census. Thus we find in the same work of Zumpt's (p. 153): "Censeo, censui, censum, (participle also censitus)." Now the noun census, acc. censum, ought to be referred to an obsolete stem cen-, which is also the parent of the derivatives cen-sio, cen-sor, cen-sura, cen-trum much as

ara- and pig- (ping-) are of the words ara- tio, ara-tor and pic-tor, pic-tura, ara-trum. One of the many advantages of starting from the simple element, is that we are thus led, or rather all but compelled, to include in our view words, which by their formation claim kindred, although the meaning at first seems repugnant to such claim. Thus, centrum, 'a centre,' seems in sense to have no connection with the words to which, by virtue of its shape alone, we have been led to append it. Lünemann seems to have had no systematic principles of etymology. Hence, under the heads of censio, censor, censura, census, he refers us to censeo, but when he comes to centrum, he tell us in the parenthesis usually assigned to etymology, that the word is Greek, and identical with Kévтpov. For this appeal to another language there was no occasion. The word centrum is as genuine a native of the Roman soil as Kévτpov of Greek. The notion expressed by the root cen- of the Latin language, was, no doubt, to prick.' This of course is wellsuited to the meaning of the noun centrum; and when we consider that one of the most ordinary modes of counting among ourselves is by pricking some such material as paper, we see at once how derivations from the root cen- might well be employed to denote the office and duties of a censor or enumerator. We the less hesitate about this as we know that the Romans actually employed the process of puncturing wax or some other material in matters of enumeration. Thus, at the elections, the votes were marked by a puncture of some kind, so that punctum became synonymous with a vote, and is so used both by Cicero and Horace. Thus we deem it safe to claim for the Latin language a root cen- to prick,' which is akin to the Greek KEVTE-W, &c. But in the Greek dictionaries also a similar course of error has prevailed. Thus we find the Homeric KEY-σa called an aorist of κεντε-ω, or else κεντάω. Here too we contend for the simpler form Kev-, whence we would adduce not merely this aorist KEV-σaι but also keyτρον, κεντωρ, as well as κεσ-τρον, κεσ-τρα, and the adj. κεσ-τος Facu pictus.' The interchange of a v and g at the end of Greek roots, is all but co-extensive with the number of such roots. Thus oßev-vvμɩ Γεννυμι, φαίνω, (φαν-) have beside them α-σβεστος, ε-σβεσθην, Γεσ θης, ημφιεσμαι, φάσμα.

While dwelling upon the root cen- as existing in the Latin language, the thought comes across us that the French verbs conter "to tell a story, narrate," and compter, whence our own count, are themselves both to be deduced from the same source. As regards meaning, we should be disposed to consider the idea of counting as entitled to precedence over that of narrating; and the passage from the one notion to the other is familiar to the English scholar in the thoroughly parallel case of tell and tale, two words which, in their primitive sense, express merely enumeration. Thus the shepherd who tells his tale under the hawthorn in the dale is merely counting his sheep. The question of form is in part easily disposed of, the Latin verb temptare (for so it turns out all the best MSS. of all the best authors spell the word) is a modification of ten-ta-re, and so it is but a frequentative of the root ten, "strain," more familiar to us in the lengthened forms tene-o, "I grasp," and tend-o," I stretch." Now a frequentative is well suited to the idea of counting, which is essentially a matter of repetition, and a