law which assures to instructors a minimum salary of 600 francs (257.), will enable us to demand of them more zeal and assiduity. They will not require to seek, in labours foreign to their profession, an increase of pay to assure the daily existence of themselves and their families. But 19-20ths of the instructors of this department will not be able to claim more than the fixed minimum allowance. It is to be regretted that we cannot, by means of salaries increasing progressively in proportion to the services performed, excite the emulation of teachers and establish a system of promotion advantageous to the cause of education. Girls' Schools.-There are in the department 54 communal and 163 private schoolmistresses. The increase on 1848 is 18 in number. The communal schools receive 3669, and the private schools 5662 pupils ; in all 9331. When compared with the numbers attending school in 1848, there is a decrease of 151 pupils. If we add to the above number 1234 girls who are taught in the common schools, we shall have a total number of 10,565 girls receiving elementary instruction. Of the 9331 who are taught by schoolmistresses, 6674 pay, and 2657 are educated gratuitously. Of the 1234 who attend the common schools,* 941 pay, and 293 receive gratuitous instruction. The communal masters alone receive pupils who pay nothing; the private teachers receive none. All the schoolmistresses, on the contrary, whether communal or private, admit gratuitously a great number of children. There is no need to direct your attention to the fact, that the zeal and the devotion of our schoolmistresses are not sufficiently recompensed. Every one is fully convinced of the salutary influence which the education of females exercises upon the morality of a country. We ought, therefore, to find some means of properly rewarding our schoolmistresses for the eminent services which they have rendered. It is necessary, above all, to encourage the establishment of girls' schools, in order to diminish, as much as possible, the number of mixed schools, which, in spite of the most careful superintendence, present results most unfavourable. As a proof of the low estimation in which these mixed schools are held, take the following facts :-In those communes which possess a girls' school, the mean number of pupils attending is sixty-four per commune; whereas in the communes having no girl's school, but, on the contrary, a boys' school open to girls, the mean number is reduced to nine. There are 189 communes entirely without schoolmistresses, that is to say, in 189 communes of the department the girls are either wholly deprived of instruction, or receive an education which, from being given by a man, is not at all in harmony with the duties imposed upon the sex by society. From these considerations, I have the honour of proposing to you to ask of the general council a sum of 2000 francs, to be appropriated thus: 1000 francs among private schoolmistresses, many of whom find it difficult to live, and 1000 francs to be divided among the poorest of the communes which shall make sacrifices to establish communal schools for girls.t (To be continued.) EXAMINATION FOR CERTIFICATES OF MERIT. The Examination of Masters will be held on Monday, the 21st of April, at― London. In the St. James's National School, 45, Marshall Street, *These common or mixed schools are conducted by masters. Every commune is obliged by law to support at least one primary school, either of its own, or in conjunction with neighbouring communes. Golden Square, Piccadilly, by the Rev. H. Moseley, H. M. Inspector. Derby. In the Trinity Church School, by the Rev. J. J. Blandford, Leeds. In the St. James's National School, by the Rev. F. Watkins, Swansea. In the National School, by the Rev. H. Longueville Jones, The Examination of Mistresses will be held on the 21st of April, at London. In the Whitelands Training School, King's Road, Chelsea, by Clevedon (near Bristol)-In the National School, by the Rev. W. H. Birmingham. In the St. Paul's National School, by the Rev. H. W. Huddersfield. In the Northgate Upper School, by the Rev. D. J. The Examination of Schoolmistresses in South Wales will be held at Swansea. In the National School, on the 28th of April, by the Rev. For the convenience of Teachers in North Wales, additional Examinations will be held by the Rev. H. L. Jones, For Masters at Caernarvon, in the National School, on the 2nd of For Mistresses, at the same place, on the 9th of June. Intelligence. wwwm TESTIMONIAL TO THE REV. R. DAWES, DEAN OF HEREFORD.A public dinner was held, on Tuesday, March 11, at the George Hotel, Winchester, for the purpose of presenting a testimonial to the Very Rev. Richard Dawes, Dean of Hereford, in acknowledgment of his services in the cause of education. Among the company present were the Hon, and Rev. Samuel Best, Chairman, the Very Rev. the Dean of Winchester, the Very Rev. the Dean of Hereford, Sir John Barker Mill, Bart., the Hon. A. Arundell, R. W. Lingen, Esq., Secretary of the Committee of Council on Education, and many other clergymen and gentlemen of the diocese. BATTERSEA.-The Rev. Samuel Clarke, late Vice-Principal of St. Mark's, is appointed Principal of Battersea Training College. To Correspondents. wwwwww A COUNTRY SCHOOLMASTER asks for any suggestions that will assist him in making a seraphine; as to the best kind of metal and wood, and the method of tuning. G. B.-We fear your suggestion would take us out of our beat, but we will con sider it. J. B. B.-There is no work on the subject that we can recommend. A. M.-Postponed for the present. ON LATIN ETYMOLOGY. No. IX. THERE is no more abundant source of error in etymology, than the circumstance that roots wholly independent often assume a common form. Thus the Latin language has a considerable number of words derived from an obsolete verb ver-, 66 pour," which must be carefully distinguished from the progeny of the verb ver-, "turn." In our last paper we drew attention to one of those derivatives, namely, verg"pour," as distinguished from verg-, " turn," " incline." Servius in his note on Virg. Æn. VI. 244; "Frontique invergit vina sacerdos," interprets the verb, vergere, as meaning fundere; though it is true, he seems also to imply a connection between vergere, so used, and the idea of turning the vessel (ut patera convertatur). Lucretius again (V. 1008), has " Ipsi sibi saepe venena vergebant." And to say nothing of Stat. Theb. VI. 211, we find in Liv. XLIV. 33, "Montes spem faciebant, quia nullos apertos evergerent rivos, occultos continere latices." Lastly, divergium, a "watershed," may be called in evidence, as well as the Italian versare, and French verser, "to pour." But it may be said, that in all the instances so far quoted, the idea of pouring may be secondary, as the inversion of a vessel necessarily leads to an effusion of the liquid contents. While we admit the force of this argument, we still adhere to the belief that a root ver-, "pour," is at the bottom of all the words we have given, and think our readers will go with us before we have finished. Even in such a phrase as, "Gallia vergit in Septentriones," it is doubtful, whether the translation may not be, Gallia pours its waters towards the North; for though the slope determines the course of the waters of a country, on the other hand, the course of those waters is the best evidence of the slope. The neuter substantive virus (crude form vir-es) according to the theory we have repeatedly put forward, implies a previously existing verb in the form of vir-. We are not deterred from this view by the fact, that in the oblique cases we have forms that belong to the second declension, as the gen. viri, and ablative viro, in Lucretius; for here we have the not very uncommon occurrence of one declension being called upon to supply what is defective in another. The case of volgus is perfectly parallel. And indeed nouns of the second declension from verbs often co-existed with neuters in es-. Thus, by the side of modus modi, the Latin language must at one time have had a neuter modes(modus, moderis); or, otherwise, we could not account for the appearance of the adjective modestus, and the verb moderare. Compare scelus, scelestus, sceleratus. So again, we find glomus, -i, and glomus, -eris. Then, as to meaning, we may pretty safely give to virus the idea of "sap," in general, for a restriction to noxious juices was certainly not original in the word, any more than in papμakov, venenum, and our own poison; the last of which has evidently come to us through the French, from the Latin potion-. But the idea of sap might well be denoted by a derivative from a verb signifying to" flow." VOL. IX.-NO. V. E Now that we regard virus as a vox media, which may be applied to salubrious juices as well as to poisons, it seems highly probable that the verb virere meant only "to be full of sap," for the word in its original sense seems to be used almost exclusively of vegetation. Of course, viridis is a derivative from virere. The termination is rare, but still not far removed from that of utilis, agilis on the one hand (considering the convertibility of l and d in Latin), or from that of rapidus, fervidus on the other. A word for the idea of greenness would, in the nature of things, be borrowed from the vegetable kingdom, and the close connection between the greenness of vegetation and the flowing of the sap, is self-evident. We may observe too, that the representatives of viridis in the Romanic languages, as the Italian verde, French vert, &c., exhibit the very vowel which we commenced with claiming for our root, ver-, "flow." The several ideas of greenness, flowing of sap, and vegetation, together with the form of the root under consideration, all draw our attention to the little word ver-, "spring." But for the full explanation of this monosyllable, we must stop a while in order first to establish what mathematical writers sometimes call a lemma. In our last paper, p. 110, we drew attention, in passing, to the abbreviation of Latin words in those cases where the formation of a derivative, or compound, would lead to a recurrence of the same syllable. What we said had no pretensions to novelty, so far as regards the principle. It was distinctly put forward, with not a few examples, in some papers privately printed and distributed at Cambridge some years ago. The abbreviation in question has probably been the result of some slight confusion in the minds of those who had not a clear view of the principle of formation. It is one that is still at work. Thus a letter in the Times" newspaper, a few days back, was signed Pimlicola, meaning evidently, an inhabitant of Pimlico; so that the word should, in strictness, have been Pimlico-cola. So again, our Chemists talk of Formic acid, whereas the term, following the analysis of Sulphuric acid, should have been Formicic acid, i. e. the acid of ants, from formica, an ant." The most familiar instance is our word idolatry, in Italian, idolatria; which is, of course, an abbreviation of the fuller form, idolo-latria, edwλo-λarpeia," idol-worship." The corruption is of classical antiquity, and we will point out some of the leading instances, including those alluded to in our last paper. 1. From μονοand ονυχ-, we ought to have had an adjective μονονυχ- (nom, μονοννξ) or μovovvxo- (nom. μovovvxos); but we find in the Greek writers, μωνυχο- and μωνυχ Hence came the name for a centaur in Juvenal, Monychus. 2. From αγαν and ανηρ should have been formed an adjective ayav-avwp; but one of the two similar syllables being omitted, we have αγανωρ, or in the common dialect, αγήνωρ. In the same way, 66 some treat ποιμανωρ, as an abbreviation of ποιμαν-ανωρ, as though the word contained in its first element the essential part of the verb, ποιμαίνω. In this case however we prefer the derivation from the substantive πων, and an obsolete μανηρ, an older form of ανηρ. That avno had, at one time, a prefixed digamma, we know on the authority of Dionysius. And an initial w has often supplanted its relative the liquid of the labials. Thus our own man, has changed its initial letter or a virtual w, in the phrases no one, and one says,* which respectively represent the German nie-mand, and man sagt. Thus we regard Fav-ep-, as having in its first syllable the same root as our own man, and in the second part an unimportant suffix. The Greek Toμev-, literally, "sheep-man," or "cattle-man," likewise contains the same root, man. And the claim of avep- to an initial μ, is confirmed by the proper name, Anaxi-mander, compared with Alex-ander. 3. The Latin nutrix would seem to be a corruption of nutri-trix from nutrire; unless, indeed, the verb nutrire be itself formed from the noun. In either case, there will be a difficulty left for the etymologist, for nutrix, if formed from nu-ere, would signify "a female who habitually nods," and so express a character very ill-suited for the office of a nurse. On the other hand, if nutrire be the parent of nutrix, we still have an arduous problem in the explanation of the verb. 4. The socalled passive infinitives, in their archaic form, amarier, monerier, audirier, are evidently deduced from the active infinitives, amare, monere, audire, by the addition of a suffix, not unlike that which distinguishes amatur and amantur from the active amat and amant. On the same principle, we ought to have had regerier from regere. This form, however, gives us the syllable, ĕr, repeated and separated by nothing more than the very faint sound of the interposing i. It was therefore natural, that one of the recurring syllables should be suppressed, and so we have the actual infinitive, regier. 5. Salut- (nom. salus), bears some analogy in its termination to juven-tut-, senec-tut-, servi-tut-, which three are formed by the addition of a common suffix to the several nouns, juveni-, senec-, servo-. If we regard salut-, as a compression of a fuller form, salu-tut-, it is legitimately derived from the adjective salvo- (nom. salvus). 6. Stipendium, as we before observed, is the word stip-i-pendium reduced, so that the length of the first vowel is accounted for; and a derivation from the noun stips, and the verb pendere, is in meaning satisfactory. 7. Quini, and we may add, quindecim, seem to be respectively representatives of fuller words, quinquini, or quinqueni, and quinquendecim. The Greek πεντα has a final vowel in common with ἑπτα, εννεα, and δεκα. The forms α-кovтa and sexa-ginta are securities for the existence at one time of a simple numeral a. Thus it is no very bold step to assume that quinque, in an old stage of the Latin language, ended like septem, novem, and decem; and thus we arrive at a theoretic quinquendecim, to agree with septendecim. But the syllables quin and quen were too similar, and too near to maintain their ground together. The form, quinqueni, would agree with those of septeni and noveni; or on the other hand, the analogy of bini (for duini), would suggest a full form quinquini. In either case, we arrive at a word which would inevitably be compressed into quini. Of course, on the same principle, we regard quingenti as an abbreviation of quinquingenti, which would correspond exactly with septingenti, octingenti. 8. The four verbs, verto, viso, verro, vello, stand almost alone, as having in the third persons of the simple present and perfect tenses, forms perfectly identical, vertit, * In the French on dit it is now an admitted fact, that on represents an older hom, i. e. man. |
