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have gradually transformed itself into a distinctly 'wet afternoon; but, to the startled horror of the jolly German professors, Murray shunned the Ihringer Riesling and drank a fluid which, at a German University of those days, was thought to have been created solely for the use of the lower animals.

The chief interest of the Oxford Dictionary is, of course, historical. Until this survey of the language had been carried out, writers on word-lore were groping in the dark. Every section issued from Oxford contains data which bring down card-castles laboriously erected by etymological dreamers. Sometimes a word for which great antiquity has been postulated is shown to be of quite recent introduction or manufacture. Thus slate, to assail vigorously, which Skeat derives from AngloSaxon slætan, to bait, is first recorded as a Dublin vulgarism of the 19th century. On the other hand, the derisive 'old geezer,' which has such a modern Cockney ring, is the Old French guiser, a mummer, which passed into English in the Middle Ages. The historical method, of course, involves the most elaborate tracing and classification of meanings. I do not know which is the longest article in the Dictionary, but the verb take occupies fourteen pages (and what pages!), including a sub-section on take up, in which fifty different senses of this combination are distinguished and illustrated by examples ranging through the centuries.

Of course the earlier volumes of a work which has been in progress for over half a century show gaps. Quite apart from the scientific monstrosities which are coined every day by those who busy themselves with motor-cars, wireless, television, etc., there are many words now current which in the early days of the Dictionary were quite unknown. You will look in vain for appendicitis, bolshevist, and camouflage. Cinema will be found under K. There is plenty of information about divot, but the only meaning which the word has for the southron is not mentioned, as golf had not then spread like a pestilence over our countryside. Sometimes the editors have been really unlucky. They must have missed sabotage by inches and the cinema vamp almost by a hair's-breadth. Still, all these, and many others, will come into the Supplement, and we can congratulate

Vol. 250.-No. 496.

R

Mr Onions on still having a congenial task before him.
There are still worlds for him to conquer!

I have hinted already at the indifference shown by our countrymen to this noble monument of the English language. It is difficult also to avoid being struck by the short-sightedness of many Continental scholars. Those who are working at any branch of Teutonic philology naturally treat the Oxford Dictionary with awe and reverence; but it does not yet seem to have occurred to any Romance scholar that English has been, since the Norman Conquest, to a great extent a Romance language by its vocabulary, and that this vocabulary is here sorted, sifted, and documented with a fullness that has never been distantly approached in the treatment of any Continental language. The most comprehensive work on the etymology of the Romance languages is Meyer-Lübke's Romanisches Wörterbuch, completed in 1920. Look through its voluminous list of authorities and you will find no mention of the Oxford Dictionary, nor do I remember to have seen it quoted in any other work on the subject. One example will illustrate the value which the Oxford Dictionary might have for the Romance scholar. There is a colour called isabelle, a kind of dirty pale brown, rather hard to describe, but easily identified by any one who has noticed the 'isabelline bear' at the Zoo. It is constantly repeated by Continental authorities that the colour owes its name to the Archduchess Isabella, who, after the manner of such ladies, swore not to change her chemise till her husband took Ostend. As the siege lasted from 1601 to 1604, this rash vow involved her in some discomfort and made a new colour fashionable at her court. If, however, we consult the Oxford Dictionary, we find that Queen Elizabeth possessed, in 1600, one rounde gowne of Isabella-colour satten, with silver spangles.' The discrepancy in the date is not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.

The Oxford Dictionary is not the only, nor indeed the first, national dictionary conceived on a monumental scale. Grimm's Deutsches Wörterbuch began to appear in 1851, and is still in progress! The Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, also unfinished, dates from 1864,

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and the first part of the Swedish Academy's Dictionary appeared in 1893. Of these Grimm is naturally the most familiar to English students. It is a most valuable and admirable work, but in range of vocabulary, fullness of treatment and typographical excellence it falls far behind the Oxford Dictionary. The fact is that in such undertakings able and devoted editors and assistants are not the only essential factors. Much of the driving power is furnished by the technical and material resources of a great Press. But for the patriotism and wisdom of those who control the great Oxford establishment, which sprang from the profits on Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, the Dictionary could never have been begun with confidence, continued steadily for nearly half a century, and brought to a triumphant conclusion.

ERNEST WEEKLE

Art. 3.--THE UNREASONABLENESS OF DISESTABLISHMENT.

THE rejection of the Prayer Book Measure by the House of Commons has imparted some degree of practical urgency to theoretical questions and created a situation of some difficulty and danger in regard to the historical relationship between Church and State which for many years has remained happily undisturbed. Has the time now come when the connexion between the two which has subsisted through so many and great changes and convulsions from our earliest history, and is so closely interwoven with our national life, should be severed? What are the probable consequences of a severance ? What are the advantages to be expected? What losses and dangers are to be feared? Such are the questions which are being forced into prominence.

In an age when great issues are so often obscured by blind controversy, by facile assumptions built on ignorance and prejudice, by words used promiscuously with varying and even opposite connotations, by partial views, and by a welter of confused, uneducated thought finding ready expression in irresponsible utterances, one must recognise more than ever the need, the value, and the importance of right thinking. It is only by sound knowledge and right thinking that one may hope to find out the truth about any matter, which is in no way affected by any number of opinions; and so to win the reward of truth, and to avoid its nemesis. The following is an attempt to take a brief but comprehensive survey of the subject with the principles involved and the reasons that may be adduced for or against Disestablishment.

In the first place, it is to be noted that an established Church, both in its conception and its reality, is peculiar to Christianity. The distinction between civil and religious authority, so familiar to us, was almost unknown in the ancient world. The nearest approach to this distinction was the separation between the kingly and priestly offices in the Jewish theocracy. No ancient nation can be thought of which had not a national, a political, or a tribal religion. And both religious and civil offices were vested in the same person, whether

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king, or chieftain, or magistrate for the time being. Church and State were, in fact, one and the same thing.

The appearance of Christianity was followed by a new phenomenon in history, the adoption of a new religion by whole nations. History affords no example of the voluntary rejection of a higher for a lower religion by any nation. But the rejection by a nation of a lower religion for the adoption of Christianity has been known in many instances. And when this change has definitely taken place, whether by the more gradual and normal process marked by an edict of toleration, as of the Emperor Constantine or of Ethelbert of Kent, or by the example and decree of a leader and autocrat, as of Clovis the Frank or Vladimir of Russia, the nation becomes, ipso facto, a Christian nation. There is, indeed, another sense in which the phrase is more commonly used, to characterise a nation in which the majority, or a considerable number, of the citizens are Christian in character, or a nation the public acts of which at home or abroad are governed by Christian principles. But this is a secondary and less logical definition which is vitiated by generalisation and personification, as when we speak loosely of the national character. A nation is not a person, and has not a character. It is an aggregate of the individuals that compose it. But for all practical purposes it is the product or resultant of the wills of the constituents, determining it to think and to act in a certain direction, as e.g., to go to war, or to remain at peace, or to recognise the supremacy of a certain religion. However distressful it may seem to some minds to speak of a nation of barbarians as a Christian nation before the process of conversion and moral enlightenment has well begun, they must be asked to accept this as a clear logical definition, if only for the purpose of the present argument.

Now, when the Christian religion is accepted by any nation, it is accepted consciously or unconsciously in its entirety and with all its implications. This is a necessity of the case. Let it not be imagined that there ever was a pact, or a decree, or a piece of legislation, which gave legal enactment to the establishment of a Church. But from the adoption of Christianity there necessarily follows both the conception and the reality

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