forsook him, and he was unable to frequent places of amusement, it was then a glory filled his room, and an angel hovered over him. Pleasant thoughts crowded upon the sick boy's mind, of the home of his childhood, and the friends of his youth. Once more he mingled with the little group, where kind faces beamed upon him, and loving voices sounded in his ears. An unused Bible, his mother's gift, was quickly in his hands, and the parable of the prodigal son came home to his heart; and, in its beautiful words, he said, I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.' A voice sounded in his heart, and told how, when he was a great way off, the father saw his wandering son return, and had compassion, and ran and fell upon his neck, and kissed him. The penitent was comforted, and the heavenly flame was fanned ere the ministering spirit retraced his steps, to partake of the joy in the presence of the angels of God, over one sinner that repenteth.'

How happy was that girl who, in all the thoughtlessness of life's early morning, looked upon the world as one bright scene of sunshine! Loving and beloved, she went forth into the world, ignorant of its temptations, and strong in her own innocence. Was it not well that an angel-guard attended her, to tell of the snares that were around, and to protect her from the great enemy, who would try to lead her from the paths of holiness? Tears of disappointment were wept when she learnt the vanity of life; and she returned to her quiet home, cheerfully resigning the gay pleasures that had lured her from it. She resolved, with one of old, to choose 'that good part which shall not be taken away from her.' When the angel heard the choice, he knew that his mission was fulfilled, and, like a fond child, hastened back to his faithful home.

The dream was past! and the sleeping boy awoke. New beauty seemed to fill the world, when he pictured the countless shining links, binding each one of the little flock to the great Shepherd; and angels ascending and descending, as in ages past they had been revealed in a dream, uniting earth with heaven. Never had he felt so fully the dignity of those who can truly say, 'Our Father which art in heaven,' and never had he so earnestly asked to be made one of those heirs of salvation,' to whom spirits are 'sent forth to minister.'

THE STUDY OF WORDS.

DEGENERATED WORDS.

glistens; thus 'cloth of tinsel' would be cloth inwrought
with silver and gold; but the sad experience that all is
not gold that glitters,'-that much which shows fair and
specious to the eye is yet worthless in reality,-has caused
the word imperceptibly to assume the meaning which it now
has, and when we speak of 'tinsel,' either literally or figu-
ratively, we always mean now that which has no reality
of sterling worth underlying the glittering and specious
show which it makes. Tawdry,' which is a word of cu-
rious derivation, though I will not pause to go into it, has
undergone exactly the same process; it once conveyed no
intimation of mean finery, or shabby splendour, as now it
does. . . . The word 'prude,' signifies in the present day
a woman with an over-scrupulous affectation of a modesty
which she does not really feel, and who betrays the absence
of the reality by this over-preciseness and niceness about
the shadow. This use of the word must needs have been
the result of a great corruption of manners in those among
whom it grew up. Goodness must have gone strangely
out of fashion, before things could have come to this. For
prude,' which is a French word, means virtuous or pru-
dent; prud'homme ' being a man of courage and probity.
But where morals are greatly and almost universally relax-
ed, virtue is often treated as hypocrisy; and thus, in a dis-
solute age, and one disbelieving the existence of any inward
purity, the word 'prude' came to designate one who affect-
ed a virtue, even as none were esteemed to do anything
more; and in this use of it, which, having once acquired,
it continues to retain, abides an evidence of the corrupt
world's dislike to and disbelief in the realities of goodness,
its willingness to treat them as mere hypocrisies and shows.
Again, why should the word 'simple' be used slightingly,
and 'simpleton' more slightingly still? According to its
derivation, the 'simple' is one without fold,' sine plica;
just what we may imagine Nathaniel to have been, and
what our Lord attributed as the highest honour to him,
the Israelite without guile;' and indeed, what higher
honour could there be than to have nothing double about
us to be without duplicities or folds? Even the world,
that despises simplicity,' does not profess to approve of
duplicity, or double-foldedness... Silly,' written 'seely'
in our earlier English, is beyond a doubt the German
'selig,' which means 'blessed.' We see the word in its
transition state in our early poets, with whom 'silly is so
often an affectionate epithet applied to sheep, as expressive
of their harmlessness and innocency. With a still slighter
departure from its original meaning, an early English poet
applies the word to the Lord of Glory himself, while yet an
infant of days, styling him this harmless silly babe.' But
here the same process went forward as with the words
'simple' and 'innocent.' And the same moral phenome-
non repeats itself continually. The French have their
'bonhommie' with the same undertone of contempt, the
Greeks also a well-known word. It is to the honour of the
Latin, and is very characteristic of the best side of Roman
life, that simplix' and 'simplicitas' never acquired this
abusive signification.

ORIGIN OF DUNCE.'

How many words men have dragged downward with themselves, and made partakers more or less of their own fall! Having originally an honourable significance, they have yet, with the deterioration and degeneration of those that used them, deteriorated and degenerated too. What a multitude of words, originally harmless, bave assumed a harmful as their secondary meaning; how many worthy have acquired an unworthy. Thus 'knave' meant once no more than lad (nor does it now in German mean more), 'villain' than peasant; a 'boor' was only a farmer; a 'varlet' was but a serving-man; a 'churl' but a strong fellow. Time-server' was used two hundred years ago We may all know what a 'dunce' is, but we may not be as often for one in an honourable as in a dishonourable sense as well acquainted with the quarter whence the word has 'serving the time.' 'Conceits' had once nothing conceited been derived. Certain theologians in the middle ages were in them; officious' had reference to offices of kindness, termed schoolmen; being so called because they were and not of busy meddling; moody' was that which per- formed in the cloister and cathedral schools which Chartained to a man's mood, without any gloom or sullenness lemagne had founded-men not to be lightly spoken of, as implied. Demure' (which is, des mœurs,' of good now they often are by those who never read a line of their manners) conveyed no hint, as it does now, of an over- works, and have not a tithe of their wit; who, moreover, doing of the outward demonstrations of modesty. In little guess how many of the most familiar words which 'crafty' and 'cunning' there was nothing of crooked wis- they employ, or misemploy, have descended to them from dom implied, but only knowledge and skill; 'craft,' in- these. Real,' 'virtual,' entity, nonentity,' 'equivocadeed, still retains very often its more honourable use-a tion,' all these, with many more unknown to classical Latin, man's craft' being his skill, and then the trade in which but which now have become almost necessities, were first he is well skilled. And think you that the Magdalen could coined by the schoolmen, and passing over from them into have ever given us 'maudlin,' in its present contemptuous the language of those more or less interested in their speapplication, if the tears of penitential weeping had been culations, have gradually filtered through the successive held in due honour in the world? Tinsel,' from the strata of society, till now they have reached, some of them, French 'etincelle,' meant once anything that sparkles or to quite the lowest. At the revival of learning, however,

their works fell out of favour: they were not written in classical Latin: the form in which their speculations were thrown was often unattractive; it was mainly in their authority that the Romish church found support for many of its perilled dogmas; on all which accounts, it was considered a mark of intellectual progress and advance to have broken with them and altogether thrown off their yoke. Some, however, still clung to these schoolmen, and to one in particular, Duns Scotus, the great teacher of the Franciscan order; and many times an adherent of the old learning would seek to strengthen his position by an appeal to its great doctor, familiarly called Duns; while the others would contemptuously rejoin, Oh, you are a Dunsman,' or more briefly, You are a Duns'-or, 'This is a peice of dunsery;' and inasmuch as the new learning was ever enlisting more and more of the genius and scholarship of the age on its side, the title became more and more a term of scorn: Remember ye not,' says Tyndal, how within this thirty years and far less, the old barking curs, Dunce's disciples, and like draff called Scotists, the children of darkness, raged in every pulpit against Greek, Latin, and Hebrew?' And thus from that long extinct conflict between the old and the new learning, that strife between the medieval and the modern theology, we inherit the words 'dunce' and 'duncery.'

THE FIRST TARIFF MEN.'

wedlock. The Captain performed the service; there was
nobody to forbid the banns, and everything passed off
smoothly. Fling was a little at fault in the matter of the
responses, but, upon the whole, acquitted himself with
much decency. Both he and Humming-bird send their
loves to you. They thought of going to reside in the
settlements, but when it came to the point, neither of them
had the heart to leave us, and we shall most probably
perform the remainder of life's strange pilgrimage in one
another's company. We could not have lived asunder.
Nickstick, who often talks of his friend Heap-of-hair,
made an attempt in the fall to get westward, but the snow
set in, and obliged him to return. He has been practising
with the pistols you gave him, and can hit a dollar-piece
at thirty paces. I never knew till the other day that the
poor lad loved Humming bird. He told Fling so flatly,
but gave him to understand at the same time, that hence-
Ile said
forth he should always regard her as a sister.
he should have to look at her with the other side of his
heart in future.

Poll Crake (who is busy skinning a deer) had a narrow escape of his life a week since. He received orders from the Captain to fell a stout tamarack, and, finding the tree rather obstinate in yielding to his wishes, ran at it with his head, but missed the mark, rolled over into a ravine, and put his collar-bone out. The Captain set it for him, and he is doing well.

I have merely given you a short summary of events; I will epistolise you at length when I can learn your proper address. So, in the interim, believe me, &c., &c. Abel Leg, Esq.

P.S.-Nothing more of the Thorns. Diver has just brought me in a large white hare. I shall make the skin into a winter cap for Hummingbird.'

...

...

Nor is the true derivation of tariff' unworthy to bo traced. We all know what it means, namely, a fixed scale of duties levied upon imports. If you turn to a map of Spain, you will take note at its southern point, and, running out into the Straits of Gibraltar, of a promontory, which from its position is admirably adapted for commanding the entrance of the Mediterranean Sea, and watching the exit and entrance of all ships. A fortress stands upon this promontory, called now, as it was also called in the times of the Moorish domination in Spain, Tarifa;' the name indeed is of Moorish origin. It was the custom of the Moors to watch from this point all merchant-ships going into, or coming out of, the Midland Sea; and, issuing from this stronghold, to levy duties according to a fixed scale on all merchandise passing in and out of the straits, and this was called, from the place where it was levied, ' tarifa,' or tariff:' and in this way we have acquired the word.-probable that I have depicted many scenes for which the R. C. Trench.

WHITTLINGS FROM THE WEST.

BY ABEL LOG.

HEAP THE SEVENTY-EIGHTH.

ONE morning I received two letters. The handwriting of
both were strange to me. I broke the seal of the first,
which was from Twobears Ramsay, and ran as follows:-
'Butternut Castle, May 6,

Year of our Lord, one eight four seven. My Dear Abel,-I write you a line-as the certain man we read of in Scripture drew his bow-at a venture; for you may, long ere this, have crossed the sea, and trodden the shores of your native land. Health and happiness to my old friend, whithersoever the vagabond fates may lead him.

The Captain is sitting at my elbow, and dictating, though I have told him several times that I do not require his assistance. So if I indite you an unintelligible letter, you will know whom you have to thank for it. He desires me to express his regrets that you did not remain the winter with us; and begs that if you ever conceive any sudden disgust for the world, and all therein, you will clap your knapsack on your shoulder, and set your face for Butter

nut.

I told him the other day that I gave you the few first sheets of his memoirs, and he fell into a violent rage, but presently smoothed his moustache, pulled my ear in a friendly way, and asked if I did not think you had better have the remainder of them also. These, therefore, and anything else we have, are quite at your service.

Tom Fling and Humming-bird have been united in holy

I am sensible that there are a great many subjects and scenes connected with New York (as well, indeed, as with many other localities I have visited) of which, in place of dwelling upon lighter topics, I ought to have treated. But I must remind the reader again that the hasty memoranda I have thrown together were never intended as a seriously descriptive work, nor as a guide-book to the places at which I have barely touched. Tastes differ, and it is very

majority of persons have no relish at all, and omitted accounts of others that would have afforded them much edification. I cannot help this now, but I regret it. We will suppose a party of gentlemen let loose upon a desert island. One has a turn for botany; he falls to work instantly, with glass on nose, to inspect every novel plant he meets with a second is a geologist; he thumps stones to pieces, looks for fossils, and examines strata: a third is a lover of the picturesque, and a landscape painter; he sits down upon a knoll of turf, half closes his eyes, and lets 'contemplation have her fill:' a fourth is an ornithologist; he discovers a nest of young birds under the brow of a cliff, and deposits them in his hat: a fifth, who likes nature very well, but something to eat and drink better, has a lunch in his pocket, and finds immediate occupation: a sixth is a sportsman, he has his dog and gun, he goes in search of wolves or wild-fowl: a seventh has his book, and seeks no better company: an eighth-but I need not describe the tastes of an eighth; I merely intend to show that we each have our whims and fancies, and are sure to talk of and dwell upon those themes which have most interest for us; nor should the botanist quarrel with the sportsman, nor the sportsman grumble at the student. There are certain matters, nevertheless, which should more have engaged my attention, and many a useful and elevating moral that I might have drawn, which I have neglected altogether. In my defence, I can only state, that the slides of my magic lantern were painted in a hurry; many of them are illustrations of little and unimportant subjects; other glasses have been broken, and thrown aside; some have got lost; a few were too whimsical and grotesque for exhibition; and those of which I have availed myself, would look to much better advantage if they had received each a new

that now and then shot through the foliage, and illuminated the gravel walk beneath it. Presently, a respectably dressed man, wearing the air of one who had been partak ing pretty freely of the creature comforts under some friend's hospitable roof, staggered into the shade of the avenue, and deposited himself, with a ludicrous despatch, upon the ground, back to a tree, and facing my window. It was plain that he was in merry pin, for he began to white hat, which was ornamented by a broad black crape band, slid gradually from its proper position, downwards to the bridge of his nose. Shortly afterwards, three

The second letter was from Mr Benjamin Chaffers, for- warble a fragment of some bacchanalian song, while his merly of the Hotel du C, Montreal.

'Temperance Coffeehouse, near the Mountain,
July 17, 1847.

Dear and respected Sir,-I have been at very conside-city pigs, who had likewise been spending the evening out, rable trouble in procuring your address. I repaired to your old lodgings, in the hope of obtaining it there, but they refused to give me any tidings of your movements, and had the additional assurance to shut the door in my face. A few of the most select of my companions, therefore, and myself, resort thither regularly once a-week, at the hour of midnight, to serenade the landlady upon trombones, and blow asafoetida through the keyhole. My next application was to Colonel Banjo, who supplied me with the requisite information at once, but intimated that, as his fortunes were rather changed, he hoped to be excused the formality of inviting me to dinner.

You can form no conception of the base treatment I have received at the hands of Madam StIt was a hard thing to be ejected at a moment's warning from the door of that very hotel which I had been instrumental in pushing into popularity. But the hour of retribution will arrive. I owe that unworthy woman one hundred dollars (I will not be particular in stating the exact amount of odd pence). I will pay them, and if she has a heart, sir -if she has a heart-it will be moved. The revenge would be terrible, but I believe I could go through it. Do not attempt to dissuade me from my purpose. It would be of no use. I am adamant. My mind is made up.

and were jogging decently homeward, espied the gentleman under the tree, and gathered round him. The gentleman, who was evidently a cheerful, chirping soul, took their visit in good part, continued to sing, and, as though he had one of the most select audiences possible, waved his hand, now to this side, now to that, by way of giving the words of his song a proper effect. Upon this, one of the pigs, who was of a more poetical temperament than either of his brothers, and liked to study character, sat himself down in a lounging way, as one who had fallen in with something that pleased him, and kept up a steady, goodnatured stare upon the individual against the tree. The second pig had less of the meditative cast of disposition. He was for turning the adventure to account, and thrusting his snout into the bosom of the gentleman's waistcoat, he seemed to be bent upon searching for his pocket-book and purse; while the third pig, who had grosser tastes still, and inherited all the greedy propensities of his fraternity, got possession of the white hat, and, probably with the intention of examining whether it contained anything eatable, plunged his head forcibly into it. The result not being satisfactory to his wishes, he attempted to withdraw himself, but the lining had got over one of his ears, and the effort was not crowned with success. Without imprudently exhausting himself by ineffectual struggles, thereYou were once so kind, my dear sir, as to oblige me with fore, or appearing to be in any way disconcerted by the the loan of a few shillings. I liked the way in which you calamity, he quietly quitted the company of his friends, pushed it upon me, and had too much delicacy to think of and, with the white hat fixed gracefully upon his brow, returning it, the sum was so paltry. I thought I might and the black band, which had become loosened, streaming some day have occasion to apply to you again, and then out behind him, sauntered demurely away up the centre the two amounts might be put into one, and remitted plea- of the street. It may have little entertainment for the santly by bank order. I am anxious not to have the mat-reader, but to the whimsicality of this scene I believe I ter delayed, and would be glad, therefore, if you can now oblige me with the loan of about fifteen pounds. I should have asked for less, but feared you would feel offended if I did so. I shall not want the money for more than a week, or a fortnight at furthest, and if the sum should happen to be a larger one, the obligation will be greater, and the term of accommodation less-say four, or, lest any unforeseen event should occur in the interim, eight days.

I should be delighted to seek you out in New York. Have you comfortable rooms? What a rouse we would give them! Take the will for the deed at present, and believe me to remain-Yours till death,

Abel Log, Esquire.

BENJAMIN CHAFFERS. P.S.-You will not feel displeased, perhaps, to learn that I have changed my religious views. I had for a long time been solicited to attend the Unitarian Church. Several of the heads of that respectable community waited on me the other day, and were so polite, that I was induced to acknowledge myself a convert to their way of thinking. Will you be so good as to hint, by return, what the more prominent tenets of these gentlemen's faith are; and whether you consider them safe.'

am mainly indebted for my speedy recovery from a tedious illness; at all events, I found myself so well the next morning, that Dr Trehearn said he should call in an hour or two to take me for an airing in his carriage.

The doctor kept his word; and, as we rode out together, I begged that he would relate another of those little anecdotes with which he had expressed himself willing to oblige me.

The very thing I was about to do-the very thing of all others I was about to do,' said Dr Trehearn. 'That splendid house youder, among the trees, suggests it. Patients of mine, my dear sir, but proud people-high people-the giraffes of the human species. The Cadogans. I was called in some time since to attend the daughter, who was secretly attached to a friend of mine, a Captain Lechmere. They had been children together, and the friendship of their childhood had ripened into a more important feeling, but quite as pure and honourable to both parties. However, we shall come to that presently. She was ill; nobody knew what was the matter with her. She was pining away like a sick lily. It was one of those delicate cases that we professional men sometimes meet with. She had a complaint of which young ladies at her age are extremely susceptible. In vulgar parlance, Miss Cadogan was in love. She was a noble, artless girl-but refrained, of course, from alluding to the real cause of her melancholy. My dear Miss Cadogan,' said I, 'I am an old man, as you see, with grey hair, and one foot in the grave; you may talk to me as you would to your grandfather; pray do. Besides, I may be of use to you. Do not attempt to conceal the truth; all may be well yet. I am sure your affections are set upon a worthy object,