recognized Middy's writing, opened the packet | hour neither of us spoke, It was dark. I could not see his face. Once I heard him mutter" Poor, poor Middy!" It might have been 'Poor, dear Middy." I am not sure. Tears, I fancied, were trickling down his cheeks. Not in the slightest degree from a wish to hurt or annoy him, but more from carelessness and heedlessness than any thing else, I thought I would try to ascertain his real feelings. In a few moments he said— 66 Any more wine, Charles ?" "No, sir; many thanks to you, but my travelling expenses have been paid, and as for the rest I would do any thing in the wide world for that dear gude leddy, who, when alive, was so kind to me and my puir bairns." With that she departed. Again my bell sounded, and the clerk, on intruding his inquisitive face, was told, "Do not let me be disturbed by anybody on any account for the next hour." The last words I heard before settling down becca, and Rowena, that—” to my reverie wereI had gone too far. Gang to the deil wi' ye, ye auld fule; do ye think that packet was for the likes of ye to handle? ha ha! ye auld fule." "No, thank you,” replied I; "but, Frank, I say, did you ever read Ivanhoe, and do you remember just at the end, where Walter Scott says with reference to Ivanhoe, Re "Temple," said he sharply, addressing me by my surname, "you said you would have no more wine; if you are not going to the ladies, I am." He moved towards the door, but returned, took my hand, squeezed it and said, "Charlie, The door was indignantly slammed. Poor I did not mean to be so abrupt. I hardly Middy had chosen a coarse-tongued but faith- knew what I was saying. I feel a little reful messenger. The packet contained a let-lieved at having told you this chapter of my ter, my picture, a song, and the chain and life; but mind," whispered he, almost fiercely, locket. "mind never allude again to what I have tonight related." The letter was written of course under most highly excited feelings, if not actually under the influence of delirium. I put it, the picture, and the song into my fire. The burden of the song (I had often heard her sing it) was, "Will she love you as I do?" The locket I dropped into the Thames that night. The chain my eldest daughter wears round her neck. In my pocket-book I have the tress of hair she gave me in the railway carriage when under such strange circumstances we first met. Frank had finished. For a quarter of an We went up-stairs-Frank going first-to his dressing-room, probably to wash away traces of emotion. A quarter of an hour later, with his rich tenor voice, he was joining in some merry glee. As I looked at him, I thought how little sometimes do our nearest and dearest relations and friends know of little did I conjecture what was coming when what passes beneath the surface. Oh, how first I heard the commencing words of the story "Pray, sir, are you a gentleman ?" CHARLES TEMPLE. NOT EXACTLY ROSEWATER.-A correspondent of The Times gives the following directions for deodorizing that substance which is the principal component of hot-beds : "If those who have stable manure will take four ounces of sulphuric acid and two gallons of water, and mix them in a garden watering-can, with the rose on, then sprinkle the contents over the manure every evening (supposing it to be a cartload) it will counteract the unpleasant smell." The writer then goes on to explain that the graveolence of the fertilizing compound is destroyed by the sulphuric acid in fixing the ammonia which that compound contains. Beginners in gardening should understand that the deodorizing process is effected solely by the sulphuric acid, otherwise they may form a misconception on that point from being informed that the materials to be made pleasant are to be sprinkled with the contents of a watering-can which has the rose on.-Punch. From The Saturday Review. HARD WORDS. It is a true saying that language was given us to conceal our thoughts, but it is a saying which does not quite go to the root of the matter. There can be no doubt that language was also given to save us from the trouble of having any thoughts at all. Thinking is an exertion-to many people it is a painful exertion-and yet it would not do to appear never to think. It is a great gain when a man can at once enjoy the reputation of thinking and the luxury of not thinking. The problem is, to express the smallest possible amount of meaning with the greatest possible amount of appearance of meaning. Nobody ever was so wise as Lord Thurlow looked. The problem is to look as wise as Lord Thurlow, and at the same time to be as foolish as anybody we please. This twofold advantage may be reaped by the judicious employer of that kind of diction which we can best describe as the Imperial style. It is not for us to judge with what objects that style is adopted by its great master. Possibly there may be moments when he, like meaner mortals, means nothing, and only wants to make people believe that he means something. There may be other moments when he does mean something, but wants to make people believe that he means something different from what he does mean. Sometimes, as we all know, the oracle condescends to be perfectly intelligible. A simple application of the rule of contrary sets everything straight. Thus, "I will be faithful to the Democratic Republic," "The empire is Peace," "I will liberate Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic," are sentences which a slight change-perhaps merely of a grammatical termination, at most of a single word, like "Guerre" for "Paix "—will convert into an honest expression of the speaker's meaning. But this is not the true imperial style. Anybody can swear that black is white; and when the process has been gone through too often, everybody finds out the key. Even the confiding simplicity of Lord Derby, which had stood a good deal, gave way when he found that "I will not annex Savoy" had really all along meant "I will annex it." Utterances of this sort are the mere freaks of imperialism in an occasional fit of candor. Long habit may prevent the delivery of a true proposition; but its contradictory will do just as well. The true imperial style is something very different. It always conceals something. It may be that it conceals a meaning-it may be that it only conceals the lack of a meaning. With the great man himself, we cannot always pretend to say which it is. With his imitators, French and English, we are pretty sure that what the imperial style conceals is much less commonly meaning than the absence of meaning. In the smaller imitators of the imperial style the whole thing sinks into a mere love of hard words. But the love of hard words! takes two forms. Sometimes they are simply used when easy words would do just as well. But sometimes, also, they are used when easy words would not do just as well. That is, it often happens that if a man were obliged to put what he had to say into plain English words of one syllable, everybody would at once see whether he meant anything or nothing. But only let him use long words with French endings to them, and he escapes amid a cloud of abstractions, and you cannot tell whether he has any meaning or not. This last is the true imperial, or what might with equal truth be called the Jovial style. The other form is something lower, and can hardly be accurately distinguished from the allude-to-individual style of penny-a-liners and members of Parliament. If there is any difference between them, it is that the one always carries with it a certain intention of being smart, the other a certain intention of being grand. For instance, when the Oxford correspondent of The Times, in describing the Commemoration, calls the undergraduates the "juvenile academics," and the men whom they hoot "unfortunate individuals," the fun is dreary enough, to be sure, but the writer evidently thought he was writing something funny. But when a policeman tells a magistrate that he found the prisoner in "a state of intoxication," he has not the faintest notion of being funny, but he has a very great notion indeed of being solemn and impressive, and of choosing his words well. So, when we read of armies being "decimated," kings or heroes receiving "ovations," etc., what is meant might easily be put into plain English, only the writers think plain English low, and fancy that they have hit upon something much finer. The scholar commonly laughs believe means, in plain English, that the students kicked up a row. Logic-lane, on a fifth of November, has often been the scene of far more cogent demonstrations than ever were argued out within the walls of the schools. to see how this sort of talk almost invariably | while "ovation" still retains the charm and involves blunders at every step. For in-grandeur of obscurity? Then, besides " ovastance, the straightforward English word tions," there are "demonstrations," the Q. E. "drunk" is voted impolite. Those who D. of which it is not always very easy to see. have swallowed too much liquid are "in- We read how the students of such a uni ebriated," "intoxicated," "in a state of in-versity "made a demonstration." This we toxication." Now a penny-a-liner would stare if you told him that drunkenness and intoxication are two quite different things. A man is drunk who has had too much, be it of the purest port or the most unpolluted pale ale. But a man is intoxicated who has lost his wits, not by quantity but by quality -by drinking something, be it much or little, which has been drugged. The words "intoxicate" and "intoxication" were doubtless first applied to common drunkenness by a sort of metaphor, but being long and hard words, they have gradually made their way, and have elbowed the old Teutonic "drunk” out of court. Undoubtedly, it often happens --such is our beer—that a man who appears" inauguration" of a new statue; but we have to be simply drunk is really intoxicated in the strictest sense. The word, in short, has an accidental propriety, but we have not to thank our penny-a-liners for that. Then, what is a "diatribe ?" How should we pronounce the word? Is it three syllables or four? Has it any thing to do with the Greek diarpiẞn? And, if so, how has diarpiẞn so changed its meaning as to express, for instance, the sort of things which Mr. Bright says, at Birmingham, about the British aristocracy? Then, why is every thing " inaugurated?" It is silly enough to talk about the 66 quite got beyond that. "Inaugurate" is fast displacing the French "commence," just as "commence" displaced the English "begin." We should not be at all surprised to read, in very fine writing, of people inaugurating their dinners with soup. So with the word "decimate." As far as our recollection goes back, this word came into popular use at the time of the Crimean war. Somebody said our army was "decimated" by the various evils which fell upon it. As a rhetorical flourish, we should not much" Arabs," "Bohemians," admire it; still, just for offce, as a rhetorical flourish, it might perhaps be allowed to pass. But it was a long word, and sounded grand; and so the whole tribe of scribblers and orators took it up and used it without any definite meaning. It has now become a formula, and every army which suffers considerably is said to be "decimated," without the slightest regard either to the proportion or to the nature of its losses. Again, what is an "ovation?" People now-a-days are always receiving, accepting, declining "ovations." Garibaldi and the king of Italy come in for more of them at present than anybody else, though undoubtedly President Lincoln or anti-president Davis, whichever is finally the victor, will come in for a gigantic we beg pardon, a monster one. What puzzles us is, why such famous people as these are always content with "ovations" -why they are so modest as never to aspire to triumphs. Is it because "triumph" has become by long usage a common English word, Besides these, we have a whole crowd of phrases, used once as jokes or metaphors, but which have become stereotyped as formulas, "Social Evils," "Londoners over the Border," which last, when we first saw it, we were simple enough to think meant "Londoners on the other side of the Tweed." However, one may be thankful that it was not "Metropolitans over the Border." The stereotyped use of metropolis" and "metropolitan" to mean "London" and "of or pertaining to London," is much more recent than people think, and, unlike most other such modes of speech, it is purely our own. In French, as far as we know, the word" metropole " is never used except either in its ecclesiastical or in its old Greek sense. Paris is never so called, except in reference to the Archbishop of Paris and the Church of Nôtre Dame. In English, however, this use of the word supplied a real want. The city of Paris has grown-the city of London has not. What we practically call Paris is also, all or most of it, legally and formally Paris: of what we practically call London only a very small part is legally and formally London. Hence the words "metropolis " and " metropolitan,” though we hear them a good deal too often, | cially puzzles us, "solidarity." Some of these did supply a real need in the language. For words, if not English, are at least Latininstance, the words "metropolitan borough," Latin, if not in the sense in which they are and " metropolitan member" convey a cer- used, at least in some other sense; but tain idea which could not be expressed by any "solidarity" is beyond us. "Solidaritas" other form of speech. But it was too bad is not to be found in the biggest Latin dicwhen the Bishop of London got up in public, tionary we have. The nearest etymological and, utterly ignoring Canterbury and York, guess we can make is that it means the state spoke of his own church as "the metropolitan of a man who carries a "solidus," a "splencathedral." Doubtless, the bishop merely did shilling," in his pocket. Here is the meant it as a bit of high polite language, a main difference between this form of the euphemism for so commonplace a form of style and the other. The mere hard-word words as "St. Paul's." But a wicked wag in style is capable of translation; the true iman ecclesiastical newspaper caught it up, and perial style is not. To translate a sentence wanted to know whether Dr. Tait, like his we must first understand it; but who can predecessor, Gilbert Foliot, aimed at reviving understand the Napoleonic oracles ? These the claim of London to be the Archiepiscopal nobody attempts to translate-people merely See of Britain. reproduce them. The Napoleonic oracles, The last invention in this way is the word as we see them in The Times, are rendered "interpellation." When an opposition mem- into that sort of English into which Bishop ber of a foreign Parliament asks a question Gardiner sought to render the Old and New of a Minister, he is said to "put an interpel- Testaments. The words which it is imposlation." We have not yet seen it directly sible or inexpedient to translate are left in applied by an Englishman to proceedings in the original. Some Frenchman, foolish or the English Parliament, but we have seen cunning, as it may be, invents a new word it in English translations of French accounts or uses an old one in some strange sense. of English debates. Now we beg to sug- The unlucky Englishman has to translate gest first, that "interpellation" is not an it; he has no idea what it means-very likely English word; secondly, that the Latin it means nothing-still he must translate it "interpellatio" does not mean what people somehow. The process is not hard; he seem to think it means. 66 Interpellatio" is translates the little words which come begood Latin, both classical and medieval; tween them, and leaves the grand imperial but it means, not a question, but an inter-words as he finds them. If they end in ruption. When all the neighboring people-ation, they may be safely left just as they took refuge at Crowland, for fear of a Dan-are; if they end in -té, there is nothing ish inroad, the monks, according to the pseudo-Ingulf, were disturbed by their "querelæ et interpellationes." If a member is called to order, it is most strictly an "interpellatio" on the part of the Speaker. But the most hostile and captious question that Mr. Disraeli could put to Mr. Gladstone is no "interpellatio" at all, if put according to the due form and routine of parliamentary question-putting. Is the explanation to be found in the fact that, in the imperial style, the word "question" has One or two more specimens, and we have got quite another meaning or non-meaning done. What is an "agrarian outrage ". from what it has in plain English-to wit, an “agrarian disturbance ?" It appears to "the Eastern question," ," "the Roman ques-be most commonly an Irish business, though tion," and so forth? This last is emiently we have seen the word applied to the doings ludicrous in its Greek form, ntnμa. of the klephts in Greece. Now we know harder to do than to change té into ty. They thus at once pass for English, and certainly they are just as much English as they are French. Their grandeur and foreign origin impress the public mind, and Englishmen go about talking of "solidarity" and "interpellations," conscious, one would hope, that the words have no meaning, but perhaps with a vague notion that they have as much meaning in their mouths as they have in the mouth of the mighty oracle himself. We now get round again to the true im- perfectly well what is meant by an agrarian perial style the style of "questions," "so-law. We can understand that the aristolutions," "complications," and, what espe- cratic party might have called the legisla tion of the Gracchi an agrarian disturbance, | friends tell us that the word has a special and the death of the man whom the follow- meaning in their art; but all the world are 66 ers of Caius stabbed, an agrarian outrage. not doctors, and are not bound to underBut what have these things to do with either stand doctors' language. Finally, to match Ireland or Greece? Is an "agrarian out- the "state of intoxication," we have the rage" an outrage done in a field, or an out- "state of nudity," "the nude state." In rage about a field? When a fox has the the language of connoisseurs of painting, whole field after him, does he look on it as we even reach the metaphysical abstraction an "agrarian disturbance ?" Agrarian of "the Nude." Is “nude” at all different outrage" has generally something to do from "naked ?" and if not, why should it with landlords and tenants. Must it be an be more polite or delicate to talk bad French outrage done by a tenant to a landlord? than good English? In the seventeenth Or will it also apply to an outrage done by century, certain fanatics ran about without a landlord to a tenant? If people would clothes, saying, "We are the naked Truth." only write plain English, and not misapply Now-a-days such words could not even be Latin technicalities, there would be some reported; they would have to be translated chance of understanding them. Then, to into "We are Verity in a nude condition." match 66 agrarian outrages," we have As for "the Nude," it is, like "the Beau"chronic disorders." Why "chronic ?" tiful," "the Now," "the Then," etc., quite It clearly has something to do with time-beyond us; we can only ask some metaphysical genius whether the Nude has or but how? Is a chronic disorder the same has not any thing to do with the Uncondias a perturbation of Jupiter? Medical tioned. RUSKIN ON WAR.-I believe the war is at | watch the climbing light gild the eastern clouds, present productive of more good than evil. I without thinking what graves it has gilded, will not argue this hardly and coldly, as I might, first, far down behind the dark earth-line,-who by tracing in its past history some of the abun-never more shall see the crocus bloom in spring, dant evidence that nations have always reached without thinking what dust it is that feeds the their highest virtue, and wrought their most ac-wild flowers at Balaklava. Ask their witness, complished works, in time of straitening and battle; as on the other hand no nation ever yet enjoyed a protracted and triumphant peace without receiving in its own bosom the ineradicable seeds of future decline. I will not so argue this matter; but I will appeal at once to the testimony of those whom this war has cost the dearest. I know what would be told me by those who have suffered nothing, whose domestic happiness has been unbroken, whose daily comfort undisturbed, whose experience of calamity consists at the utmost in the incertitude of a speculation, the dearness of a luxury, or the increase of demands upon their fortune which they could meet fourfold without inconvenience. From these, I can well believe, be they prudent economists or careless pleasure-seekers, the cry for peace will rise alike vociferously, whether in street or senate. But I ask their witness to whom the war has changed the aspect of the earth, and imagery of heaven, whose hopes it has cut off like a spider's web, whose treasure it has placed in a moment under the seals of clay. and see if they will not reply that it is well with them and with theirs; that they would have it not otherwise; would not, if they might, receive back their gifts of love and of life, nor take again the purple of their blood out of the cross on the breastplate of England. Ask them, and though they should answer only with a sob, listen if it does not gather on their lips into the sound of the old Seyton war-cry-" Set on." They know now the strength of sacrifice, and that its flames can illumine as well as consume; they are bound by new fidelities to all that they have saved, by new love to all for whom they have suffered. Every affection that seemed to sink with those dim life-stains into the dust has been delegated, by those who need it no more, to the cause for which they have expired; and every mouldering arm, which will never more embrace the loved ones, has bequeathed to them its strength and its faithfulness. INFALLIBLE RECIPE FOR HOT WEATHER.What is the best way to prevent meat turning? Those who can never more see sunrise, nor | Eat it straight off. |