the microscopic particles, so far from meriting to be treated as creepers," are of high importance, and that to know when and how to use them is of no less moment to the speaker or writer than to know when to use the grandiloquent expressions which we have borrowed from the language of Greece and Rome. To every man who has occasion to teach or move his fellow-men by tongue or pen, I would say in the words of Dr. Addison Alexander,— themselves a happy example of the thing he commends:

"Think not that strength lies in the big round word,
Or that the brief and plain must needs be weak.
To whom can this be true who once has heard

The cry for help, the tongue that all men speak
When want or woe or fear is in the throat,

So that each word gasped out is like a shriek
Pressed from the sore heart, or a strange, wild note

Sung by some fay or fiend? There is a strength
Which dies if stretched too far or spun too fine,

Which has more height than breadth, more depth than length;
Let but this force of thought and speech be mine,

And he that will may take the sleek, fat phrase,

Which glows and burns not, though it gleam and shine,-
Light, but no heat-a flash, but not a blaze!

Nor is it mere strength that the short word boasts;
It serves of more than fight or storm to tell,
The roar of waves that clash on rock-bound coasts,
The crash of tall trees when the wild winds swell,
The roar of guns, the groans of men that die

On blood-stained fields. It has a voice as well
For them that far off on their sick beds lie;

For them that weep, for them that mourn the dead;
For them that laugh, and dance, and clap their hand;
To joy's quick step, as well as grief's slow tread,
The sweet, plain words we learned at first keep time;
And though the theme be sad, or gay, or grand,
With each, with all, these may be made to chime,

In thought, or speech, or song, in prose or rhyme."

CHAPTER V.

WORDS WITHOUT MEANING.

POLONIUS. What do you read, my Lord?

HAMLET. Words, words, words.-SHAKESPEARE.

Is not cant the materia prima of the Devil, from which all falsehoods, imbecilities, abominations, body themselves; from which no true thing can come? For cant is itself properly a double-distilled lie; the second power of a lie.-CARLYLE.

Mankind are fond of inventing certain solemn and sounding expressions which appear to convey much, and in reality mean little; words that are the proxies of absent thoughts, and, like other proxies, add nothing to argument, while they turn the scales of decision.-SHELLEY.

OME years ago the author of the "Biographical His

SOME

tory of Philosophy," in a criticism of a certain public lecturer in London, observed that one of his most marked qualities was the priceless one of frankness. "He accepts no sham. He pretends to admire nothing he does not in his soul admire. He pretends to be nothing that he is not. Beethoven bores him, and he says so: how many are as wearied as he, but dare not confess it? Oh, if men would but recognize the virtue of intrepidity! If men would but cease lying in traditionary formulas,pretending to admire, pretending to believe, and all in sheer respectability!"

What an

Who does not admire the quality here commended, and yet what quality, in this age of self-assertion, of sounding brass and tinkling cymbal, is more rare? amount of insincerity there is in human speech! few persons is the tongue an index to the heart! What a meaningless conventionality pervades all the forms of

In how

social intercourse! Everybody knows that "How d'ye do?" and "Good morning!" are parroted in most cases without a thought of their meaning, or at least, without any positive interest in the health or prosperity of the person addressed; we begin a letter to one whom we secretly detest with "My dear sir," and at the end subscribe ourselves his "obedient servant," though we should resent a single word from him which implied a belief in our sincerity, or bore the slightest appearance of a command. But not to dwell upon these phrases, the hollowness of which may be excused on the ground that they sweeten human intercourse, and prevent the roughest men from degenerating into absolute boors, it is yet startling to reflect how large a proportion of human speech is the veriest cant. That men should use words the meaning of which they have never weighed or discriminated, is bad enough; but that they should habitually use words as mere counters or forms, is certainly worse. There is hardly a class, a society, or a relation in which man can be placed toward man, that does not call into play more or less of language without meaning. The "damnable iteration" of the lawyer in a declaration of assault and battery is not more a thing of form than is the asseveration of one petitioner that he "will ever pray," etc., and of another that he "will be a thousand times obliged," if you will grant his request. Who does not know to what an amount of flummery the most trifling kindness done by one person to another often gives occasion on both sides? The one racks the vocabulary for words and phrases in which to express his pretended gratitude, while, in fact, he is only keenly humiliated by having to accept a favor, and the other as eloquently dis

claims any merit in the grant, which he really grudged, and will never think of without feeling that he made a great sacrifice.

The secret feeling of many a "public benefactor," loudly praised by the newspapers, was finely let out by Lord Byron when he sent four thousand pounds to the Greeks, and privately informed a friend that he did not think he could well get off for less. How many wedding and other presents, and subscriptions to testimonials and to public enterprises, are made by those who secretly curse the occasion that exacts them! With the stereotyped "thanks" and "grateful acknowledgments" of the shopkeeper all are familiar, as they are with "the last," the "positively the last," and the "most positively the very last" appearances of the dramatic stars that shine for five hundred or a thousand dollars a night. As nobody is deceived by these phrases, it seems hypercritical to complain of them, and yet one can hardly help sympathizing with the country editor who scolds a celebrated musician because he is now making farewell tours "once a year," whereas formerly he made them "only once in five years." Considering the sameness of shopkeepers' acknowledgments, one cannot help admiring the daring originality of the Dutch commercial house of which the poet Moore tells, that concluded a letter thus: "Sugars are falling more and more every day; not so the respect and esteem with which we are your obedient servants." The cant of public speakers is so familiar to the public that it is looked for as a matter of course. When a man is called on to address a public meeting, it is understood that the apology for his "lack of preparation" to meet the demand so "unexpectedly" made upon him, will

preface the "impromptu" which he has spent weeks in elaborating, as surely as the inevitable "This is so unexpected" prefaces the reply of a maiden to the longawaited proposal of marriage from her lover.

Literary men are so wont to weigh their words that cant in them seems inexcusable; yet where shall we find more of it than in books, magazines, and newspapers? How many reasons are assigned by authors for inflicting their works on the public, other than the true one, namely, the pleasure of writing, the hope of a little distinction, or of a little money! How many writers profess to welcome criticism, which they nevertheless ascribe to spite, envy, or jealousy, if it is unfavorable! What is intrinsically more deceptive than the multitudinous "WE" in which every writer, great and small, hides his individuality, whether his object be, as Archdeacon Hare says, "to pass himself off unnoticed, like the Irishman's bad guinea in a handful of halfpence," or to give to the opinions of a humble individual the weight and gravity of a council? "Who the is 'We'?" exclaimed the elder Kean on reading a scathing criticism upon his "Hamlet"; and the question might be pertinently asked of many other nominis umbra who deliver their vaticinations and denunciations as oracularly as if they were lineal descendants of Minos or Rhadamanthus. Who can estimate the diminution of power and influence that would result should the ten thousand editors in the land, who now assume a mystic grandeur and speak with a voice of authority, as the organs of the public or a party, come down from their thrones, and exchange the regal "we" for the plebeian and egotistic “I”? Who is 'I'?" the reader might exclaim, in tones even more contempt