[39] “The sun has gone down with his battle-stained eye.”
[40] “Roba di Roma,” by W. W. Story.
[41] Macaulay’s “History of England,” Vol. II.
[42] “The Doctor,” Vol, VII.
[CHAPTER XV.]
CURIOSITIES OF LANGUAGE.
Language is the depository of the accumulated body of experience, to which all former ages have contributed their part, and which is the inheritance of all yet to come.—J. S. Mill.
Often in words contemplated singly there are boundless stores of moral and historic truth, and no less of passion and imagination, laid up.—Trench.
A thoughtful English writer tells us that, when about nine years old, he learned with much surprise that the word “sincere” was derived from the practice of filling up flaws in furniture with wax, whence sine cera came to mean pure, not vamped up or adulterated. This explanation gave him great pleasure, and abode in his memory as having first shown him that there is a reason in words as well as things. There are few cultivated persons who have not felt, at some time in their lives, a thrill of surprise and delight like that of this writer. Throughout our whole lives, from the cradle to the grave, the stream of our history, inner and outer, runs wonderfully blended with the texture of the words we use. Dive into what subject we will, we never touch the bottom. The simplest prattle of a child is but the light surface of a deep sea containing many treasures. It would be hard, therefore, to find in the whole range of inquiry another study which at once is so fascinating, and so richly repays the labor, as that of the etymology or primitive significations of words.