Miss Hateman would give all she's worth,
To purchase a man to her liking;
Miss Merry is shocked at all mirth,

Miss Boxer the men don't find striking!
Miss Bliss does with sorrow o'erflow,

Miss Hope in despair seeks the tomb;
Miss Joy still anticipates wo,

And Miss Charity's never "at home!"
Miss Hamlet resides in the city,

The nerves of Miss Standfast are shaken;

Miss Pretty man's beau is not pretty,

And Miss Faithful her love has forsaken!

Miss Porter despises all froth,

Miss Scales they'll make wait, I am thinking;

Miss Meekly is apt to be wroth,

Miss Lofty to meanness is sinking;

Miss Seymore's as blind as a bat,
Miss Last at a party is first;

Miss Brindle dislikes a striped cat,

And Miss Waters has always a thirst!

Miss Knight is now changed into Day,
Miss Day wants to marry a Knight;
Miss Prudence has just run away,

And Miss Steady assisted her flight;
But success to the fair,-one and all!

No miss-apprehensions be making;-
Though wrong the dear sex to miss-call,

There's no harm, I should hope, in MISS-TAKING.

CROOKED COINCIDENCES.

A pamphlet published in the year 1703 has the following strange title: "The Deformity of Sin cured; a Sermon preached at St. Michael's, Crooked-lane, before the Prince of Orange, by the Rev. J. Crookshanks. Sold by Matthew Denton, at the Crooked Billet near Cripple-gate, and by all other booksellers." The words of the text are, "Every crooked path shall be made straight;" and the prince before. whom it was preached was deformed in person.

THE COURT-FOOL'S PUN ON ARCHBISHOP LAUD.
Great praise to God, and little Laud to the devil.

English Words and Forms of Expression.

DICTIONARY English is something very different not only from common colloquial English, but even from that of ordinary written composition. Instead of about forty thousand words, there is probably no single author in the language from whose works, however voluminous, so many as ten thousand words could be collected. Of the forty thousand words there are certainly many more than one-half that are only employed, if they are ever employed at all, on the rarest occasions. We should be surprised to find, if we counted them, with how small a number of words we manage to express all that we have to say, either with our lips or with the pen. Our common literary English probably hardly amounts to ten thousand words; our common spoken English hardly to five thousand.

Odd words are to be found in the dictionaries. Why they are kept there no one knows; but what man in his senses would use such words as zythepsary for a brewhouse, and zymologist for a brewer; would talk of a stormy day as procellous and himself as madefied; of his long-legged son as increasing in procerity but sadly marcid; of having met with such procacity from such a one; of a bore as a macrologist; of an aged horse as macrobiotic; of important business as moliminous, and his daughter's necklace as moniliform; of some one's talk as meracious, and lament his last night's nimiety of wine at that dapatical feast, whence he was taken by ereption? Open the dictionary at any and you page, will find a host of these words.

By a too ready adoption of foreign words into the currency of the English language, we are in danger of losing much of its radical strength and historical significance. Marsh has compared the parable of the man who built his house upon the sand, as given by Matthew and Luke. Matthew uses the plain Saxon English. The learned Evangelist, Luke, employed a Latinized

dictionary. "Now," he says, "compare the two passages and say which to every English ear, is the most impressive:"

"And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it."-Matthew.

"Against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great."-Luke.

There can scarcely be a difference of opinion as to the relative force and beauty of the two versions, and consequently we find, that while that of Matthew has become proverbial, the narrative of Luke is seldom or never quoted.

Trench says that the Anglo-Saxon is not so much one element of the English language, as the foundation of it—the basis. All its joints, its whole articulation, its sinews and its ligaments, the great body of articles, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, numerals, auxiliary verbs, all smaller words which serve to knit together and bind the larger into sentences, these not to speak of the grammatical structure of the language-are exclusively Saxon. The Latin may contribute its tale of bricks, yea, of goodly and polished hewn stones to the spiritual building, but the mortar, with all that holds and binds these together, and constitutes them into a house, is Saxon throughout." As proof positive of the soundness of the above affirmation, the test is submitted that" you can write a sentence without Latin, but you cannot without Saxon." The words of the Lord's Prayer are almost all Saxon. Our good old family Bible is a capital standard of it, and has done more than any other book for the conservation of the purity of our language. Our best writers, particularly those of Queen Anne's time,-Addison, Steele, Swift, &c.,—were distinguished by their use of simple Saxon.

SOURCES OF THE LANGUAGE.

Some years ago, a gentleman, after carefully examining the folio edition of Johnson's Dictionary, formed the following table of English words derived from other languages:

A foreigner looking at a picture of a number of vessels, said, "See what a flock of ships." He was told that a flock of ships was called a fleet, and that a fleet of sheep was called a flock. And it was added, for his guidance, in mastering the intricacies of our language, that a flock of girls is called a bevy, that a bevy of wolves is called a pack, and a pack of thieves is called a gang, and that a gang of angels is called a host, and that a host of porpoises is called a shoal, and a shoal of buffaloes is called a herd, and a herd of children is called a troop, and a troop of partridges is called a covey, and a covey of beauties is called a galaxy, and a galaxy of ruffians is called a horde, and a horde of rubbish is called a heap, and a heap of oxen is called a drove, and a drove of blackguards is called a mob, and a mob of whales is called a school, and a school of worshippers is called a congregation, and a congregation of engineers is called a corps, and a corps of robbers is called a band, and a band of locusts is called a swarm, and a swarm of people is called a crowd.

DISRAELIAN ENGLISH.

Mr. Disraeli gives us some queer English in his novel of Lothair, as may be seen in the following examples :-" He guarded over Lothair's vast inheritance;" "Lothair observed on" a lady's singing; "of simple but distinguished mien, with a countenance naturally pale, though somewhat bronzed by a life. of air and exercise, and a profusion of dark, auburn hair;" "he

engaged a vehicle and ordered to be driven to Leicester Square;" "he pointed to an individual seated in the centre of the table;" "their mutual ancestors;" "Is there anything in the Tenebro why I ought not to be present?"; "thoughts which made him unconscious how long had elapsed;" "with no companions than the wounded near them;" "The surgeon was sitting by her side, occasionally wiping the slight foam from her brow." We have heard of people foaming at the mouth, but never before of a lady foaming at the brow.

"YE" FOR "THE."

Ye is sometimes used for the in old books wherein the is the more usual form, on account of the difficulties experienced by the printers in "spacing out." When pressed for room they put ye; when they had plenty of room they put the. Many people in reading old books pronounce the abbreviation ye. But the proper pronunciation is the, for the y is only a corruption of the old thorn-letter, or symbol for th.

ITS.

His is the genitive (or as we say, possessive) of he, (he's,— his,) and it or hit, as it was long written, is the neuter of he, the final t being the sign of the neuter. The introduction of its, as the neuter genitive instead of his, arose from a misconception, similar to that which would have arisen had the Romans introduced illudius as the neuter genitive of ille, instead of illius. Its very rarely occurs in our authorized version of the Bible, his or her being used instead-occurs but a few times in all Shakspeare was unknown to Ben Jonson-was not admitted into his poems by Milton-and did not come into common use. until sanctioned by Dryden.

THAT.

The use of the word That in the following examples is strictly in accordance with grammatical rules: