certain influences do seriously affect public health. Is it, then, in our power, by sanitary regulations and improvements, to effect the changes necessary to ameliorate the physical condition of our people? I have alluded to what authorities and police can do. I have attempted to sketch out what an Association like ours can accomplish. We can teach, but the masses must practise. We must attack the serried bands of almost hopeless ignorance and indifference, which are arrayed before us; we must cleave their closed ranks with the sword of knowledge and truth, and not content ourselves with cutting off a few stragglers here and there. We must endeavour to light up the torch of intelligence among the masses of the people, although its first feeble illumination be obtained from our own dim rushlight of knowledge.

By far the largest portion of this labour of improvement, must be performed by proper intellectual training. But this great question of popular education is still a disputed point between different classes and adverse sects, who generally refuse to support any system except it meet precisely their views, unless it accept their interpretation of right and wrong,-forgetting that our great Master taught His saving truths alike to Jew and Gentile. Such being the case, and our struggle one between life and death, we cannot wait the good time coming, when all their prominent differences shall have been smoothed down, and some general scheme adopted. We have to accept the difficulties under all existing circumstances, and effect the utmost in our power.

We may lay it down, as a first principle in Sanitary Law, that nothing so largely affects the physical condition of the people, as being crowded together in too great numbers. Decency is set at defiance, and with the loss of that nice sense of propriety which ought to distinguish civilized beings, there is the gradual loss of self-respect a principle which lies at the root of all lasting improvement. The self-respect that will

induce a man to regard his personal appearance, will also induce him to see that his children are clean and tidy, though their garments may be poor and homely. Such a one will regard the care of his domestic arrangements as an important duty. Home will be to him something sacred, the real repository of his hopes and fears, his pleasures and pains; not a place to be avoided because untidy and comfortless, and to be abandoned at any moment for the allurements of the beer-shop or the gin-palace. We cannot, perhaps, reasonably hope to change the habits of large masses, by any means short of police authority. We must enforce regulations as to the number of people permitted to occupy certain sized houses, and as far as possible encourage and support the erection of dwellings, suitable to the wants of the working classes. - In aid of this section of our required improvements, baths and wash-houses play an important part; and the removal of the operation of purifying the gar ments in daily use, from confined rooms to spacious public laundries, will act beneficially in more ways than one. Unfortunately, the erection of the dwellings of the working classes has been, and is, too much in the hands of mere speculators, who, purchasing land at high prices, cover it as cheaply as possible. In this respect we have gone from bad to worse, and no one can examine the cottages that are springing up on all sides, without feeling the utmost astonishment, not merely that people can be found to live in them, but that the majority of them will even stand until tenanted. What we require, so far as I can understand this question, is the erection of dwellings on the continental system of living in flats, by which means more substantial buildings are raised-therefore warmer and more suitable to our variable climateand, at the same time, the extent of ground covered affords accommodation to many more families, without their being in the least degree crowded.

THE MEANINGS OF WORDS.

BY MR. T. A. REED.

You will not expect from me this evening any learned etymological disquisition. My simple object is to string a few thoughts together on the subject of Words viewed in a variety of aspects-regarding them not merely as collocations of vowels and consonants arbitarily representing ideas, but as suggestive, by their structure and associations, of important truths that we shall do well to consider.

One writer has said that language is "fossil poetry," and another has designated it "fossil history:" by which we are to understand that even isolated words, when viewed in their past and present uses, convey to us moral sentiments and historical lessons in a concrete, tangible shape, so that a sermon is embodied in a word, and an historical essay may be evolved from significations attached to a few simple sounds. In many a single word there lies hidden an amount of information little suspected by the casual reader. True, it is not seldom a matter of considerable difficulty to extract all that is wrapped up in the simple combination of vocal sounds, and, owing to our imperfect knowledge, a good deal of uncertainty often prevails. But this need not prevent our availing ourselves of what lies before us in a tolerably definite form, offering us both instruction and amusement. Of course, to take a comprehensive grasp of the subject, an intimate acquaintance with many languages is needed; but it is quite a mistake to suppose that the ordinary student, possessing but a smattering of one

or two of the most useful languages, may not find in this subject an amount of interest which will well reward him for whatever time and pains he may bestow upon it. "For many a young man," says Dean Trench, "his first discovery of the fact that words are living power, are a vesture, yea, even a body, which thoughts weave for themselves, has been like the dropping of scales from his eyes, like the acquiring of another sense, or the introduction into a new world." "What riches," says another writer, "lie hidden in the vulgar tongue of our poorest and most ignorant! What flowers of paradise lie under our feet, with their beauties and their parts undistinguished and undiscerned, from having been daily trodden on!"

A striking instance of the power of a single word to convey an important moral lesson is given by Trench at the commencement of his little work on the Study of Words. He quotes a long piece of poetry by George Wither on the subject of adversity and tribulation, in which the old English poet describes the uses of affliction in winnowing the chaff from the wheat, and contends that a high state of moral purity is not to be attained,

"Till the bruising flails of God's corrections

Have thrashed out of us our vain affections."

Now the idea running through all these verses, the sum and substance of Wither's rhymes, is, as Trench points out, contained in the single word “tribulation," the latin for which (tribulatio) is derived from tribulum, a flail.

The word "miser" is not less suggestive of moral considerations. It signifies wretched, miserable, and a long commentary could not better describe the condition of the man who hoards up money for its own sake, and, while possessed of ample resources, is deaf to the appeals of poverty and distress.

So the words

kind" and "mankind," when regarded in the light of their origin, teach us the connection subsisting between the entire human family,

"Man

and the duty each man owes to every other. kind" is man-kinned; "kind" being connected with kin or relationship: teaching us that kindness is not a mere fleeting impulse, but a law whose obligation is universal.

And this reminds one of some of those family names that are in themselves as good as a homily. Take "husband," which is house-bond-a title descriptive at once of the duty and the privilege of him who stands in that relationship. Some ladies may prefer this to what is suggested by the corresponding appellation "wife," which belongs to the same class of words as "woof" and "weave," and indicates the familiar household employment of married women when the word was coined. The strong-minded female who, clamorous for the rights of women, neglects her homely duties, and permits the bond of the house to go with unmended stockings and buttonless shirts, might receive a useful hint from the mere etymology of this word "wife." So the derivation of "spinster," which is said to be spindle-stir, may prove suggestive to young ladies who lay aside needle and thread for the last new novel.

The teacher of youth may learn a lesson which is even now vastly needed, from the origin of the word "educate." Real education is not cramming the memory with dry facts; it is not imparting any amount of superficial knowledge on a variety of subjects; it is in the highest sense a development of the faculties, a leading or bringing out (for this is the meaning of the word) of the hidden powers of the intellectual and moral man. The high office of the teacher is too often lost sight of in the mechanical drudgery of the schoolroom, but so long as the word "educate" forms part of our language it will be a standing protest against a mere perfunctory discharge of the teacher's calling.

But if it is true that there is a store of morality laid up in many of our words, it is no less certain that