the fatality of the vampire-each one contributing his share towards the obscurity and eventual destruction of a language which, probably, has had more varied capabilities displayed by the genius of its writers than any other which ever existed. But whatever reasons or apologies may be given for these mongrel innovations, and as if this evil were not sufficient, the public are fostering another malady, and altering our pronunciation as fast as ignorance or levity can dictate. Singularity appears to be the predominant whim; and I fear many of our distinguished contemporaries had rather be remembered by their absurdities than sink into oblivion : and "So much they scorn the crowd, that if the throng By chance go right, they purposely go wrong." In the republic of literature, however, all men are equal in rights, my little forty-shillings mental freehold secures me an equal vote with my opulent neighbour of a thousand a year. Ability will find its consequence, and command respect without any badges of distinction. If I walk the street in decent apparel, I have no occasion to insist on taking the wall of every person of inferior appearance; courtesy will give me the preference more perfectly than any laws could enforce it; and so it is in literature. Genius may recommend, but it has no right to dictate; and the authority which attempts to remove our literary land-marks, should be resisted and brought to reason by numbers. I may admire the intellectual energies of a Johnson, a Walker, a Sheridan, or an Elphinston; but should feel as little disposed to submit to their fiat, as, in a political sense, I should have been satisfied with the sway of a Cæsar or a Frederic. Let the public allow them consequence, but not arbitrary power, and scrutinize their proposed emendations with candour, but with independence. Claiming, therefore, the liberty of protest, I shall use it against those senseless and would-be-improvements which violate established rules, sanctioned by custom, by reason, and by analogy; and I have no fear of rendering myself ridiculous or censurable by such interference. Thus I find bound, found, ground, hound, pound, round, sound, &c. all permitted to remain in unison; why must wound be singled out and modernized as an objection? If it be not a Gothic barbarity to inflict such a woond without provocation, then houghing and scalping are innocent amusements. Again we have, by common usage and consent, hour, lour, sour, flour, &c.; by what stupid perversion, then, can we suffer that pour shall be torn from his associates, and sent into the exile of a parish workhouse? We cannot spare the word poor from the language; and as it belongs to so vast a majority in the "social order," surely it is of sufficient importance to stand alone without any infringement upon its dignity. It may be urged that pour and power having been similar in sound, no extra confusion is made by the change; but to this it may be replied, that where a solitary instance of analogy is to be set in opposition to numbers, the appropriate rule should be to give the weight to quantity. Let us now see what a Babel-jargon has been thus vauntingly introduced under the garb of authority;-what would the witlings of the day have said if Paddy O'Blarney, the Irish watchman, had first started the lingo, and thus commenced the relation of a nocturnal frackaw-as we call it? "On going my roond at a very late hoor, 1 foond a poor wretch all at length on the groond, The rain did in torrents tremendously poor, And I thought, tho' so dark, I discover'd a woond." I can bear to see the pretty sylphs of the day screw up their dress with one hand to display their symmetry, and carry their purse in the other to shew that they are not pennyless; let them render themselves as ridiculous as they please, it is their own concern. But when Mama has delegated to Miss Fifteenetta the important charge of making tea, and the fashionable babbler asks me if I will allow her to poor me out another cup? she is stepping out of her sphere; and if she were to poor her tee into my shoes I do not know that it would do more violence to my feelings. Instead of multiplying our difficulties, the rule of analogy will enable us to reduce them; thus the words four and your will be found deviating from the common standard, but as their unsociable pronunciation is established, let them pass; or at any rate let us rather force them to compliance, than make the majority bend to their humour, and as a measure of uniformity, I should say, let them in future rhyme with sour, lour, devour, &c. There are, I suppose, few persons who have not hesitated as to the best pronunciation of foreign names of persons and places; and it must be admitted that on either side some awkward and grotesque attempts will inevitably be made. If we are always to take the foreign accent, then no person can presume to read a newspaper to others till he has learnt somewhat of every language in existence, dead or living. On the other hand, to attempt to give the English sound where the possibility does not exist, is distressing and often ludicrous. Who does not remember when the contending armies were hovering (vulturelike) in the neighbourhood of Ypres, and how did my poor countrymen distress themselves, or their few knowing friends, with the pronunciation of this word so familiar to French understandings! One called it wypres, another yerps, a third whipprees, and while nobody was right, the belligerents were slaughtering each other with as little ceremony or compunction as this poor name was mangled by our cobbler politicians, or mechanic newsmongers. I will, however, venture to affirm that the fewest outrages will be committed by adhering as closely as we can to the English sound; and this is perhaps the mode most countenanced by custom. If I say I went through Leel to Paree I must expect to be unintelligible; and a total want of similarity in the name is less liable to misconception than the endeavour to accommodate our organs of speech to every dialect under the sun. Thus, Stamboul and Constantinople, Etienne and Stephen, L'Allemagne and Germany, will be more universally understood to mean the same thing, than an erroneous pronunciation can possibly be. But, Sir, I have not yet quite done with the former class, though a few words more shall release you from the (perhaps) tiresome perusal. By what stupid or wilful ambiguity could a worse change be adopted than that of substituting the j or dz for d? Is it possible to under stand what a person can mean who should say "I have been brushing the dzhu this morning"? One may put invention upon the rack, but the darkest enigma of the celebrated sphinx could not be more enveloped in mystery. Thus, it may be supposed that he had been cheating an Israelite in a bargain for some old clothes, or it may possibly mean that he had been sparring with Mendoza; but least of all would it be thought that he had been only sauntering in the dewy meadows. We have seen that some words will by slow degrees become transmissible into our vernacular state; it is much to be regretted that the facility of exchange in other cases should be instantaneous; for surely the jostling of such a word as dissipated out of our pronouncing dictionaries, and the substitution of dizzy-pated in its stead, must provoke a smile from gravity, or a frown from common sense. Have we not already addle-pated, num-scull, shallow-brains, and many more synonymous terms; what possible advantage then can arise from the new coinage, if more weight and value must be purloined from another quarter? That these interpolations, so revolting to established custom, and so degrading to the judgment of the practitioners should be tolerated at the tea-table, at the bar, or on the stage, is surely more than sufficient; but to insult the house of God by the silly affectation is abominable. I can sit with tolerable patience to hear (as I sometimes have done) the "Capting of our salvation," or, "in the fust place reform, and in the next_pur-ze-vere;" but when I hear from one pulpit, that " we are all by Na-chure the crea-chures of wrath, but that the Gosple poors the balm of comfort into the woonded buzzum;" or from another the petition, that the "Almighty would in his own dzhu time accomplish his purposes"-then are my devotions dizzypated, and my indignant feelings roused; and then it is that I devoutly wish all such vile, corrupt, puerile, hotch-potch lingo at the devil. J. L. SONNET FROM VINCENZIO DA FILICAJA. SEE a fond mother and her offspring round, By kisses her affection: on the ground Another smiling sits upon her knee; Ω. HUMBOLDT'S TRAVELS.* THERE are some men whose names seem to irradiate the age in which they are born, whose every step in life forms an epoch in science, and who, as if Nature herself were sedulous to guard them as her historians, escape unhurt through perils that would alike appal the mind, and overwhelm the bodies, of less enthusiastic, less gifted individuals. Such is Humboldt, every addition to whose travels is an addition to our stock of knowledge. In him all the qualities that are requisite for a philosopher and a man of science are most happily combined, whilst the energies of his mind seem to transform themselves into physical powers of more than natural strength, to enable him to follow whither his ardour leads him. The termination of his "Personal Narrative" has made its appearance, and the last part is no way inferior to the first, in vigour of research, truth of inference, and beauty of moral reflection. It is not easy for persons who stay quietly at home, to imagine the exceeding energy of mind which must be called up, to bear some of the torments, the privations, the perplexities, of a man exposed to every variation of climate, and to peculiarities attendant on each, of which he may be totally ignorant. The moschettoes, for instance, just beyond the mouth of the Rio Aranca, assume the appearance of an evil so formidable as to forbid all the attempts of man towards civilization in the quarter which they infest, in a degree greater than is known in any other part of the habitable globe. "The lower strata of air, from the surface of the ground to the height of fifteen or twenty feet, are filled with venomous insects like a condensed vapour. If in an obscure spot, for instance in the grottoes of the cataracts formed by superincumbent blocks of granite, you direct your eyes toward the opening enlightened by the sun, you see clouds of moschettoes more or less thick, according as these little animals, in their slow and regular movements to their own music [mouvemens lents et cadencés], form into groups, or spread themselves abroad. At the mission of San Borja, the suffering from moschettoes is greater than at Carichana; but in the raudales, at Atures, and above all at Maypures, this suffering may be said to attain its maximum. I doubt whether there be a country upon earth, where man is exposed to more cruel torments in the rainy season. Having passed the fifth degree of latitude, you are somewhat less stung; but on the Upper Oroonoko the stings are more painful, because the heat, and the absolute want of wind, render the air more burning, and more irritating in its contact with the skin." No wonder that in the missions of the Oroonoko, in the villages placed on the banks of the river, surrounded by immense forests, stations to which the unfortunate priests of Spain are condemned for twenty years together, the plaga de los moscos, the plague of the flies, "Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, during the years 1799-1804. By Alexander De Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland; with maps, plans, &c. Written in French by Alexander de Humboldt, aud translated into English by Helen-Maria Williams." Vol. V. affords an inexhaustible subject of conversation, and that when two persons meet in the morning the first questions they address to each other are "How did you find the zancudoes during the night? How are we to-day for the moschettoes?" Some of these poor missionaries shewed their legs to Mr. Humboldt, which were so discoloured by the repeated stinging of the different species of these tormentors (for their name is legion) that it was difficult to see a trace of the whiteness of the skin between the spots of coagulated blood. The different species do not congregate together, but occupy the air in succession, and sometimes there is a short interval of quiet between the changes, which is enjoyed with an ecstasy that must make the recommencement of the attack still more insupportable. It is a mistake to imagine that the Indians are less susceptible of the bites of these insects than the Europeans. "How comfortable must people be in the moon," said a Saliva Indian to father Gumilla; "she looks so beautiful and so clear that she must be free from moschettoes." Mr. Humboldt's account of this plague of the deserts is minute and highly interesting; as is also his description of the missions in general, and of those whom God has ordained, as the monks despairingly express themselves, to inhabit them. But our limits forbid us to enter into particulars: instead of which we will present our readers with the following characteristic sketch of a part of the travelling suite of Mr. Humboldt and his companion Bonpland, in their passage up the Rio Negro. "In one of the huts of the Pacimonales we made the acquisition of two large fine birds, a toucan (piapoco)*, approaching the ramphastos erythrorhynchos, and an ana, a species of macaw, seventeen inches long, having the whole body of a purple colour, like the p. macao. We had already in our canoe seven parrots, two manakins (pipra), a motmot, two guans, or paras de monte, two manaviris (cercoleptes or viverra caudivolvula), and eight monkeys, namely, two ateles †, two titis, one viudita §, two douroucoulis or nocturnal monkeys ||, and the cacajao with a short tail. Father Zea whispered some complaints at the daily augmentation of this ambulatory collection. The toucan resembles the raven in its manners and intelligence. It is a courageous animal, but easily tamed. Its long and stout beak serves to defend it at a distance. It makes itself master of the house, steals whatever it can come at, and loves to bathe often and fish on the banks of the river. The toucan we had bought was very young; yet it took delight, during the whole voyage, in teazing the cusicusis, or nocturnal monkeys, which are sad and passionate. I did not observe what has been related in some works of natural history, that the toucan is forced, from the structure of its beak, to swallow its food by throwing it up into the air. It raises it indeed with some difficulty from the ground, Kiapoco, or aviapoco. + Marimonda of the Great Cataracts, simia belzebuth, Brisson. Simia sciurea, the saimiri of Buffon. vol. i. p. 327, 334, 353, and 357.) (See my "Rec. d'Observ. de Zoologie," § Simia lugens. (Ib., p. 319). || Cusicusi or simia trivirgata. (Ib. p. 307 and 358.) This is the aotus of Illiger. ¶ Simia melanocephala, mono feo. (Ib. p. 317.) These last three species are new. |