us. Attired in classical inexpressibles, and
adorned with becoming beards, the interesting
delegates strut into the Greek parliament,
and decree a community of goods and a
general relaxation of domestic restrictions.
One man shall no longer be rich and another
miserable. One man shall no longer selfishly
appropriate broad acres to himself, and
another not have land enough to be buried
in. There shall be no poverty, and no crime,
for everybody shall have everything. Then,
with regard to another delicate question, the
lady senators, in their collective wisdom, decide
that the Protectionist principle is unworthy
of a free and enlightened Republic, and
decree free-trade in love. Some legislation,
however, they believe to be necessary to
redress the inequalities of nature. Accordingly,
they enact that all the handsome
young men shall begin by engaging themselves
to the plain young women, and only
on the termination of this agreeable
preliminary arrangement be permitted to make
a voluntary proposal to the pretty young
women. An analogous condition is to be
required of the corresponding moiety of the
softer sex, and every deviation from
established law is declared to be unconstitutional.

                    FOSSIL GEOGRAPHY.

SOMEBODY has said that there is fossil
history contained in English words. Every
syllable was once itself a word with its own
breath of life in it. There is also a fossil
geography in names of places. Everybody
sees that there is an old meaning in all our
hams and hursts and leys, that every name
of a place has some kind of description of
its past life petrified within it, true or false
now, but once upon a time true fact or true
opinion.

The World meant the round vault. Europe
was perhaps called through Latin the land
euro-opposita opposite the east; or, through
Greek, eur-õps the broad-faced; or, through
Carthaginian, ur-appa the white-faced, because
Europeans are not swarthy as the
African. Africa may have been Greek
aphriken, devoid of cold; or Latin aprica,
the sunny; or Phoenician Havarca, or Avreca,
the country of Barca; or Africa, the ancient
name of Carthage; or Hebrew ephor dust,
because of the sand of its deserts; or Arabic
pheric, an ear of corn, and pharaca, to rub,
because the region now called Tripoli and
Tunis was to the Romans a great granary.
We say nothing of any nymph Europa, of
Afra and Afer, of Afrus or Ifricus, and of the
nymph of Asia. Perhaps Asia was named
after the Ases about Mount Taurus; or from
the Greek azõ, to dry, allied to the Hebrew
az, to burn, alluding to its droughts. Or it
was called by the Phoenicians Asi, meaning
middle, because Asia Minor—all that was
known of old as Asia—used to be described
as in a middle place between Africa on the
right and Europe on the left of those who
sail towards it down the Mediterranean, the
one great sea of the ancients. America was
named, we know, on its discovery in a much
later time after the geographer Amerigo
Vespucci, who was in baptism called
Emmericus, after the saint known as Emmerich by
the Germans. Australia is short for Austral
(or South) Asia; but we may probably consider
the contraction to have been deliberately
made, to represent this great region
by a name wholly its own, as the Southern
Continent.

Now let is look at home. The name of
Britain is derived most probably from the
Phoenicians, who first traded on our shores.
Some tell us that bre tin meant Mount of
Tin, and was the name of an old mine; others
that barat anac was the Land of Tin, which is
in Syriac varatanac. Hebrew brith means a
covenant, but carries a sense of division
which, it is said, might make it applicable to
an island cut off from a continent. Welsh
brith means painted with spots, and the
Britons were perhaps so called because they
were spotted; but there are few who believe
this, as there is nobody who now believes
that Picts were so called because they were
picti, which is to say, painted. Prydain is
Welsh for something civilised, beautiful, and
imposing; this was perhaps ynys prydain,
the Fair Island. Or was prydain an old
chief whose name attaches to the country?
Or is Britain really named from its fabulous
first colonist, Brutus, great grandson of the
pious Æneas? It is from old Celtic bret inn,
a high island, or braith-tuinn, the Land on
the Top of the Waves. That is the derivation
most in harmony with our belief as patriot
sons, who never shall be slaves, of her
who rules, &c. But in Armorican, the
language of Brittany or Little Britain,
brytho means to paint, and britannia means
variegated.

Albion is not named from the Latin for
white because of the chalk cliffs on the
southern coast. The name comes from the
north, and was first given by northern settlers
who touched land near the mountain
regions about Aberdeen. The Highlanders
still know their country as Albuin. But
Doctor Skinner says that Al-by-on is
"the residence beyond the passage of the
water."

Of what use, then, is local etymology if it
is troubled with such notable uncertainty
when it endeavours to account for the
commonest and oldest names? The truth is,
that it fails chiefly in accounting with
certainty for those names which are too old to
be traced back to their origin. We do not
know whether we may find Scythians in
Scots, and see cousins of the Grim Tartars in
the Cymry of Wales. We pass back out of
the ken of history to get such words. But
we have record to guide us in knowing