29.- Last Poems of ELIZABETH BARRETT BROwning.

With a

Memorial, by THEODORE TILTON. New York: James Miller. 1862. 16mo. pp. 242.

Most of these poems were left in manuscript by the author. Some of them are among the best of her minor poems. Several have that union of masculine vigor with the profoundest womanly tenderness, which we could trace more and more in the last years of her life, and which marked the culmination of her powers. We have so recently discoursed at length on the peculiar traits of her genius, that little now remains which we should wish to add. Mr. Tilton's "Memorial" is a warmly appreciative and at the same time a discriminating essay on her character and poems, and especially on her character as illustrated by her poems.

30. A Dictionary of English Etymology. By HENSLEIGH WEDGWOOD, M. A., Late Fellow of Christ College, Cambridge. Volume I. (A-D.) With Notes and Additions, by GEORGE P. MARSH. New York: Sheldon & Co. 1862. 8vo. pp. 247.

THIS is a dictionary, not to be consulted, but to be read through both for delight and for instruction. It is one of the most fascinating books of the time. We can best define it by terming it a biographical dictionary of words. Biographical we say; for words have life, and sometimes they die before the language to which they belong; and while they live, they move, they drop and take on significations, they are called to new services with the growth or modification of science, art, and social refinement. Conversely, the biography of words embodies large and momentous sections of human history. How much, for instance, is told by the contrast between the Latin privilegium and the English privilege, the former capable of a bad sense [a priva lex against an individual], as when Cicero complains of the demolition of his house as a privilegium, the latter indicating that Christian civilization, whatever it may do, will recognize exceptions only in favor of individuals! How much of spiritual history is comprehended in the fact that Tertullian, the Christian, was the first writer known to have used tribulatio to denote affliction, thus marking the advent into Christian consciousness of the threshing ministry for God's wheat of what were previously regarded only as burdens and sorrows! Of such items of history the volume now before us is full. English author must have made these inquiries the study of a lifetime, and the additions by our learned countryman are such as we should have anticipated from his previous labors in this department. Were

The

the reconstruction of our orthography on phonographic principles possible, which it is not, and were it on other grounds expedient, a sufficient and conclusive objection would be found in the bearing which it would have on the history of thought. It is our silent letters and our anomalous combinations of letters that connect our words with their origin, and make them waymarks of the progress of our race.

We notice very few of the words in this volume, to whose treatment we could take exception; but there are one or two with regard to which we are inclined, not without diffidence, to dissent from the author. One of these is the word assess, of which he writes:

"To Assess. The Lat. assidere, assessum, to sit down, was used in Middle Lat. in an active sense for to set, to impose a tax; assidere talliam; in Fr. [French] asseoir la taille, to fix a certain amount upon each individual.”

We are inclined to derive our sense of assess from one of the senses of assidere, to sit by. In a tribunal, while the principal judge was occupied wholly in his judicial functions, it fell to the lot of his by-sitters, or side-judges, to manage the financial concerns of the court, to determine costs, fines, and damages, and to apportion the rates to be paid for the public service. From the position of these men as assessors, their distinguishing office came to be designated by the corresponding verb assess.

"Calamity. Lat. calamitas, loss, misfortune. Perhaps from W. [Welsh] col, loss, whence Lat. incolumis, without loss, safe."

Is not this word more probably derived from calamus, a reed, and is there not reference to the reed broken by the wind? Bacon derives it from calamus, a stalk, and says that it denotes the blighted condition in which the corn cannot "get out of the stalk," so that the unhappy cultivator has only the stalk for his harvest, a calamity indeed. We doubt whether the whole story is told in the following:"Dint. - Dent. - Dunt. All imitative of the sound of a blow. To dunt, to strike so as to make a hollow sound, to beat, to palpitate.-Jam. Icel. [Icelandic] dyntr, dynt, shaking up and down; dynkr, a hollow sound, as when a stone is thrown into the water; Sw. [Swedish] dunka, to beat heavily. Sc. [Scotch] to dump, to beat or strike with the feet. Sw. dimpa, to fall."

We cannot but think that dint, dent, and dunt are connected in their origin with dens, dentis, and denote, primarily, a tooth-mark.

These doubts, to which we might add a few others, we propose, not by way of fault-finding, but barely as specimens of the fruitful questionings which it is one of the offices of such a book to raise.

NEW PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Two Dedication Sermons, delivered in Wilton, N. H., before the First Congregational Church and Society in that Town; by Rev. Jonathan Livermore, Pastor, January 5, 1775; and by Rev. Abiel Abbot Livermore, Pastor of the First Congregational Unitarian Church in Yonkers, N. Y., January 10, 1861. New York. 1861.

Christ stilling the Waves. A Sermon preached in King's Chapel, Boston, February 2, 1862, the Sunday after the Funeral of the Hon. Samuel A. Eliot. By Rev. Henry W. Foote. Cambridge. 1862.

A Sermon for the Hour. Preached on Sunday, February 23, 1862, in the First Unitarian Church of Chicago, by Rev. Charles B. Thomas. Chicago.

1862.

Addresses at the Inauguration of the Professors in the Theological Department of Yale College, September 15, 1861. New Haven. 1861.

The Good Samaritan in Boston: a Tribute to Moses Grant. From a Discourse by Rev. William R. Alger, delivered January 26, 1862. Boston. 1862.

The Pulpit and Rostrum. Sermons, Orations, Popular Lectures, &c. Andrew J. Graham and Charles B. Collar, Reporters. No. 29. Oration by George Bancroft, on the Twenty-second of February, 1862. To which is added Washington's Farewell Address. No. 30. The Sabbath and its Relations to the State, by the Rev. Alexander H. Vinton, D. D. The Concluding Discourse of the "Sabbath Series," delivered in St. George's Church, New York, March 9, 1862. New York: E. D. Baker. April, May, 1862.

Man's Twofold Life included in the Promise of Godliness. A Discourse preached at the Installation of Rev. William Irvin, as Pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Rondout. By John Proudfit, D. D. New York. 1862.

Life of Captain Nathan Hale, the Martyr-Spy of the Revolution. Boston: American Tract Society. 1862.

Words of Healing for the Sick Soldier. By Mrs. H. E. Brown. Boston: American Tract Society. 1862.

How to come to Christ. By Rev. J. S. Sewall. Boston: American Tract Society. 1862.

How to become a Christian. By Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. Revised by the Author. Boston: American Tract Society. 1862.

:

Hallelujah the Voice of Thanksgiving for the Army and Navy of the Republic. Boston: American Tract Society. 1862.

[Supplement to the Friend.] Morning-Star Papers. By Rev. Samuel C. Damon. Honolulu. 1861.

Letter to the Editor of the Atlantic Monthly. By Charles Beck. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1862.

Emancipation in the West Indies. By F. B. Sanborn. Concord. 1862. Remarks of the Hon. B. F. Thomas, of Massachusetts, on the Relation of the "Seceded States" (so called) to the Union, and the Confiscation of Property and Emancipation of Slaves in such States, in the House of Representatives, April 10, 1862. Boston. 1862.

Southern Slavery and its Relations to Northern Industry: a Lecture delivered at the Catholic Institute, in Cincinnati, January 24, 1862. By Henry Reed. Cincinnati. 1862.

Philosophia Ultima. Charles Woodruff Shields. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1861.

The Cattle-Disease" Panic: Pleuro-Pneumonia, Tight Barns, etc. From the "Massachusetts Ploughman." Boston. 1862.

The London American-Extra. George Train and a British Jury. London. April 9, 1862.

The Parish Will Case. Argument of John K. Porter, in Behalf of the Respondents, in the Court of Appeals of the State of New York, January 10, 1862. Albany: J. Munsell. 1862.

Argument of Hon. Henry F. French, of Boston, March 12, 1862, before the Joint Committee of the Legislature of Mass., on the Petition for the Repeal of " An Act in Relation to the Flowage of the Meadows on Concord and Sudbury Rivers." Boston. 1862.

The Hoosac Tunnel and Troy and Greenfield Railroad. Boston. 1862. The Road to Ruin: or, The Decline and Fall of the Hoosac Tunnel. By F. W. Bird. Boston. 1862.

Memorial of the Union Railway Company to the City Council of the City of Cambridge. Cambridge. 1862.

Argument of Henry W. Paine, Esq. upon the Petition of Thomas Stearns and others, for an Act of Incorporation for the Broadway Railroad Company, before the Committee on Railways and Canals, Tuesday, February 24, 1862. Phonographic Report by W. Bacheler. Cambridge. 1862.

Debate in the Massachusetts Senate, upon an Act to incorporate the Cambridge Broadway Railroad Company, Friday, April 25, 1862. Phonographic Report by W. Bacheler. Cambridge. 1862.

Address of Charles D. Drake, on the Birthday of Washington. Delivered at the Union Commemoration, in St. Louis, February 22, 1862. St. Louis. 1862. The Present Attempt to dissolve the American Union a British Aristocratic Plot. By B. New York. 1862.

Second Part. The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus under the Constitution. Philadelphia. 1862.

Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Utah, of the Eleventh Annual Session, for the Years 1861-62. Great Salt Lake City. 1862. pp. 152.

Our Flag. A Poem in Four Cantos. By T. H. Underwood. New York: Carleton. 1862.

Library of Select Novels. No. 220. The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and

Robinson. By One of the Firm. By Anthony Trollope, Author of "Orley Farm," "Framley Parsonage," "Castle Richmond," "The Three Clerks," "Doctor Thorne," "The Bertrams," &c., &c. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1862. pp. 136.

Can Wrong be Right? By Mrs. S. C. Hall. Complete. Boston: T. O. H. P. Burnham. 1862. pp. 143.

The Old Lieutenant and his Son. By Norman Macleod. Boston: T. O. H. P. Burnham. 1862. pp. 130.

The Monitor. Vol. I. Nos. 1-6. Concord: Albert Stacy. 4to. pp. 1-48. Chambers's Encyclopædia. A Dictionary of Useful Knowledge for the People. On the Basis of the latest Edition of the German Conversations Lexicon. Illustrated by Wood Engravings and Maps. Parts 44-48. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. pp. 129-448.

The Book of Days: a Miscellany of Popular Antiquities, in Connection with the Calendar; including Anecdote, Biography and History, Curiosities of Literature, and Oddities of Human Life and Character. Parts I. and II. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. pp. 1-128.

Index to the New-Englander, Volumes I. to XIX. (1843 to 1861), containing an Index of Authors, a Topical Index, an Index of Books noticed and reviewed, and a List of Engravings. New Haven: William L. Kingsley. 1862. pp. 152.

Catalogue of the Officers and Students in Yale College, with a Statement of the Course of Instruction in the various Departments. 1861-62. New Haven. 1861.

Obituary Record of Graduates of Yale College deceased during the Academical Year ending in July, 1861, including the Record of Ten who died the Year previous, hitherto unreported. Presented at the Meeting of the Alumni, July 24, 1861. New Haven. 1861.

Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the College of New Jersey for the Academical Year 1861-62. Princeton. 1862.

University of Michigan. Catalogue of the Officers and Students for 1862. Ann Arbor. 1862.

Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. 1861-62. Chambersburg. 1862.

Report of the Committee of the Overseers of Harvard College appointed to visit the Library for the Year 1861; together with the Accompanying Documents. Submitted January 30, 1862. Boston. 1862.

Report of the Committee of the Overseers of Harvard College appointed to visit the Observatory in the Year 1861; together with the Report of the Director. Submitted February 20, 1862. Boston. 1862.

Annual Report of the Trustees of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, together with the Report of the Director, 1862. Boston. 1862.

Rules and By-laws of the Board of Overseers of Harvard College: to which is appended the College Charter, with sundry Acts and Instruments relating

to the Powers and Duties of the Overseers. Boston. 1862.

Fourteenth Annual Report of the Trustees of the Massachusetts School for Idiots and Feeble-Minded Youth. October, 1861. Boston. 1861.