nationality of its original settlers. The New-Englander's line of Exodus can be traced infallibly by the vestigia of Puritanism imprinted upon family given names, by the Jothams, Abilms, Abishags, Zerubbabels and Melchisedechs which betray the hereditary influence of the old-time Scripture-genealogies. The New York name, Paulding, which was originally English— Pawling—occurring in a Dutch settlemont, was variously translated into Pauldinck, Paulden, and could only finally compromise with the instincts of association around it by retaining the characteristic d of the Dutch, and remaining Paulding. In the same way, the names of Frenchmen and Canadians who came into New England, were forced to break down before the inveterate cacology of the colonial people, and assume something like an English form; so that the brave Bon Coeur became Bunker, Pibandiere was transformed into Peabody, Bon Pas was sunken in Bumpus, and (' O! what a fall was there!') the aristocratic De Z' Hotel sneaked away in the guise of the mean Yankee Doolittle!15

It may be shown, likewise, that even our most strange, hideous, and outlandish names of places, have their origin, and a certain value, in historical association, or are due to some local cause that is distinctly to be traced. The apparently unmeaning Pen Tan, which casual observers would take to be an Indian word, is actually an abbreviation of Pennsylvania-Yankee, and marks the spot where the New England Exodus met the spread of the Germans and Quakers upou a common ground. The best catalogue we have ever seen of our nondescript Western names of places is embodied in Mr. Elbert H. Smith's great Epic,16 among a great profusion of other rare gems of verse The list is certainly hard to match:

'Hard Scrabble, Fair Play, Nip and Tuck, and Patch,
"With Catholic, and Whig, and Democrat to match,
Blue River, Strawberry, and Hoof Noggle steep
And Trespass, and Slake Rag, Clay Hole deep;
Bee Town, Hard Times, and Old Rattlesnake
Black Log, Shingle Ridge, Babel and Stake;

15 Captain Marryatt's Diary. i«Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-Shc-Kia-Kiak; or Black Hawk, and Scenes in the West. A National Poem in Six Cantos.

Satan's Light House, Pine Hook, and Dry Bone,
And Swindler's Ridge with hazels o'ergrown;
Buzzard's Roost Injunction, and the Two Brothers,
Snake Hollow Diggins, Black Jack, Horse and others,
As Small Pox, Buncombe, and Peddler's Creek,
And Sower Coon, Stump Grove, and Red Dog bleak,
Menominee, Rat-tail Ridge, may measure out this sonnet,
With Bull Branch, Upper Coon—pour no curses on it!'

Yet, each one of these names is a page from the chronicles of the settlers of those regions. The peculiar physical features of a country, its climate, animals, and vegetable productions, the circumstances of the colonists, their trials, hardships, and misadventures, their religious faith, their patriotic impulses, and all the interests of nationality, find a durable record in the names of places.17 Even had no history been written of the settlement of the North-west, the linguistic student would be able to trace the French from the lakes to the Gulf simply by the spelling they have given to adopted Indian names, as, for instance, the soft ch in Michigan, Chenango, the cm in Missouri, the missing TTin Ouachita, and the accent and elided s in Arkansas, Illin6is.18 The curious observer can very nearly trace the period of settlement of the various belts of the country, as well as the character and circumstances of the colonists, by the names that attach to localities. The great and permanent landmarks, the mountains, rivers, lakes, and bays, have retained their original nomenclature, and are almost universally called by Indian names; but all the improvements wrought by civilization, all political divisions and immediate growth, have names that indicate their history. The counties in Virginia, mark, by a regular progression, the advances made by settlement during the colonial, the revolutionary, and the modern periods. So again, we can almost read the history of the building of Baltimore in the names of its streets.19 The town was first laid out in 1730, and called Baltimore, in honor of the Lord Proprietary, while the few streets of the original plat were named with a view to existing circumstances rather than in obedience to out

17 De Quincey on Style. 18 Noah "Webster. Introduction to Dictionary.

wSee 'The Stranger in Baltimore, by J. F. Weishampal, Jr.'—A valuable Hand-book.

side impulses. Early Colonists, says De Quincey,'live under influences the most opposite to those of false refinement; coarse necessities, elementary features of peril or embarrassment, primary aspects of savage nature, compose the scenery of their thoughts, and these are reflected by their names.' Thus, for instance, Calvert street had originally a simple local name; Charles street, was Forrest street; and Gay, Bridge 6treet. Then, after nature was a little subdued, colonial patriotism became audible, giving us Yorke, George, Queen, Pitt, Chatham, Frederick, Tammany, and other streets. Presently came the Revolution, and under its stirring influences, the piety and poverty of New Church street were forgotten in the memorable name of Lexington; Indian Tammany and British Chatham were merged in Fayette; Queen became Pratt; George, Water; Saint Paul's, Saratoga, &c. The later crop of the war and its sequel appears in Franklin, Howard, Conway, Barre; in Liberty, Constitution; in Smallwood, Putnam, Pulaski; and in Eutaw, Camden, Cowpens, &c. The feelings of the second war with England, and of the Mexican war, are similarly perpetuated in the names of our streets. And what we have here illustrated from the example of Baltimore, has taken place all over the country; so that he who glances at a county map of the United States may read as he runs something of the history of each locality.

Now, assuming it for a fact that the changes a people have undergone are authentically inwritten in the words they use and the style in which they collocate them, it remains to be determined whether those departures from the received standard of English speech, which are known as Americanisms, indicate a change for the better or a change for the worse. We are constrained to say, after a.careful examination of the subject, and a zealous endeavor to rid ourselves of prejudices of every kind,, that the conclusions we have come to are not at all favorable to our own style of speech. We have found Americanisms to be not only departures from, but perversions of, the best formsof the English language,—perversions not only unlicensed, but indefensible, unseemly, and vicious. We have found that they have not given as a better language than the English, but have crippled our speech seriously, and made it far inferior to the mother tongue in force, in flexibility, in rhythmic proportion, in precision and correctness, and in idiomatic life and character. The English archaisms which we have retained add nothing to the strength and beauty of our speech. The solecisms we perpetrate do not compensate by increase of force for the loss of grammatical order which they occasion. The barbarisms which we have introduced have been, for the most part, the vulgar eflbrts of ignorance struggling against incompetency of expression, rather than the untrained exuberance of youth and vitality. The lawlessness of our innovations has broken forth rather in distinctive than in expansive efforts. If we have invented new words, and perverted the meaning of old ones, we have at the same time, and in a disproportionate degree, let drop out out of sight, and consigned to disuse and oblivion, many valuable niceties of expression and treasures of idiom, which are still retained in currency and vital force by the parent stock. While we have revelled in slang, and rioted in the utmost extravagance of hyperbole and figurative language,'picking up wit as pigeons peas,' we have wilfully neglected the principles of perspicuity, and turned a cold shoulder to the precedents of good grammar. We have been like the spendthrift, dilapidating our patrimony at the same time that we have wasted our income in illicit expenses. Wo have indeed been ' at a great feast of language', but have brought away with us little else besides the heel-taps, and broken scraps of meat.

To be sure, we have the right to claim that there is much less difference in this country than in England between the speech of the most vulgar and that of the most cultivated classes; but this equalization of our language has levelled ,downwards as well as upwards, and, while it has sensibly elevated the speech of the lowest, it has in at least an equal measure depraved the speech of the more refined. In seeking a medium, we have lowered the standard of excellence, and banished, as an object of aspiration, that ideal perfection of style which ever solicits the ambition of genius.20 There have been,

*°' The ripest scholars among us acknowledge the fact that in the best authors and public speakers of England, there is a variety in the choice of exand still are, men very competent to teach us better; but their influence is weak even -when exerted to its full extent, and has been further enfeebled by the characteristic reserve of the American scholar. Our actual teachers, those whom we have admired, applauded, and patterned after, have done us far more harm than good. Superficial scholars who re-hash, without understanding, the results of German criticism; eager politicians; preachers of' sensation'; authors, floating, true bubbles as they are, upon the plaudits of to-day,' a moment seen—then lost forever'; editors who make tinsel and clap-trap their deliberate study for the sake of profit; so-called philosophers, who are sedulous only to live elbow-deep ' in the alms-basket of words', and 'to draw out the thread of their verbosity finer than the staple of their argument';—such have been our actual teachers, under whose leadership our eager youth have necessarily gone helplessly and hopelessly astray from the right path, and wandered into horrible wildernesses of barren conceit and ridiculous rhodomontade. We have mistaken ornament for substance, and have fancied that to be richness which was naught but the tawdry subterfuge of poverty. Guided by these false lights,— the mere will o' the wisps of perverted doctrine, blind incompetency, and a barbaric cachexy of revolting vain glory,—we have wasted our periods of useful culture in grasping at a swollen coxcombry of speech that is empty of all true merit, and puffed up with all superfluities of naughtiness; we have skimmed the cauldron when we should have stirred it deeply, and filled our poor bellies with froth and scum instead of bread and meat and 'jolly good ale'. These teachers, while they have seduced us into squandering our sterling patrimony in the hearty English speech, and wandering feebly and helplessly forth from the right acceptation of words, have given us nothing in exchange for such sacrifices but a counterfeit and ridiculous jargon, a 'sermo obstreperus, ventoms et versipellis', fit

pressions, a correctness in the use of the particles, and an idiomatic vigor and racines8 of style to which few or none of our writers can attain. The unfortunate tendency to favor the Latin at the expense of the Saxon elements of our language, which social and educational causes have long tended to foster in the mother country, has with us received an additional impulse from the great admixture of foreigners in our population.'—Bartlett Introduction.