that its derivation from a certain absconding
Mr. Moses (who broke the law of his great namesake through a blind
admiration of his example in spoiling the Egyptians) was only a new
instance of that tendency to mythologize which is as strong as ever
among the uneducated. _Post, ergo propter_, is good people's-logic; and
if an antecedent be wanting, it will not be long before one is invented.

If we once admit the principle of _onomatopoeia_, the difficulty remains
of drawing the line which shall define the territory within which those
capable of judging would limit its operation. Its boundary would be
a movable one, like that of our own Confederacy. Some students, from
natural fineness of ear, would be quicker to recognize resemblances of
sound; others would trace family likeness in spite of every disguise;
others, whose exquisiteness of perception was mental, would find the
scent in faint analogies of meaning, where the ordinary brain would be
wholly at fault. In the original genesis of language, also, we should
infer the influence of the same idiosyncrasies. We were struck with this
the other day in a story we heard of a little boy, who, during a violent
thunder-storm, asked his father what that was out there,--all the while
winking rapidly to explain his meaning. Had his vocabulary been more
complete, he would have asked what that _winking_ out there was. The
impression made upon him by the lightning was not the ordinary one of
brightness, (as in _blitz_, (?) _eclair_, _fulmen_, _flash_,) but of
the rapid alternations of light and dark. Had he been obliged to make
a language for himself, like the two unfortunate children on whom King
Psarnmetichus made his linguistic experiment, he would have christened
the phenomenon accordingly.

Mr. Wedgwood has by no means carried out his theory fully even in
reference to the words contained in his first volume, nor does the
volume itself nearly exhaust the vocabulary of the letters it includes
(A to D). Sometimes, where we should have expected him to apply his
system, he refrains, whether from caution or oversight it is not easy
to discover. The word _cow_, which is commonly referred to an imitative
radical, he is provokingly reserved about; and under _chew_ he hints
at no relation between the name of the action and that of the capital
ruminant animal.[a] Even where he has derived a word from an imitative
radical, he sometimes fails to carry the process on to some other where
i