Horne Tooke showed, more than eighty years ago, that "all our words, even those that are expressions of the nicest operations of our minds, were originally borrowed from the objects of external perception.' Well, if words are borrowed from things, there arises a presumption at least that symbols or letters employed to represent words are also borrowed from things. In point of fact, our ten fingers have determined our decimal system of arithmetic. from the mouth of a child. In short, it becomes | Latin Paulus, by way of example, becomes the babe, baby. Father and child, papa and baby, are Spanish Pablo. The reader may find the semicomplements one of the other, mutual correlatives in labial F fully discussed in Donaldson's "Varroword and fact. And let me remark here also that nianus." The earliest dental, D, combines easily the form of the word Babel is worth reconsideration. with the labials, and is clearly a modified P or half B. Probably all the lip letters in our alphabet, as well as the dentals, spring from only two primaries, one of which is copied from the lips, the other from the hand. They are all mutually interchangeable, not only from one language to another, but often in the same language. In reading different languages no character has given me so much trouble as S. It disappears and reappears in a most fugitive and tantalising manner. But it would be impossible, probably, on any hypothesis to assign the original of each letter. This, however, is not of very great importance. If a beginning is once made, the thing goes on, must go on. "Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute"; it is only the first step which is difficult. What I have here written occurred to me twelve years ago. Some seven years since I was delighted to find that Professor Melville Bell had arrived at similar conclusions. In his pamphlet on "Visible Speech"-my copy has the date 1865-he says:"The idea of representing sounds by letters is no novelty; it is as old as the first alphabet. Nor, perhaps, is the idea new of designing the forms of letters so as to suggest their sounds. Some principle of association-pictorial or otherwise directive These same fingers have been used as copies for the primary elements of the Roman notation. We have I, II, III, IIII, as on clocks and watches-plain imitations of the four fingers. But how did V come to indicate five? Look at your open hand, with the thumb on one side, distended from the four fingers kept together on the other, and you have a natural V. So much for the left hand. Proceed now similarly with the fingers of the right, and they lead us up to ten, represented by X, or two V's. A basis of number is thus obtained from our own bodies, which basis may be amplified and modified to an indefinite extent. I need scarcely observe that the mode of writing four and nine-IV and IX—in our Bibles, for instance, were after improvements. It seems to be unquestionable that obscure and unwieldy hieroglyphs were long antecedent to systematised alphabets. But so was the standard yard measure long preceded by the variable cubit and arm's length. The standard inch rose from a finger's breadth, and this again was measured by barleycorns. Ages passed away before any exact system of weights was elaborated. Thirty-two dried grains of the staff of life" were reckoned as the weight of a small and now very old penny. Twenty of these ill-coined pennies were an ounce in weight, the counterpart of an inch in measure. Weights and measures are not arbitrary, not an invention; they are copied from the human body, or from things very near to us, and essential to human life. So numbers and their symbols from the hand, so primary letters from the mouth. Nature's ways are one and of a piece. They start uniformly from very simple beginnings; and in working out any system we are at first liable to a maximum of error. It is only after innumerable partial failures, slow attempts, that we arrive at a maximum of truth. If we look at alphabets in the light of the organs of speech, we find the lips represented by the most numerous class. But lip-sounds are dependent to some extent upon education and physical surroundings over which we have no control. Upper class education or a level country develop lip-speech, while a good deal of manual labour or a hilly country strengthen the gutturals, or throat-speech. In the relaxing atmosphere of tropical climates the strong consonants of northern languages disappear, and soft sounds increase. If we search for historical sequence among these lip letters, it will appear evident that while B and M are contemporaneous, P is later, and nothing else than B reduced by nearly one-half, that V is later still, since it is numerical and taken from the hand, is left-handed, is easily vocalised into u, which returns again to a semi-consonant power, for the must have guided the framers of all original alphabets. It is even likely that, in many cases, the mouth itself may have been the model copied in the letters. But although this principle of symbolisation may have been kept in view by the designers of primitive letters, it has evidently been quite lost sight of by subsequent alphabetarians. These seem to have been guided merely by associations and convenience. Familiar forms were adopted from old alphabets in reducing new languages to writing, and symbols for unrepresented sounds were selected or invented to harmonise with the other charactors. Then all became arbitrary, as alphabets remain to this day, leaving only here and there faint fossil traces of the original representative principle-like footprints in the buried sandstone-to reveal the secrets of an earlier world." And again, "I went to the same source from which, as I conceive, the earliest alphabetarians derived their symbols, and constructed from the mouth itself, a new set of representative letters." have S. K. ODDITIES OF IMPULSE AND HABIT. THERE are fewe not heard or read of Doctor persons of any literary liking at Johnson's curious habit of numbering and in a manner caressing the posts in Fleet Street. He did it frequently, we are told, and if he happened to pass one of them unnoticed would recollect the omission, and retrace his steps to perform the act, as if in satisfaction of his conscience. What was the motive which instigated, or the feeling which underlay, this absurd practice of the learned doctor? The question may stand over for the present, while we cite other instances of a kindred sort, which may perhaps serve to cast some light upon it. Many years ago a fellow-student of the writer, occupying the same sleeping-room-a lad who afterwards rose to eminence in the legal profession-had the habit, on retiring to rest, of touching with the forefingers of each hand certain objects in the room, calling them at the same time by the several numbers (not names) he had appropriated to them. The objects were ten in number, being articles of furniture, one or two books, the lock of the door, and his slippers. This ceremony he performed as regularly as his devotions, and apparently with as much seriousness, and always the last thing before getting into bed. A celebrated Scotch author was occasionally moved by some strange impulse to leave his study or fireside for his dressing-room, there to take his razors from their case, strop them carefully a certain number of times, and then replace them-having no occasion to make use of them. The late Rev. Mr. - for over forty years a dissenting minister, was the subject of singular impulses, which he never thought of resisting at the moment, whatever may have been his thoughts after he had obeyed them. He might, for instance, be discussing some moot point of theology with a friend during a walk, when he would suddenly, in the midst of a sentence, start off at a run-perhaps to overtake a trotting horse before it reached a particular spot-perhaps to take a flying leap over a gate or a running stream, or it might be a wheelbarrow, or truck, or a bale of goods which caught his attention in the distance. A common thing with him was to challenge his interlocutor, in the midst of an argument, to the performance of some gymnastic feat, which he would himself accomplish forthwith, and then vanish from the field. Going once with a party of friends to see a famous oak, the enormous growth of centuries, while all were lost in admiration at the huge proportions of the tree, he suddenly swung himself up on one of the depending branches, ran along it, and swarming up the trunk like a monkey, was soon lost to view among the foliage; nor did he deign to emerge from his hiding-place, or to respond to appeals from the friends below, until the whole of the party had left the ground. If remonstrated with on these singular outbreaks, he never apologised for them or seemed to think that any explanation was necessary. where he pined in solitude for years, until the revolution of 1830, which put an end to the rule of the priests, set him at liberty. Most of us, at some time or other, have experienced a morbid impulse urging us to do something we ought not to do. Sometimes it is an impulse to laugh when we are under an obligation to be serious-sometimes an inclination to blurt out a fact which good manners requires us to be reticent about. Very frequently it is the impulse to rush into danger which common sense and our natural instincts teach us to avoid. Nervous persons tell us that in the presence of any sudden and unlooked-for peril they can with difficulty resist the temptation to incur it, even when they know the act would be fatal; and they are deterred from exposing themselves to risk by the fear that this nervous impulse should overmaster them. There can be little doubt that many a so-called suicide has been only the acting-out of such nervous impulsesand perhaps the same may be said of many a crime. Very lately the writer was walking near the edge of a lofty cliff with a party of ladies and gentlemen out for a holiday ramble. A turn in the pathway gave us a sudden view of the vale lying far below, and of the river running through it. One of the gentlemen rushed forward as if about to plunge headlong, crying out at the same time, "Save me! save me!" He was caught by a friend before reaching the brink, and, in a state of utter prostration, had to be taken back to his hotel. He assured us that he had no power to resist the impulse that came upon himthat he had long been aware of his complete want of control under such circumstances, and that he would on no account have gone with the party had he known that any such trial was in store for him. A very common impulse, and one which prevails especially with the classes which have to make their own way in the world, is the impulse to be ever doing something. Some men cannot be idle or unemployed; if there is nothing worth doing to be done, they will do something that is not worth doing, or that ought not to be done. The restless backwoodsman of America is described as whittling chips just to relieve his itch for action; even an honourable member of the legislature, we are told, will whip out his big blade during a debate and whittle away at his desk unless some provident functionary has had the foresight to provide a log of wood for the purpose. The same impulse for action of some sort is manifested in a variety of ways. There is a large class of persons to whom perfect rest and quiet are an affliction, culminating in a state of "the fidgets" not to be endured. Perhaps it is this feeling as much as anything to which are due those singular movements and contortions of body or countenance which strike us sometimes in the deportment of certain individuals con--grimaces not always pleasant to look at, and which we need be at no pains to describe. There lived in the neighbourhood of Bath for many years an old sea officer who went by the name of the Whistling Purser, a kind-hearted and benevolent man, who bestowed a large share of his income on the poor and needy, and was the unfailing friend of the distressed. This man was always whistling; morning, noon, and night, save when talking or at his meals, he was piping the one everlasting tune (which nobody ever identified as being a tune) from his rounded lips. No accident or event, however surprising or untoward, interfered with the flow of very questionable melody he stantly poured forth, and of which it was said, as was indeed highly probable, he was himself for the most part unconscious. During the popularly obnoxious rule of the Jesuits under Charles the Tenth, we happened one day to be present in the church of St. Roche, in Paris, when the organist, who had come to officiate at a solemn ceremony, was seized with an irresistible desire to play the old revolutionary and incendiary tune, "Ca ira," and he struck it up accordingly, with a kind of insane fervour, on the combined powers of his instrument. It was a most unfortunate freak for the musician, who was incontinently hauled off to prison, The causes of the strange habits and stranger impulses we have touched upon are not by any means obvious to the inquirer. It may be that such habits are partly hereditary, and as such explainable on physiological grounds, or they may be the half-unconscious expression of a peculiar mental condition rendered recurrent by peculiar circumstances. The poet speaks of a mood of mind in which "The heart luxuriates with indifferent things, a mood, we should imagine, to which few can be total strangers even in years of maturity, and the manifestation of which in little children is their most fascinating charm. However this may be, the causes of the strange, and at times overmastering, impulses which lead to acts as strange, must be looked for, we think, in some unrecognised failure or derangement in the bodily organisation, and consequent defective health. The fact that a dispassionate man will act suddenly in opposition to what would be the sober dictates of his judgment, seems to point to cerebral disorder. One thing, at any rate, is clear, and that is, that the constitutionally healthy and robust are rarely if ever the subjects of these unaccountable impulses. THE Name was uttered, and the deed was done, Foretaste of all. The first drops of that rain That should wash white the world from Adam's stain THE EPIPHANY. "Lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them. ... They presented unto Him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh."--St. Matt. ii. 9-11. Tongue of heaven, whose silence eloquent, To those far off, whose alien eyes intent Thus, speaking through my eastward-gazing eyes, Varietics. For INSANITY AND INTEMPERANCE.-Professor Edgar Shephard of King's College, one of the consulting physicians of Colney Hatch Asylum, says :-"It is beyond a doubt that the taste for spirituous liquors and the habit of intemperance are growing evils, productive of an amount of distress and misery which defy calculation. Certainly, if any one is in a position to measure their effects, a superintendent of a lunatic asylum is. twelve years I have here watched and chronicled the development of the greatest curse which afflicts this country. From 35 to 40 per cent. is a fairly approximate estimate of the ratio of insanity directly or indirectly due to alcoholic drinks. It is scarcely necessary to say that the actual existence of intemperance in an individual member of society does not represent the mischief which this unit inflicts upon it. There is the evil example; there is the resultant poverty and distress to those dependent upon him-new factors of every malady; there is the transmission to posterity not only of various forms of disease-notably derangements of nerve-tissue-but of a proclivity to drink, which is established by competent authorities to be as hereditary as insanity itself." GWEEDORE.-A tourist in Donegal last autumn, reporting his adventures in "Land and Water," mentions some interesting facts as to the relations of landlord and tenant, and the improved condition of the country:-"All the property here What he has done for Gweedore belongs to Lord George Hill. and its surroundings are matters of history. The people now, although with respect to the illicit whisky-still covertly lawless, are in all other respects civilised, orderly, and becoming more industrious every day. Some thirty or forty years ago Lord George found the place a savage wilderness, inhabited by savage tribes. It is no exaggeration to speak thus of the condition of the people as they were in those days. The well-known pamphlet, Facts from Gweedore,' published in 1934, graphically details the sad picture. The most interesting incident during my short stay was the arrival of Lord George Hill himself, the venerable benefactor of the district. He came over early in the day, having set out to take a drive of upwards of twenty miles in an open car through a storm of wind and rain, severe even for Donegal, that might have daunted the youngest and heartiest man among us; but the veteran and father of his tenants had a kind action to perform, so with all his weight of years and snowy head he faced the storm. The chief shepherd of the Gweedore portion of his property, a man who had served Lord George faithfully for upwards of thirty years, had died, and was to be buried this day, and though the tempest kept many of the shepherd's friends from his funeral, the master was there, paying the last tribute of respect he could to his faithful servant. CURIOUS WILLS.-It is a very agreeable thing to be a legatee; sometimes, however, a legacy comes clogged with a condition which takes off a good deal of the pleasure accompanying its receipt. It may not be an intolerable condition having to take the name and arms of an old family, and give up some undistinguished name for an historical or an aristocratic one in order The to inherit a fine estate, but it is often a burden to a widow to know that if she should give way to a natural wish and marry again, she will lose all or the greater part of the money left to her by her husband. On such a condition large estates are constantly being willed, and many of the bequests to widows are only so long as they remain unmarried. Occasionally the condition on which legacies can be enjoyed is that the legatee shall not become or be married to a Roman Catholic. Hon. Mrs. Araminta Monck Ridley, whose will was proved in April, 1869, placed still further restraints on her legatees. She declares "that if any or either of my said children, either in my lifetime or at any time after my decease, shall become or marry a Roman Catholic, or shall join or enter any Ritualistic brotherhood or sisterhood, then, and in any or either of the said cases, the several provisions, whether original, substitutive, or accruing, hereby made for the benefit of such child or children, shall cease and determine and become absolutely void. In olden times estates were often held in England by very curious tenures. One of the most ancient in the north was the tenure by a horn. The superior lord, who might be the king, gave possession of the land by the gift of a horn, and the land was held on condition of its being blown, so as to give notice whenever there was any danger or an actual inroad of the Picts. In modern times we have property held by a more curious tenure still. Mr. Henry Budd, by his will, proved in February, 1862, declares "that in case my son Edward shall wear moustaches, then the devise herein before contained in favour of him, his appointees, heirs, and assigns, of my said estate called Pepper Park, shall be void, and I devise the same estate to my son William, his appointees, heirs, and assigns. And in case my said son William shall wear moustaches, then the devise hereinbefore contained in favour of him, his appointees, heirs, and assigns, of my said estate called Twickenham Park, shall be void, and I devise the said estate to my said son Edward, his appointees, heirs, and assigns." Mr. Budd is not singular in his objection to the moustache. Mr. Fleming, an appraiser and upholsterer of Pimlico, by his will, proved in April, 1869, gives to the different men in his employ £10 each; "but to those who persist in wearing the moustache, £5 only." Testators sometimes even venture to touch feminine attire; for we find Mr. James Robbins, whose will was proved in October, 1864, declaring "that, in the event of my dear wife not complying with my request to wear a widow's cap after my decease, and in the event of her marrying again, that then and in both such cases the annuity which shall be payable to her out of my estate shall be £20 per annum, and not £30." As there was no stipulation as to the time the widow's cap was to be worn, probably Mrs. Robbins found it easy to comply with the letter of the request in her husband's will and yet indulge her own taste in the matter. In contradistinction to this example of a husband compelling his widow to wear the emblems of mourning for him whether she mourned his loss or not, may be placed the provisions of the will, proved in May, 1868, of Mr. Edward Concanen; although the bequest is not made to depend upon their observ ance, the testator says:-"And I hereby bind my said wife that she do not after my decease offend artistic taste, or blazon the sacred feelings of her sweet and gentle nature, by the exhibition of a widow's cap." A very peculiar obligation was imposed on two of his legatees by Sir James South, the astronomer, whose will, with several codicils, was proved in 1868. By his will he gave a pocket chronometer each to the Earl of Shaftesbury, the Earl of Rosse, and Mr. Archibald John Stevens, and in one of his codicils he states they were so given to them in the fullest confidence that they would respectively use and wear them in the same manner as "I am in the habit of wearing my chronometer-namely, in my pantaloon pocket, properly so called "a sort of premium to try and perpetuate the old fashion of carrying the watch in the fob pocket, in vogue when Sir James South was a young man. To quote one instance of a conditional legacy given nearly 100 years ago, we may refer to the codicil to the will of David Hume, the historian, wherein he leaves to his old friend Mr. John Home, of Kilduff (who disliked port, and used to contend that "Home" was the correct spelling both of his own name and Hume's), "ten dozen of my old claret at his choice, and one single bottle of that other liquor called port. I also leave to him six dozen of port, provided that he attests under his hand, signed John Hume, that he has himself alone finished that bottle at two sittings. By this concession he will at once terminate the only two differences that ever arose between us concerning temporal affairs.”—Illustrated London News. IRISH IN SCOTLAND.-Up to 1820 three distinct races of men divided the territory of Scotland. In the Lowlands, excluding Caithness, Anglo-Saxons (so-called) were to be found; Celts dwelt in the Highlands, while Norsemen occupied Orkney and Shetland, and many a fishing village on the coast. After that date an irruption of Irish set in, and this grew to enormous dimensions in 1840. when railways began to be made. From 10 to 30 per cent. of the town population is now made up of the Irish Celtic race. Such a body of labourers, of the lowest class, with scarcely any education, cannot but have a most prejudicial effect. These Irish do not seem to have improved by their residence in Caledonia, and it is certain that by their contact they have deteriorated the native Scot. In the language of the Registrar-General, "It is painful to contemplate what may be the ultimate effect of this Irish immigration on the morals and habits of the people, and on the future prospects of the country." DISPENSARIES.-Sir Charles E. Trevelyan suggests that very sparing help should be given to "Dispensaries from the Hospital Sunday collection, or from any charitable source. These institutions, if properly organised and managed, ought to be self-supporting. The really poor can still obtain gratuitous help, but those able to pay ought to be ashamed of going as paupers. Medical attendance being an universal want of our state of society, especially in connection with family life, the habit of seeking it at the hand of charity has largely contributed to the formation of that pauper dependent spirit which disgraces large sections of our population. Relying upon others for all the contingencies of life, they throw foresight and thrift to the winds, and spend everything in self-indulgence, as it comes in, generally at the public-house. The medical profession is deprived to a great extent of its just remuneration, which reacts to the detriment of the public in a variety of ways, and especially in this, that, owing to the want of legitimate professional openings, young medical men are tempted to get up all sorts of special medical charities not really required, and injuriously competing with the general hospitals. He suggests that no grant should be made to the managing committee of any dispensary which will not undertake to require a small monthly payment from every person benefited by it. This payment would be so small that no person above actual destitution would have any difficulty in making it, while the destitute would either be assisted to pay or would avail themselves of the Poor Law dispensaries. At first the whole of the sums so received should be periodically divided among the medical officers, the other expenses being defrayed by the honorary subscribers; but as the number of members increased further charges should be made upon the fund derived from their contributions, until the institution became self-supporting. SIERRA LEONE.-Governor Pope Hennessy lately made the incautious and unfounded statement that liberated Africans, in the second generation, relapsed into heathenism. This rather startling statement attracted attention from Mr. Hennessy's official position. On inquiry it turns out that according to an elaborate census taken in 1860, there was then a population in Sierra Leone of 41,624, of whom 22,593 were born in the colony, 15,782 were liberated Africans, and the remainder were immigrants belonging to different nations and races. While the Protestant Christians then numbered 30,731, there were only 1,734 Mohammedans and 3,351 Pagans. In other words, the non-Christian element constituted about one-eighth of the population of the settlement. Since then, partly owing to emigration and other causes, the population of Sierra Leone has rather decreased than otherwise. From Bishop Cheetham's Charge delivered in 1871, and other trustworthy documents, it appears that the Episcopalians and Wesleyans alone number between them nearly 29,000, besides Baptists and other denominations. It may therefore be confidently asserted that as regards liberated Africans in the second generation, they do not relapse into heathenism, whatever may be the tone of their Christianity. DR. LIVINGSTONE. -In reply to a correspondent who asks how long Dr. Livingstone has now been absent from England, the following extract from a letter to the editor by Livingstone's friend, the late Sir Roderick Murchison, will give the required information. It was written June 14, 1870. "Dr. Living. stone left London on his last African expedition on the 10thAugust, 1865. He spent the autumn and winter in Bombay, and landed at Mikindarry, in South Africa, a place to the north of the River Rosuma, on the 24th March, 1866. As we know that he was in safety at Ujiji, on the east coast of the lake, 30th May, 1869, we had then proof that he had spent three years and two months in his arduous travels without a single European attendant or friend.' This memorandum of Sir Roderick Murchison connects the record with Stanley's narrative of his search for Livingstone. THE POLICE AND CONSTABULARY FORCE OF ENGLAND.-It is shown by the special returns lately issued that the total police and constabulary force consists of 27,999 constables, of whom 7,818 are constables of boroughs, 9,678 county constables, 9,798 metropolitan police constables, including the dockyards and 705 constables of the City of London. The borough constables are in the proportion of one for every 770 of the population; the county constabulary, of one for every 1,323 of the population; the metropolitan (deducting the dockyards), of one for every 414 of the population of the metropolitan police district; and the City of London, of one for every 106 of the City population. The Royal Irish Constabulary numbers about 13,000, and the Dublin Metropolitan Police over 1,000. POOR MAN'S FILTER.-At the Bethnal Green Museum a simple contrivance was exhibited under the name of the Poor Man's Filter. The idea is not new, and has been often carried out, but not with instructions so explicit as are given by Mr. Richard Sheward, the exhibitor of this specimen. It consists of a common garden or flower-pot, of some 9-inch diameter and 10-inch depth. The drainage hole is stopped (not too tightly) with a piece of clean sponge. A layer of about two inches of animal charcoal is first placed in the pot, then a second layer of clean sand, upon which a layer of three inches of clean, coarse gravel is placed. The pot can be stood over an earthen jar, into which an abundant supply of pure water will filter for all drinking purposes. LEISURE HOUR A FAMILY JOURNAL OF INSTRUCTION AND RECREATION. "BEHOLD IN THESE WHAT LEISURE HOURS DEMAND,-AMUSEMENT AND TRUE KNOWLEDGE HAND IN HAND."-Cowper. claimed Adam; "how came you to be left all alone "Oh, let me go; I must stay here till my ayah comes back," cried the child; yet she did not struggle, |