Civilisation is a word very hard to define so as to formark quite clearly ourselves and other men, whom we allow to be civilised, from those that we deem to be uncivilised. If we draw a definition from the Latin (which, however, gives no authority for the mongrel word 'civilisation') we shall find that it is the state in which men are cives-men of a coetus, from coeo- -or body of men dwelling in a kind of common form of life; but that lets in any tribe of men living together under a chief, and we cannot shut them out by the putting on of laws as a mark of civilisation, for laws are found among all communities of men, great or small.

If we take the tilling of the land and the building of houses as marks of civilisation, we must take in African and other tribes, which we, in our talk and writing, shut out as uncivilised, if not as savages.

If we mark civilisation to be the state in which men have the steam-engine, or printing, or guns, or any of the higher tokens of our civilisation, we make ourselves to have been too lately wholly uncivilised, and yet our fore-fathers were cives without those things of civitas.

And as to printing, I have seen a frame which may be called a print block, of a kind which women in one of the South-Sea islands had made or used for the printing of patterns on tapa cloth; and so those people, whom we call savages, had long ago invented block-printing.

Superstition.-A man who may call a belief or a deed superstition may know what he himself means by it; and he may mean by it a belief beyond that of himself in the ghostly world; but then we will not answer Amen to

his cry of superstition till we know what he does believe, or how far his belief ought to be a standard of faith in ghosthood, by which we mean spiritual being and agency as differing from matter and dynamics, whether in the great mind of minds, God, or in the soul of man, or in angel or ghost, with its work in the world of mind, Unhappily we do not feel helped to an understanding of superstition by the word superstitio, for we do not, for our part, know its primary meaning. Is superstitio formed directly from supersto, or else from superstes? Supersto is to overstand or overbe; but as we cannot tell whether a man overpays till we know how much he ought to pay, so superstitio, from supersto, is undefined till the statio itself is marked. Superstes is overstanding, or overbeing, or outliving; and superstitio from this word, or from the word supersto, as it may mean to overlive, would mean the state of one who overbides or outlives -but what? or whom? Some have taken superstitio as an idle dread-superstantium rerum-of overstanding or heavenly things, and others as the holding of dead men to be still alive, superstites; but heavenly beings were called by the Romans superi, rather than superstantes. Superstant and superstitio, from the root meaning of living, would mean the state of an outliver, rather than a belief in such a state. It is not, therefore, very easy to gather the primary meaning of superstition from the Latin name of it, though it may have meant an overstanding, or a standing farther or longer than might be needful on little points of conscience and behaviour, or what we call over-scrupulousness, a meaning which seems to linger with us in many cases of our usage and defi

nition of the word superstition. It may be the overmuch of belief, as rated from our much or little of faith in ghosthood. To Tacitus the Christian faith was a deadly superstition (exitialis superstitio), and to us, as Christians, his polytheism would be as bad a one. A traveller of a Christian land has laughed at the so-taken superstition of some Mohammedans in their prayers to God in a storm at sea, and, if we all held his opinion of superstition, we might as well cut out of our Prayer-book the 'Forms of Prayer to be used at Sea,' if we might not cast away the whole book itself. 'Most of the Malays are Musselmen' (says a writer, 1851)—though for Musselmen he should have written Musselmans, as-man is not the English man-'and extremely superstitious, and believe that the wind can be controlled by their holy men. On seeing a waterspout they prostrated themselves on the deck, imploring their gods, with the loudest vociferations to vouchsafe their interference.' If he would say that the superstition of the Musselmans was in that they prayed to their gods instead of to God, his words would only show how recklessly and untrustworthily superstition is imputed to men of another speech, for if the Koran teaches anything it is the oneness of the Godhead.

Can the reader give a good for-marking (definition) of superstition?

A river.-A man who was angry against my little book on speech-craft challenged me to substitute a word for river, a not very easy task which I had never thought of undertaking, as, to tell the truth, I do not clearly understand on what definition a river is so called, as differing

from streams which are not rivers, whether brooks, bourns, becks, rills, or others. I once, in the hearing of two railway passengers, happened to call the Frome by Wareham a river, and one of them said to the other, 'There, they call that stream a river,' as if a stream, to be a river, must be broader than that. But how broad? or how is a river to be defined upon its breadth at some point in its length?

There are some high points of the Thames where it is narrower than the lower end of the Frome.

The Latin source of river will not help us to a clear definition of it. Rivus means a stream, and Virgil gives it for the small stream of water sent out in the watering of land.

The Italian riviera is a shore, and the Rialto Bridge at Venice leads to the island called the Rialto (for Riv'alto), the High shore, and the French rivière is as unformarked from other streams as is our river.

Is a river a stream which falls into the sea, and not into another stream? A girl was lately snubbed by a school-inspector for calling a broad stream a river instead of a confluent; but then, if a side-stream, however broad, be not a river, neither is the Ohio, or the Missouri, which falls into the Mississippi, a river; though the Missouri is called 'Great,' by the Cree word missou, which means great, in the name of the Mississippi (missou-seepee), the Great water; and if the bare falling into the sea makes a stream a river, a thread of water, which falls into the sea a mile from its source is a river.

Most likely the definition of a river must be shapen

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upon watershed risings and sea-side outfalls; but it is not easy to give a good clear one.

I believe that the Frome has a good right to the name river, as it drains a basin which reaches from the English Channel up to a watershed that sends off another stream on its other side to the British Channel below Bridgwater.

I might call a river a main-stream, a very unclear definition of it.

Public, and public property.—The word public is a word of so loose a use that, although its meaning may be close enough for common talk, yet when we bring it into questions of right and law, as those of the handling by the State of what may happen to be called public institutions, public property, and public accommodations, and the claims of the public on the services of men, we should understand what is public or what we mean by the word public. The Church, we are told, is a public institution, and its endowments are public property, and the public have a right to deal with it as it will; just as if the use of everything that is called public, from a public path to a public vehicle, belonged fully and freely to every man in the kingdom.

Now the word public (pop-ulicus) means belonging to every one, for the root of the word is found in Celtic speech, though it was lost by the Latin,-in pop, now pob, which means every, each, as pob ceiniog, every single penny, and pawp, pawb, all: 'Wrth hyn y gwybydd pawb mai disgyblion i mi ydych,' By this shall all (men know that ye are my disciples.-Matt. xiii. 35. 'A phob