Nugae literariae: prose and verse

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a mortat offence Would netther have authorised nor excitod in any Well-constituted mind). Yes, ine scorned and jested atme ut let them that scorn the tartan seis the dirk.' This passage, extracted hom the well-known Talo of tho ANTIQUARY,-a Work Whicli alWays appeared to me to containtho highest compositions and the most imaginative conceptions of the entire series, proudly original as it is, to vhicli it belongs,-thiS paSSage is Very true to nature, and receives no littio Support hom experience. Μen Will better endure any inquisition than into their minor peculiarities, and Susser any Sarcasmrather than at the expense of them. A nerVOus acuteness, a

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morbid irritability, is osten botrayed When these accidental and superficiat qualities are exposed and touched, unknown to thereat character and stri hingly in variance With it. The reasonos tho litile guard We place iapon our temper, When these triflingeccentricities are Sportively ianveiled or criticatly discussed, is simply this, that We are consciolis of their insignificance and of our in ility to de iid them. But the exercise of Wit Where any feeling, hoWeVer uiareasonably capricious, is interested, i the cruel handi ing of a dangerous Weapon. The delicacy of iis use is no justification, and is not seldom moro fatal than iis ruder flourish.-Communities have, is not their Wesi, their tender paris, their corporate pre judices and petulancies, aSweli as the individual: and is aggression bo carried against

them, not more monstrous is the revelage than egregious the

hming spolien, do not remember. And having proposed tomyself a theme though certainly not altogether Without thesolicitations of others,) whicli must involve locat sympathios and prepossession 8, I commenoed with this abrupi quotation to

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one s self, a strict regard to one's personat interests,-a liberalview of honesty, a genemus construction Upon obligation, a rigid sense of advantage, a meek-spirited conceSSion to gain, aquich apprehension of another's ignorance, an ull-prevalling

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been some centuries ago I should have been a Luddito. When achild Ι Was deported to Sussex, the most coarse in iis vulgartongue of counties, as London is os cities. But I cannot deny

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os palaces, senates, and tribunalsi Though I had no great habitos iis language, I had sonio litile os iis articulation. And Irecollected those pure expressions of the city madam and of the bourgeois multitude, Ant it. Disciver. Quite promiscuoUS,sor quite undetermined. All that sori of thing. For ahaid o

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a Varying range of eXpressions : that so immense an area os soli, and so opposite an oviline of boundary, must include a popula tion, paris of Which have no insumce over Others : that ali per- sons of education reject provincialisnis for that sorin and mannorwhicli are standard as having nothing peculiar or striking in them: that good society here, as every Where besides, is lifled upabove the necessity or disposition to resori to that whicli thohumbior classes retain: that this progression is generat, assectingeven these humbler classes in their turn, sirst showing them thata locat torm is not likely in the nature of things to be commonlyunderstood,-then enabling them to discriminate between What is local and what is common to the language, exi giVing them. the consciousness that in clinging to these they are speaking a dialect rather than a language, and last os ali inspiring them Vith an ambition whicli, whilo it suffers them occasionalty to

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draw upon their old phrases and associations,-Sometimes seramusement, and ut Other times as images and echoes of scenes

rinearse what they have been and What they have achieved, topay some of the attention, and to discliarge a feW of the ossicos, that should accompany their decline os life,-leaving it to a stili more charit te solii, to Wind them in their shroud, to ring their

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necessary to revert to la distant evenis. Under What circumstances did that language originate, many of the peculiarities of whicli survive in Our time, Whose thews and sineWs, disjecta membra, are no Where more profusely scattered and devotedlyrotainod than in this pari, and of Whose substance and nexus our distinctive Words, are not unWorthy accretions, but integrat Paris p Thero is no event of history more unsatisfactortly explained, and no event more StupendouSty important, than the disruptionos those barbarous hordes and masses Whicli, breaking like a torrent over Europe, changed the Wholo face of iis institutions, and the entire cast os iis manners. Strictly speaking, certain portions of these fierce invaderS Were European,-Scandinavianand Sarmatian. These, precipitating themselves along the Rhine and the Danube, soon pressed Upon the borders of Asia. Their irruptions, preceding any other, reached as far as the Cimmerian Bosphorus, the present Sea of AZoph. By their setilement in

tho Palus Μaeotis and the aloining regions, they displaced thooriginal possessors, Who Were thus driVen farther on the east.

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Intervals may have et sed susscient to induce a larget uinessos their common origin. They Were most formidabie to eachother, and Warred to mutuat extermination. Α question, indeed,

arises, What Was the late of the aborigones Whom they found 8Τragedies, doubiless, of the most horribie enormity axe happily

This enumeration, hoWever, malles no mention os later encroachmenis, such as that of the Saracens and afterWards of the Turcomans. They belong to another age. The Whole question of theso vast issues froni the ridges of Caucasus and the steppes of Tartary, is most dissiculi, much of their records is apocryphat, and littis of their consequences can be traced. To this hour itforins one of the most baming problems of history, and one of the most inexplicabie impulses Whicli e ver instigated humannature. The political and morat influence of these incursions and setilements can scarcely be inferior to those geographical

A colony of the second irruption is described by histo

to have occupied What Was once denominated tho CimbricChersonesus, but in modern language is called Jutland . Thissproad itself into the istes on iis Western coasi as far as thewell-known Heligoland . The generat name assigned to this race Was Saxon, and of the origin of that name many legendsinform us Witti equia degrees of improbability. It is not easylo determine iis northern and solithern boundaries, though for alimo it might be circumscribed within tho Eydor and the Elbo. Ιt, hoWeVer, Soon commanded an advanced latitude, and we learn that it threatenod Romo and sent sortii iis natives to as great a distanco as Thraco. In the Steswicli depariment of this peninsula there Was a district called Anglen, close to the Ballic Sea. Itbecame usual to speak of this peopte as Saxons and Angles,-

Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.- Vimit.

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afterWards it was usual to Speak of these as common, and Anglo-SaXon expressed the combination. This Was one column of the

Gothic influx, and proves to be that in Which We have a special

Bearing in memory the position and emigrating tendency of the Anglo-Saxons as noW pressed sorWard, probably by othermasses bellinil them ; that they Were noW hovering on the strandos the German Ocean ; and that their strand ran parallel to ourown; We Will en quire into the state os Britain at that period. By this time tho Britons were driven into the Ηighland sof Scottanii, the fasinosses of Wales, the Iste of Μan, and Ireland , by the victorious progress of the Roman arnis. The Gaelic, Urse, and Alanx dialecis, ali announce that these Briton sWere originalty Celis. The Gauls were most likely of the fame great human division. A large population Was, hoWever, lenarid multipliod itself within what we cali England. Whether

We be descended froni them or not, We need not be ashamed of their genius or attainment. Galgacus is reported by an memyto have addressed his army as feW modem heroes could Speah froin the drum-hea d. Tacitus presses their taste and quichness. Juvenal notices their capacity in plea ling causes. Horace, hoWever, Spealis of the Briton as unia med. And Cicero, in Wrilingio Atticus, advises him to prefer any flavo he might sind in themari to the Briton, as he Was so void of mind and unsusceptibio of improvenient. Whatever might have been their pristine State, many Were the advantages of civiligation they derived