To the minute philosopher, who

holds that things are strange in proportion to their commonness; that the fit attitude for the human mind is that of habitual wonder; and that true science, so far from explaining phenomena, only shows that they are inexplicable, or likely to be so, not merely as to their final but as to their proximate causes ;— to him, I say, few things seem more miraculous than human speech. He has not time to ascend to the higher question of the metaphysics of language; not even to that first question-How did the human race ever make the surprising discovery that objects might be denoted by symbols, by names P-and how did they communicate that discovery to each other? Puzzling as that question is, he is stopt short of it in wonder by a puzzle equally great-by the mere physical fact of articulation, which man has in common with the parrot and the daw. He watches in mute astonishment his own baby's first attempts at speech; and asking wise men the cause thereof, is told that it is done by the faculty of imitation.' Butthough quite enough of a Lockite to believe that the child can pronounce no words but what it hears, he is aware that to state a fact is not to explain it; and that man possesses the faculty of imitation,' leads him no farther forward than man can copy,' unless three long Latin words contain by their own nature more wisdom than two English ones. He turns to books which treat of the philosophy of

voice, like Mr. Hunt's (of which more hereafter), and reads there how one vowel is produced by a certain position of the lips, and another consonant by another position of the tongue, and so forth; and he is interested and instructed, but gets no light whatsoever thrown on his hourly puzzle of Why and How? Why does little Tommy imitate? What puts it into his small brains? And how does he imitate? By conscious reflection, by experiment, by what?

Desperate, he determines to begin at the beginning, and goes to see the Talking Fish. There, at least, he will find articulation in its most rudimentary, and perhaps unconscious state. And on the whole he is not disappointed. He seeswhat is always worth seeing-an animal new to him; a seal ten feet long, beautiful and graceful; he submits to its ancient and fish-like smell, having submitted to that of its English cousins many a time. He learns that its generic name is Stenorynchus, and accepts the same as denoting the narrow oblong nostril, wherein at the first glance it is seen to differ from the common seal. He sees without surprise that it is most docile, affectionate, and playful; and recollects as he watches it, pleasant days on a certain millhead, when Peter' used to come to the whistle, surging along like a great black swan, with head erect, cooing and grunting to be carried, like a great bolster, under his master's arm down to the clear

VOL. LX. No. CCCLV.