of a false honor, although aware of its insufficiency as regarded the preservation of peace. These were his last words. A long procession followed him to his grave; and the feeling of anger against the Russian, added to the inefficiency of the police, and a deficiency in their numbers, nearly produced an insurrection.

EXERCISE XXI.

CI, CY, SI, AND SY SOUNDED ALIKE.

I have been sitting with Sinclair under the sycamore and cypress trees, watching the cygnets in the pond, and the gardener syringing the plants. Sinclair wished me to praise his cousin Cyril's writings; but, though I detest being cynical, I cannot be a sycophant. Cyril's style is as frothy as syllabub. He uses abstruse terms, but they are only connected syllables; he does not understand their meaning. He calls a circle a cycle, talks of reasoning synthetically, and argues about synopsis and syllogisms; but he does not know that the plural of synthesis is syntheses, and the plural of synopsis, synopses. So again, he thinks he has the learning of a cyclopadia, because, instead of employing easy words, he chooses long ones which are, he supposes, synonyFor instance, he uses sylvan for rural, symphonious for melodious, symmetrical for regular, synchronism for a concurrence of events, syncope In his book, he talks not of the meaning, but the significance, of the systematic rules of syntax; and inserts silly notes on Jewish syndics and syna

mous.

faintness.

for

gogues, and the cylinders found in the Assyrian ruins. As for symbolism and synods, about which he talks so absurdly, they are symptomatic of the age, and persons who have no sympathy with the system to which they belong, fancy, nevertheless, that they cannot be silent upon them.

EXERCISE XXII.

PH SOUNDED LIKE F, OR ELSE SILENT.

Mournful were my feelings when I drove in my phaëton to see the porphyry cenotaph of my old friend Stephen Fowler, and strove to decipher his flattering epitaph. The catastrophe which occasioned his death was brought forcibly before me. I knew that the wisdom of the best physicians, the knowledge to be acquired from the pharmacopæia, or the pharmaceutical experience of the most renowned apothecaries, and the care of men most skilled in pharmacy, could not have prolonged his life; for hydrophobia, like phthisis and the phthisical maladies, in which suffering is caused by the accumulation of phlegm, is a disease but little understood. But as memory recalled his fine physiognomy, his philanthropic character, and the fame of his philological and philosophical discoveries, I said to myself, It is no false phraseology which thus declares, in emphatic though metaphorical phrases, that he is a loss to both hemispheres. Such a phoenix, standing as a pharos to enlighten the world, is indeed a phenomenon. Gentle as a nymph, his words flowed

with the sweetness of the song of Philomel, and the rapidity of the flight of a pheasant. He might have been deemed phlegmatic, but for the flashing of his sapphire eyes, which kindled as suddenly as naphtha or sulphur, and shone with the brightness of phosphorus whenever he apostrophized philosophy. Some, indeed, dared to utter philippics against him. A phalanx of flagitious, sophistical, and pharisaical fools, famous only for farcical attempts at geographical and topographical essays, full of faults in caligraphy and orthography, to say nothing of errors in typography, brought accusations against him, which to repeat would be blasphemy against virtue. They termed him a sophist, and said he resembled those amphibious animals who belong neither to land nor sea. They decried his lectures on phonics; laughed at his hints on philology, the origin of dipthongs, and the meaning of periphrasis and paraphrase; and would not notice his essays on the phenomena of phlogiston, or his suggestion as to the use of camphor in infectious fevers having been known to the later Pharaohs. But theirs were the sophisms; his was the triumph. He stands as the hyphen connecting physiology and metaphysics. Alas, that there should have been no philtre to preserve the life of such a man; that phlebotomy should have failed to save him; and that nought should now remain of him but the model of his skull, taken by a phrenologist, and the photograph with his autograph beneath, to be seen at the Photographic Gallery!

EXERCISE XXIII.

SC SOUNDED LIKE C, AND S; AND SCH LIKE S AND SH.

You ask me to relate succinctly my reminiscences of my predecessor in office. He was a civilian, a scion of an ancient family, once the owners of the Scilly islands, but whose descendants have of late years been reduced to merely decent poverty. Whilst dining with a barrister on the circuit, he died of ossification of the heart, or, as some have thought, of an internal abscess. I have ascertained that his domicile, when his talents were first brought into publicity, was in a crescent in the vicinity of Sion House, at the entrance of the city. It has been asserted, that, before the period of adolescence, he had elucidated the circle of the sciences, written an essay on the style of art called the renaissance, and could discourse upon indiscerptible atoms; but this is an assumption. Sparks of transcendent wit and similes worthy of citation were indeed often elicited from him; but they were evanescent scintillations, the remembrance of which was soon effaced: and this early efflorescence of cleverness, though very fascinating, proceeded principally from the effervescence of youthful excitement. His miscellaneous information was, however, great; and his witticisms were, no doubt, felicitous in expression. They cut like scythes and scissors, and pierced like the pain of sciatica or the stroke of a Damascene scimitar. The keenness and delicacy of his perceptions might

have been compared to the scent of a hound, or the touch of the elephant's proboscis: and, although he was both susceptible and irascible, and was conscious of holding in his hands the sceptre of criticism, he exercised such self-discipline that the oscillations of his feelings were never discernible; for he always remained outwardly in quiescence, never moved a muscle of his countenance, and rarely committed a solecism in civility. He was no ascetic; and, as he doomed himself to celibacy, he sought the solace of society; yet there was certainly a tinge of acerbity in his manner, and his views were circumscribed, though he dogmatized as if omniscience and prescience belonged to him. He seldom condescended to notice the arguments of his disciples; and I have witnessed many scenes in which he behaved no better than a rhinoceros. His principles were, upon the whole, conscientious; yet his plans, which were merely the immature excrescences of his genius, may now be considered not only dead, but in a state of putrescence. Even if they were renascent for a time, they could never be wholly resuscitated, and would soon be superseded by others. I cannot, therefore, rescind my opinion, or acquiesce in your wish that his party and mine should coalesce. We have now the ascendency; and with such discordance between their views and ours, on the subject of the Reform Bill, and particularly the first schedule, it is easy to discern that the attempt would force us to descend from this high position, and would only end in a wider schism.