time to time, forgets the little she has learned, does not write, read, or work, and leaves all the household duties to her numerous servants, all monetary cares to her husband. The latter goes at daybreak to Galata, spends his day in the office, at Kaviar Khan, or on 'Change, and goes home late at night. In winter, the couple, whether rich or not, visit the theatre, where they have a box or at least the fourth of a box. On Sunday morning, church and a walk offer an excuse for displaying the richest toilette. The embassy balls, which unite all the fractions of society, are naturally attended. So soon as the first beams of the May sun burst forth, everybody flies and settles down either on the quay of Therapia, or at Biyuk-deréh, and YeniKeni, on the shores of the Bosphorus, on the Gulf of Kani-Kdi, or under the shady groves of the islands of Kalki and Prinkipo. The town house is entrusted to a poor family, who in this way get free lodgings, and a wooden house is hired for six months, generally at a very high price, in which the lady shuts herself up for the whole day. She dreams till evening on her eternal sofa, and then goes out in a dazzling toilette, to refresh herself in a coffee-house on the beach. As regards the husband, he goes every morning, in all weathers, in a kaïk or steamer, to Galata. The trip takes two hours, and is either dangerous or uncomfortable. In a kaïk you are exposed to be upset by every puff of wind; on the steamer, three to four hundred persons are packed together in the cabins, on deck, and on the paddle-boxes. At night the husband returns home tired and hungry. Thus people live in summer on the Bosphorus, expensively and uncomfortably. Where the money comes from is an insoluble enigma with many families. On Corpus Christi day everybody hastens from the country into town. The Catholic clergy of the European quarter celebrate this festival with great pomp. On each Thursday and Sunday for a fortnight a procession marches forth from the two churches of Galata and Pera, and proceeds, with various halts at street altars, and under a shower of flowers, through the streets, where houses are adorned with flags and carpets. The boys and girls of the Christian schools carry flags, the sons of the most respectable families appear in the costume of St. John, with a shepherd's staff and sheepskin, or else in that of St. George, helmet and lance. In short, the procession is an Italian one, more theatrical than religious. Several Turkish cavasses pre cede the procession and make way for it, and the banners are followed by a battalion of troops with the band. By the side of the cross, which is borne by a priest, marches a guard of honor, and Turkish officers with drawn sabres surround the Host. A second battalion of troops closes the procession. When there is a halt at an altar and the believers kneel down, the drums roll, the band plays the imperial march, and the soldiers present arms. The intolerance of the Christians forms a disgraceful contrast with the respect which the Turks display for all confessions. The insults exchanged between Greeks and Catholics at every festival would frequently lead to sanguinary excesses if the Turkish authorities did not interfere. On Easter eve the Greeks assemble in the court-yards near their churches, with a lighted taper in one hand and a pistol in the other. For three days they keep up an incessant firing in honor of the Saviour's resurrection. Woe to any Catholic who fell among these pious people! Trampled on, beaten, singed by pistol-shots, the "dog of a Latin" would for a long time bear the marks of Greek fraternal love. The Jews were formerly exposed to such ill treatment at Easter, that they dared not show themselves in public. At the present day the Turkish authorities have taken such severe measures, that only a symbolic insult still occurs. An enormous sheet of paper, on which a caricaturist has drawn a Jew, is carried through the streets, and the Christians throw copper or silver coins at it. The bearers burn the picture in front of a church, and thence proceed to a pot-house to spend the money in a Christian debauch, which generally ends in fraternal knife-stabs. The disappearance of this religious rancor would mark a progress greater than any of those to which we have referred in our article. Leisure Hour. ECCENTRIC ETYMOLOGIES. "AN instinct in some minds, like the special capabilities of the pointer," is a description given of Etymology; but the most successful truffle-hunter of the race could scarcely unearth derivations such as we are about to cluster in this paper. They have been revealed in accidental ways-stumbled upon in old authors, or in modern who have ransacked the old; but, in the regular course eliciting etymologies, they never would have been found at all. An abbot of Cirencester, about 1216, conceived himself an etymologist, and, as a specimen of his powers, has left us the Latin word " cadaver," a corpse, thus dissected. "Ca," quoth he, is abbreviation for "caro;" "da," for data; "ver," for vermibus. Hence we have 66 caro data vermibus," flesh given to the worms! While the reader smiles at this absurdity, it is curious to know that our common word "alms" is constructed on much the same principle, being formed (according to the best authority) of one letter taken from each syllable of the cumbrous Latinized Greek word "eleemosyna." The aforesaid abbot no doubt pronounced some thousands of times during his life the transubstantiating formula, "Hoc est corpus meum;" whence has grown the conjuror's catchword, and slid into the usage of ordinary life in connection with jugglery or unfair dealing, "hocus-pocus." At the abbot's period, also, a clause was extant in the tenure of many English estates, to the effect that the owners might not fell the trees, as the best timber was reserved for the Royal Navy; .but any trees that came down without cutting were the property of the tenant. Hence was a storm a joyful and a lucrative event in proportion to its intensity, and the larger the number of forest patriarchs it laid low the richer was the lord of the land. He had received a veritable "windfall." Ours in the nineteenth century come in the shape of any unexpected profit; and those of us who own estates rather quake in sympathy with our trembling trees on windy nights. Under those trees roamed the red and fallow deer, which had a habit of scraping up the earth with their fore-feet to the depth of several inches, sometimes even of half a yard. A wayfaring man through the olden woods was frequently exposed to the danger of tumbling into one of these hollows, when he might truly be said to be "in a scrape." Cambridge students in their little difficulties picked up and applied the phrase to other perplexing matters which had brought a man morally into a fix. As the season went round those deerscrapes became overgrown with vegetation, and were picturesque discrepancies in the woodland surface. One of the plants that might be found thus helping to cover unsightliness was that named in Latin fumitory, and in English "earthsmoke." Wherefore so called? Because the old botanists believed it to be produced by spontaneous generation from vapors arising out of the earth. Saith one of these credulous folk, "It cometh out of the erthe in grete quantite, lyke smoke: thys grosse or coarse fumositie of the erthe wyndeth and wryeth out, and, by working of the ayre and sunne, turneth intoo thys herbe." Another plant, the derivation of which seems equally curious, is mustard. Etymologists have fought over it, and pulled it to pieces in different directions. "Multum ardet," says one, or, in old French, "moult arde," it burns much. "Mustum ardens," hot must, says another, on account of French mustard being said to have been prepared for table with the sweet must of new wine. But a picturesque story about the name is told as follows: Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, granted to Dijon certain armorial bearings, with the motto "Moult me tarde " I long or wish ardently. This was sculptured over the principal gate, and, in course of years, by some accident the central word got effaced. The manufacturers of sinapi or senévé (such were the former names of mustard), wishing to label their pots of condiment with the the city arms, copied the mutilated motto; and the unlearned, seeing continually the inscription of "moult-tarde," came to call the contents by this title. So, likewise, because a fixed scale of duties were payable to the Moorish occupants of a fortress on Tarifa promontory, which overlooked the entrance to the Mediterranean, all taxes on imports came to be called a tariff. Also, because a certain sea-captain of Charles II's time, commanding the royal ship "Black Eagle," and having the surname Fudge, was noted for telling untruths and bombastic stories, we still exclaim that monosyllable when we have reason to believe assertions ill founded- an unenviable manner of becoming a household word. The adjective "bombastic," just used, has an odd derivation of its own. Originally, "bombast" meant nothing but cotton wadding used for stuffing. Shakspeare employs it in this sense. (The bombazine of ladies' dresses comes from the same root.) Hence, by an easy transition from the falseness of padding a fig"bombast" came to signify "pretentiousness of speech and conduct," as an adapted meaning; and gradually this became the primary and only sense. ure, The old abbot with whom we began could probably have put us on the right road for the derivation of the word "gossip," which in his time bore a meaning perfectly harmless; but now, by the system of moral decadence, which Archbishop Trench has so ably illustrated as influencing human language, has come to be a term of unpleasant reproach. In the part of the country where the writer lives the "gossips" of a child are constantly spoken of, being his god-parents, who take vows for him at his baptism. The connection between these two actual uses of the word is not so far to seek as one might suppose. Chaucer shows us that those who stood sponsors for an infant were considered "sib," or kin, to each other in God: thus the double syllables were compounded. The Roman church forbids marriage between persons so united in a common vow, as she believes they have contracted an essential spiritual relationship. But from their affinity in the interests of the child they were brought into much converse with one another; and as much talk almost always degenerates into idle talk, and personalities concerning one's neighbors, and the like, so "gossips" finally came to signify the latter, when the former use of it was nearly forgotten. It is remarkable that the French "commérage" has assed through identically the same perrsion. "Neighbor," in the abbot's time, was known to mean "the boor who lives nigh to us ;" and here is also a word that has been degraded; for boor then did not represent a stupid ignorant lout, but simply a farmer, as in Dutch now. Likewise it is probable that our abbot knew the modern word "steward" as "stedeward," viz., the keeper of a place, "stow" and "stede" signifying "place" in Anglo-Saxon. The far grander office of "stadtholder" means the same. And, when touching upon French tities, we may speak of the connétable or constable, who was the count that governed the royal stables, and of the maréchal or marshal, from the Teutonic "mark-scal," master of the horse. His charge was the war-horses of the king. Having shown some degraded words, we may fairly look upon these as ennobled ones, raised from the commonality to the peerage. Vulgar expressions have often an odd etymology. There is the phrase "to quiz" a person; concerning which we have seen this explanation: "A certain great personage is said to have exhibited the exercise of a child's plaything called the quiz, in consequence of which the citizens of Dublin and London were for some time ridiculously employed in the same puerile sport whenever they appeared in the streets; whence to quiz a man came to signify to dupe him sportively with a ludicrous mistake." Another expression, to "chouse" a man out of anything, originated from the fact that, in the reign of James I, a Turkish interpreter to the sultan's Embassy in London defrauded the Turkish and Persian merchants of a large sum of money; and the word for interpreter in that language is "chiaous." His official name became attached to his deed, and synonymous with it; but the immortality thereby con-ferred is not quite so humiliating as that of Captain Fudge, being more adherent to the place than to the person. The pace of a horse called "cantering" was once a slang word, derived from the pilgrims' cavalcades to Becket's shrine at Canterbury. A literary journal lately pointed out how the full word is used by Lord Shaftesbury in his "Characteristics" (temp. Charles II); he speaks of "the common amble or canterbury." A schoolboy's letter of the seventeenth century has lately revealed that "chum" is a contraction from "chamber-fellow." of his resemblance to a hog when in sporTwo students dwelling together found tive mood. Porc-poisson" said somethe word unwieldly, and, led by another body who watched a herd of them tumuniversal law of language, they shorten- bling about, for all the world like swine, ed it in the most obvious way. Bishop except for the sharp dorsal fin; and the Fleetwood says that "dandy" is derived epithet adhered. from a silver coin of small value circulated in the reign of Henry VIII, and called a "dandy-prat." "Dunce" comes to us from the celebrated Duns Scotus, chief of the schoolmen of his time. He was "the subtle doctor by preeminence;" and it certainly is a strange perverson that a scholar of his great ability should give name to a class who hate all scholarship. But here was the working of prejudice; for the errors and follies of a later set of schoolmen were fastened on their distinguished head; and the phrase ran, "Oh, that's a piece of dunsery," when they opposed the new learning of Greek and Hebrew. Perhaps the reader has been puzzled, as the writer has been, by the word "navvy" applied to laborers. Why should earth-workers be called navigators? They whose business lay in the element antipodean to water, why receive a title as of seafaring men? Looking into an old magazine the other day, we found that, at the period when inland navigation was the national rage, and canals were considered to involve the essentials of prosperity, as railways are now, the workmen employed on them were called "navigators," as cutting the way for navigation. And when railways superseded canals, the name of the laborers, withdrawn from one work to the other, was unchanged, and merely contracted, ac That scholastic and ministerial badge, the surplice, is said by Mr. Durand to derive its name from the Latin "superpel-cording to the dislike of our Anglo-Saxon liceum," because anciently worn over tongues to use four syllables where a less leathern coats made of hides of beasts; number will suffice. with the idea of representing how the sin of our first parents is now covered by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that we are entitled to wear the emblem of innocence. Sound theology hinted here, and forgotten by Rome when she imposed upon such as our aforesaid old Abbot of Cirencester costly copes and rochets, emblems thus of her own additions to the simplicity of the faith. In his days, likewise, the NormanFrench "poltroon" had a significance obsolete now days when Strongbow was a noble surname, and the yew-trees of England were of importance as an arm of national defence; then the coward or the malingerer had but to cut off the thumb ("pollice truncus" in Latin)-the thumb which drew the bow, and he was unfit for service, and must be discharged. "Malingerer," lately brought much into use by the exigencies of the American war, is from the French "malin gré," and signifies a soldier who from "evil will" shirks his duty by feigning sickness, or otherwise rendering himself incapable in plain words, a poltroon. The common creature of the sea, whose gambols have passed into a jest and a proverb, the porpoise, is so named because The greatest curiosity in the way of derivations which has ever fallen under the eye of the present explorer is that (traced by Archbishop Trench) which connects treacle with vipers. The syrup of molasses with the poison of snakes! never was an odder relationship; yet it is a case of genuine fatherhood, and embodies a singular superstition. The ancients believed that the best antidote to the bite of the viper was a confection of its own flesh. The Greek word "theriac," of the viper, was given first to such a sweetmeat, and then to any antidote of poison, and lastly to any syrup; and easily corrupted into our present word. Chaucer has a line "Christ, which that is to every harm triacle." Milton speaks of the "sovran treacle of sound doctrine." A stuff called Venice treacle was considered antidote to all poisons. "Vipers treacle yield," says Edmund Waller, in a verse which has puzzled many a modern reader, and yet brings one close to the truth of the etymology. It would be easy to enlarge this paper with further specimens of eccentric derivations. A good purpose will have been served if any reader is set upon seeking into the roots of our marvelous English language, the richest and most composite of all tongues; which carries in its words hints of history, and biography, and poetry, unveiling themselves only to the diligent student, but rewarding him with all the deliciousness of discovery. Leisure Hour. THE NEW CAPITAL OF ITALY. A BRILLIANT distinction has been awarded to Florence, once the head of a Medieval Republic, recently the capital of the Tuscan Grand Duchy, but now constituted the metropolis of united Italy. Though highly agreeable to the citizens, this act of preference has not provoked any display of popular enthusiasm, but been received with great sedateness, as the right thing in the right place; just as a Queen of Beauty accepts any fresh homage without surprise, as a tribute to be exacted, not as a privilege to be acknowledged. The selection may be justified on political, military, historic, and traditional grounds, for the capital will have the Apennines as a line of defence from invasion, should it come either from the side of Austria or France; and not less famous has it been in the past than any of the other competing cities, while more prosperous at present, and more promising for the future. "Girt by her theatre of hills, she reaps Her corn, and wine and oil, and Plenty leaps To laughing life, with her redundant horn. Along the banks, where smiling Arno sleeps, Was modern luxury of commerce born, And buried learning rose redeemed to a new morn.' The sovereign will find ample accommodation in the Palazzo Pitti, recently the grand-ducal residence, renowned for its superb gallery of paintings and rare literary collections. Its legislature will hold its sessions in the Palazzo Vecchio. This vast and massive pile is strong and imposing as ever, after its wear and tear of nearly six centuries. It was the seat of the old republican government, and is still overtopped by the tower, the great bell of which used to warn the citizens of danger and summon them to counsel or to fight in cases of emergency. The Lower House will assemble in the Hall of the Five Hundred, Sala de Cinquecento, covered with the frescoes of Vasari and his pupils. Another spacious and richly decorated chamber, on a higher story, Sala de Ducento, hitherto occupied by the municipal body, will be the meetingplace of the Upper House. Delightfully seated in the garden valley of the Arno, at the foot of hills rising in the back-ground into mountains, the city is like a gem set in splended framework. It is hence appropriately called la bella, "the beautiful," from the exceeding loveliness of the site, while its own structures of the olden time have an air of picturesque grandeur, as the castellated mansions of patrician families engaged in civic feuds, which now offer a striking contrast to the modern architecture which the spirit of progress has called into existence. The river, ordinarily placid and smiling, is fed by mountain streams, and hence becomes a rushing flood after heavy rains, occasionally damaging the bridges or carrying them away, overflowing its banks, laying the streets and lower floors of the houses under water, while arresting the railway traffic. On the occasion of a calamity of this kind in the past year, the archbishop invited the people to prayers before the fresco of the Annunciation, in the church of that name, which had the stupid legend inscribed over it in letters of gold, that, failing to complete the picture according to his wishes, angels took the work out of the artist's hands and gave the finishing touches themselves. The birth of "modern luxury of commerce" is rightly referred to the banks of the Arno. In the Middle Ages the merchants were princes, connected by trade with all European countries, keeping large dépôts of goods at the principal ports. They were the bankers of powerful sovereigns, sometimes suffering from giving credit. Our Edward III borrowed till capital and interest amounted to 1,365,000 golden florins, his inability to repay which was a sore discomfiture to the lenders. noble coin, the golden florin, unequalled at the time for beauty, was first issued at Florence in 1254. It bore on one side the emblem of the republic, a lily, and on the reverse the head of the patron saint, John the Baptist. The word florin, now naturalized in our language as the This |