484 Wiscojisin Academy of Sciences^ Arts, aiid Letters. 



So slio would name liiin Star, or its variant Sterns. Should 

 that brightest of stars in her eyes have proved too good to live, 

 she had a still better epitaph, also from Plato: 



"Thou wert the morning star to all the living 



Ere thy young life had sped, 

 Now, like tne evening star, thou 'rt giving 

 New lustre to the dead." 



Some names represent the ecstasies of voung mothers and 

 perpotup.te them. One of those blessed women beholding in her 

 infant the best of v/hat she had read in romances realized, 

 called him her rom.ance — Romanzo. Another, admiring the 

 Old Testament knight, — most without fear and without re- 

 proach, the Chevalier Eayard of tlie Bible — called her man- 

 child the light of God, Uriah. We cannot see the name de- 

 graded in the Uriah Pleep of Dickens without feeling again as 

 we did vdien the Hag of the Union was hauled down and dragged 

 in the dust. I\Iilton^ however, had glorified the name in its 

 variant, Uriel, beyond degradation : 



"The archangel Uriel — one of the seven 

 Who in God's presence nearest to his throne, 

 Stand ready at command, and are his eyes 

 That run through all the heavens, or down to the earth." 



St. Easmus — the Christian Castor and Pollux — showing at 

 the mast-head electric tiashes welcome to sailors as a liii'ht-house, 

 gave ]N^orwe'gian mothers of sea-farers a name that was above 

 all other names. That corposant lighted vikings to many dark 

 deeds. In the Italian Pasmus is spelled St. Elmo, and gives 

 name alike to Neapolitan sailor boys and to the high-gleaming 

 castle at ^N^aples which is their land-mark, or sea-mark. 



This lucubration began with Dr. Pott, and it may well end 

 with him. I repeat it then : Go to Pott ! Pott, starting with 

 his own family name, passed on to the study of all personal 

 names and then to comparative linguistic research, rising still 

 from high to higher until he became one of the most illustrious 

 philologists of his time, and some would maintain of all time; 

 as Germans say, a path-breaker and epoch-maker. 



We may naturally gain some analogous impulses from the 



