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text for an Essay on the Natural History of German Life. The 
Authoress had travelled in Germany, and had been quick to 
perceive and note the habits and peculiarities of the people: “as 
birds nidify in the Spring, so Germans wash themselves in the 
Summer; their Waschungstrieb acts strongly at a particular 
time of the year ;. during all the rest, apparently, a decanter and 
a sugar-basin or pie-dish are an ample toilette service for them. 
Sometimes a little touch of history is incidentally introduced :— 
‘‘ Peasants who had given their voices stormily for a German 
Parliament asked afterwards, with a doubtful look, whether it 
were to consist of infantry or cavalry.”’ 
The Essays abound in subtle analogies and striking contrasts. 
The most carefully elaborated contrast is that which closes the 
Essay on the poet Young, where the wearisome monotony and 
disconnected verses of the Author of the “ Night Thoughts”’ are 
contrasted with the easy and graceful melody of the blank verse 
of Cowper. 
Occasionally, the Authoress gives her opinion of the great men 
of this or formerages. Take e.g., her remarks on “ the charming 
chatty Montaigne,whose sceptical acuteness could arrive at nega- 
tives without any apparatus of method.” At the close of a clever 
comparison of Heine with Wordsworth, Tennyson and Goethe, 
she has this beautiful image :—‘‘ His songs are all music and 
feeling, they are like birds that not only enchant us with their 
delicious notes, but nestle against us with their soft breasts, and 
make us feel the agitated beating of their hearts.’’ 
George Eliot complains that Lecky while writing a treatise on 
Rationalism had failed to define it. Here was a grand opportun- 
ity for our Authoress, a description from her pen of that somewhat 
equivocal term would have proved interesting and suggestive. 
But she fails to give the anticipated explanation, and the reader 
is left to enjoy ‘‘ the liberty of private haziness.” 
In the Essay on German Life the reader will see a reflection of 
the delightful English sketches in Adam Bede, and in the Essay 
on Rationalism there is a forecast of one of the chapters in ‘‘ The 
Mill on the Floss.”’ 
The Essays are well worth reading and study. They give us 
literature and science, poetry and philosophy, history and travel, 
doubt and devotion. 
CHRISTIAN NAMES. 
By. W LEWIS GRANT. April 14th, 1885. 
Having observed that names are not arbitrary sounds, but have 
a parentage, and that many words which seem to the naked eye 
