1823.) The Letter N.—On the 
And if our god of love 
Has doom’d a time to pain; 
Already kind, above’ - 
He gen’rous moulds your gain, 
And lo! the doubling tempest spreads, 
Afid distant tells the ire of fate, 
Yet the quick stroke mine old age dreads, 
Ye meet all fearless and clate. 
Nay,—bear it my last doom, 
E’en as I sing our woes; 
« But strew your bard’s lone tomb 
With flowers that love repose. 
Then, dearest infants, dance, still dance, 
Your happy years 
No tempest fears, 
Yet fondly nurs’d in hope’s gay trance, 
Dance on, and still sing, and still dance. 
— 
For the Monthly Magazine. 
T page 485 of your fifty-fifth vo- 
y lume, your correspondent Philo- 
dikaiosunes comes forward as the 
advocate’ of the letter N, whom, or 
which, be considers in danger of being 
unjustly dismissed from the word con- 
temporary, which is by many persons 
“spelled colemporary. 
His argument is borrowed from 
Bentley, who observes, that the Latins 
never use co for con except before a 
yowel. This may be a law of Latin 
grammar, but it is not a law of Eng- 
lish grammar; for we always write 
copariner, Dot compariner ; cosecant, not 
consecant; and Bailey and Johnson 
record the word in question cotem- 
porary. 
There are three classes of formative 
syllables in English: 1. Some which 
will unite only with words of Saxon 
origin, as the affix th used in forming 
truth, breadth, length, width, &c. 2. 
Some which will unite only with words 
of Latin origin, as the prefix in priva- 
tive, used in forming insane, insensible, 
innumerable, impossible, &c. And 3. 
Some which will unite with Latin or 
Saxon words indifferently, as the pre- 
fix un and the aflix ness, used in form- 
ing unapt, unattempted, unsound, un- 
true, loveliness, goodness, pleasingness, 
odoriferousness. This last class of 
syllables, having become truly Eng- 
lish, can unite with any root already 
pre-existing in cur own lanczuage. 
Now I contend that. co is a forma- 
tive syllal.le of this class; and that we 
can say eo-helper for coadjutor, coheir, 
coheiress, cohabitation, co-rival for cor- 
rival, which would be the Latin form; 
coparcenary, c=sine, copartnership, arid 
even co-sleeper for bedmate. 
If this be allowed, as the word tem- 
Miracles of Hohenloe. 215 
porary pre-exists in English, ft must 
be legitimate to form from it the word 
¢o-temporary, and so from temporaneous 
and to temporize the analogous words 
cotemporaneous and to cotemporize. 
Thus the lawyers say rightly, co-tenants 
at will, and never contenants' at will. 
Domestic analogy is a legal die for 
coining words. ' 
In some cases. the Latin spelling 
would occasion equivocation: thus 
co-missioner would signify a fellow- 
missionary, and commissioner one in- 
cluded in a warrant of authority. , 
I shall not contend that to employ 
the n is always a solecism, but merely 
apologize for its occasional omission ° 
En Passant. ° 
ee 4 
For the Monthly Magazine. 
The MIRACLES of HOHENLOE. 
T is lamentable to read of the mi- 
racles of Prince Hohenloe, and 
grievous to find that such blasphemies 
on nature, reason, and God, should 
find believers. Yet implicit faith in 
miracles, and powers operating mifa- 
culously, has disgraced human nature 
in all ages; and, although’ generally 
disavowed, is as prevalent now as'‘at 
any former period. i EDA 
In these new miracles, all that can 
be alleged against this princely ‘em+ 
piric, is the circumstance that he pre- 
1ends to act where he is not:  Yet,is 
not this the very fundamental principle 
of the doctrine of attraction, as taught 
in all our universities, in all our books 
of science, and believed by all the soz 
disant learned of the present age? | 
D (Ae eo. BED ‘E 
, If the body A is so affected by the 
presence of the body B, and B by A, 
as that they meet in C,—then: this 
allection is ascribed to their mutual 
attraction, or to a principle of power 
inherent in all bodies. It. is) then 
assumed as undoubted that such prin- 
ciple exists, and itis even described. 
as an essential property of all matter. 
Nature is thus tortured to render its- 
phenomena subservient to this princi- 
ple; and,whenever bodies, in spite of it, 
do not fall together, then other still 
more silly hypotheses are raised, to 
show that its action in those cases is 
counteracted; and, if exceptions exist 
again to these sccondary hypotheses, 
then other hypotheses are imvented, to 
remoye these difficulties, till the whole 
of nature is caricatured. We will 
instance 
