724 Reviews. [Oct., 
There is still much in it on which we have not touched, feeling that 
it was better to go through carefully the etymological portion, and to 
leave the mythology possibly for some future opportunity. In this 
latter subject the author has done much service to a study of the 
classics, by pointing out that the ancients possessed a religion apart 
from their mythology ; that it was not left entirely for philosophers 
to speculate on the existence of the gods ; but that there was something 
beyond the sky in which the herdsman and the slave could trust and 
rely; that this was (Acts xvii. 22, &c.) “the Lord of heaven and earth ;” 
that “they might feel after him and might find him; ” and that all 
men, and not only Jove-born kings and rulers, “are also his offspring.” 
How the layer of superstition was spread thickly over all this deeper 
feeling is traceable in words—empty words, which men think are their 
servants, but which are frequently their masters, and which, like all 
created things, are hard taskmasters when they get the dominion. 
This mastery of words over men is not confined to the days of heathen- 
dom ; the legends of the saints, the fairy tales of our-youth, the stories 
of physical wonders in the middle ages, have in many cases their 
origin in a confusion of thought arising from the similarity of sound 
between two words entirely distinct and unconnected. This part of 
the subject we must leave alone, regretting that we cannot follow 
further through the author’s lucid and thoughtful pages, and regretting 
too that in many cases we have been obliged to put in our own abbre- 
eee form what he has dilated upon with such elegance and fluency 
of style. 
We have left ourselves but little space to speak of the work of Mr. 
Picton. It is highly creditable to a provincial society that it should 
be able to elicit such excellent papers from its members. The subject. 
of the Gothic language, important as it is to us if we would understand 
the roots of our own tongue, is seldom so carefully studied as it 
evidently has been by our author. A good knowledge of Anglo-Saxon, 
Gothic, and Norse is becoming every day more important to everyone 
who would wish to master thoroughly his native English. At the 
same time it is well to see that the general affinities of the language 
are studied in its relationship to Sanskrit. We are therefore thankful 
for the paper on ‘Sanskrit Roots.’ Of course in this paper we do not 
discover anything very new. The development of Grimm’s law, and 
the exceptions to it, need to be brought clearly before the general body 
of English readers. The deeper scholars seem to be too much 
engaged with their researches to find time to explain and exemplify 
thoroughly this important principle of philology. We are therefore 
glad to welcome the exposition of it, and the examples given by Mr. 
Picton, as likely to be read by many who would be afraid of so large 
and learned a work as that of Professor Max Miiller. In his last paper 
on ‘ Architectural Terms’ Mr. Picton has done good service to philo- 
logy, in seeking in the history of his own art for an explanation of the 
terms used therein. If men of science would thus chronicle what they 
discover in’ their researches in their own department, we should not 
have so many crude guesses or such wild metaphors put forth in the 
name of veritable etymology. 
