238 OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



that one of the words was used and not the other on a parti- 

 cular occasion or in a particular social circle, will he sufficient 

 to produce so strong an association "between the word and 

 some speciality of circumstances, that mankind abandon the 

 use of it in any other case, and the speciality becomes part of 

 its signification. The tide of custom first drifts the word on 

 the shore of a particular meaning, then retires and leaves it 

 there. 



An instance in point is the remarkable change which, in 

 the English language at least, has taken place in the signi- 

 fication of the word loyalty. That word originally meant in 

 English, as it still means in the language from whence it 

 came, fair, open dealing, and fidelity to engagements ; in that 

 sense the quality it expressed was part of the ideal chivalrous 

 or knightly character. By what process, in England, the 

 term became restricted to the single case of fidelity to the 

 throne, I am not sufficiently versed in the history of courtly 

 language to be able to pronounce. The interval between a 

 loyal chevalier and a loyal subject is certainly great. I can 

 only suppose that the word was, at some period, the favourite 

 term at court to express fidelity to the oath of allegiance; 

 until at length those who wished to speak of any other, and 

 as it was probably deemed, inferior sort of fidelity, either 

 did not venture to use so dignified a term, or found it con- 

 venient to employ some other in order to avoid being 

 misunderstood. 



2. Cases are not unfrequent in which a circumstance, 

 at first casually incorporated into the connotation of a word 

 which originally had no reference to it, in time wholly super- 

 sedes the original meaning, and becomes not merely a part of 

 the connotation, but the whole of it This is exemplified 

 in the word pagan, paganus ; which originally, as its etymo- 

 logy imports, was equivalent to villager ; the inhabitant of a 

 pagus, or village. At a particular era in the extension of 

 Christianity over the Koman empire, the adherents of the old 

 religion, and the villagers or country people, were nearly the 



