128 
THE HAT. 
Shakspeare has said, " What's in a name ? for that 
which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as 
sweet." So far so good. But with all due deference to the 
immortal bard, I maintain that rats by any other name 
would eat much better. 
Here, I think, in justice to this little animal, we ought 
for a few minutes to divest our minds of all unpleasant asso- 
ciations, and then see how far it has fair cause of complaint 
against man, in reference to the odium with which it has 
been branded. After this, show me, if you can, one animal, 
in the whole range of British zoology, that is cursed with so 
foul a name j or show me, in the vocabulary of the English 
language, one word that is so harsh, grating, and displeasing 
to the human ear, as is that of rat. Just spell it slowly, 
and then pronounce it, R — A — T, rat. There is such a 
rattling at the tip of the tongue ; and then its sudden and 
abrupt termination with T, reminds us of a bolting horse 
coming smash against a turnpike-gate, and being thereby 
thrown on its back. There is nothing to modify it. In- 
deed, of all words in the English language with which I am 
acquainted, it is the most discordant and ungrateful in its 
sound, and conveys an impression of something indescribably 
foul and offensive to the imaginative eye and ear — something 
to be avoided at all hazards. Now, imagine for one 
moment, that you are a native of the Arctic regions, and 
that you read, or hear, for the first time, that the people in 
England are terribly infested with a thing called — a rat. 
Then your mind would conceive a something which was scaly, 
filthy, and mangy in the extreme ; with a form hideous and 
undefinable, and emitting a loathsome, pestiferous odour that 
poisons all around — a voice unearthly, and a precursor or 
harbinger of death ; in a word, a kind of devil's lapdoir, that 
had been kicked out of the infernal regions for being too 
ofiensive and too ugly, but which has an everlasting craving 
for men's hearts or ulcerated toads. 
This you may think is something rather overdrawn ; but 
the best way to test it is to imagine such a monster newly 
thrown amongst us ; or, if you can conceive something even 
more hideous still, do so, and then see if you can find a name 
more appropriate and indicative of its many malformations 
than that of rat. Whereas, in truth, the rat is no such 
