pressure from the banking community, and inserted a clause entirely opposed to every existing legal principle, declaring that a banker paying a check to order with a forged endorsement should not be liable."-The Times, May 19, 1873. XI. PRESCRIBE. "In the form which is prescribed to us (the Lord's Prayer) we only pray for that happiness which is our chief good and the great end of our existence when we petition the Supreme for the coming of His kingdom."-ADDISON. 'Why hast thou, Satan, broke the bounds prescribed "To the blank moon Her office they prescribed." -MILTON, Paradise Lost, x. 656. "Prescribe not us our duties."-SHAKESPEARE. "This is true; but these parochial schools were then under the control and jurisdiction of the Established Church of Scotland, which had power to enforce religious teaching according to its own doctrines and confessions, and which had also power to try and to dismiss schoolmasters who failed to do so. This jurisdiction on the part of the Church of Scotland is now at an end, and the civil law has no standard, either there or elsewhere, by which to try questions of doctrine, except such as may be prescribed to it by the Legislature."—Westminster Review, January 1873. "The matter cannot be passed over in silence. If it is to be a subject of specific legislation, the whole of the points which have been mentioned, and a great many more, must be confronted, and specific direction must be given as to the manner in which each is to be dealt with, with specific punishments or penalties in case any point shall be treated in any respect differently from what the law may prescribe."-Westminster Review, January 1873. "The utilitarian doctrine at the utmost prescribes only impartial justice.”—The Saturday Review, April 19, 1873. "It is difficult to say whether Mr. John Dounce's red countenance, illuminated as it was by the flickering gaslight in the window before which he paused, excited the lady's risibility, or whether a natural exuberance of animal spirits proved too much for that staidness of demeanour which the forms of society rather dictatorially prescribe."-DICKENS: Sketches. He insisted that "Mr. Slagg seconded the resolution. there was a wide distinction between the Bulgarian atrocities He disclaimed the intention of pre and the present case. scribing to the Government any particular course of action." -The Evening News, March 4, 1882. IV. WHEN perusing a dictionary of synonyms, one is apt to be haunted by painful doubts. The more delicate the distinctions drawn, the more intellectual and subtle the shades displayed, the more unlikely does the thing become. After all, speech exists as the performance of the speakers. Is the majority, nay, is any considerable portion, of a race intelligent enough to produce such exact significations? Is synonymy, peradventure, the invention of a few ingenious and over-refining writers ? Or has it been devised by pedantic grammarians, intent upon parading their wits, and making their studies appear more important than they really are? Surely, if the suspicion be unfounded, it is not unnaturally aroused on seeing whole nations credited with a brilliancy, a refinement, and a tact, ordinarily found only in the most gifted individuals. Synonyms are words whose significations partly agree and partly differ. As one example among thousands, let us compare high' and 'tall.' Both indicate altitude; but while 'high' is a generic term, including any extension in an upward direction, whether great or small, 'tall' refers only to the elevation and elongation of a certain class of objects, and this, too, to an exceptional elevation and elongation of the same. 'High,' a derivative from the Germanic root 'huh,' to be above, means nothing but to be above; 'tall,' from a root denoting extension, has in it an element of growth and ascending vitality, which plainly hints at the existence of other and less developed |