No sound was heard of clashing wars, Held undisturbed their ancient reign II. 'Twas in the calm and silent night, His breast with thoughts of boundless sway; III. Within that province far away Went plodding home a weary boor: Fallen through a half-shut stable door Centuries ago! V. It is the calm and silent night! A thousand bells ring out, and throw Their joyous peals abroad, and smite The darkness-charmed and holy now! The night that erst no name had wornTo it a happy name is given ; For in that stable lay, new-born, The peaceful Prince of earth and heaven, Centuries ago! DONALDSON, JOHN WILLIAM, an English philologist and biblical critic, born in London in 1811; died there February 10, 1861. He was educated at the University of London and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his degree in 1834, becoming a Fellow in 1835. He subsequently took Orders, and became Head Master of the Grammar School of Bury St. Edmunds. He resigned this position in 1855, and removed to Cambridge, where he occupied himself as a pri vate tutor and in writing. In 1856 he was appointed one of the Classical Examiners of the University of London. His earliest work, The Theatre of the Greeks (1837) is still used as a college text-book. In 1839 he put forth The New Cratylus, being an effort to develop the principles of comparative philology as laid down by Bopp, Grimm, Pott, and other German scholars. In his Varronianus (1844) he attempted to do for Latin philology what he had done for Greek in The New Cratylus. In 1854 he put forth Jashar, an endeavor to restore the lost Hebrew book of that name. He also put forth grammars of the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew languages. The New Cratylus is his most important work. ETYMOLOGICAL STUDIES. Many people entertain strong prejudices against everything in the shape of etymology-prejudices which would be not only just but inevitable if etymology, or the doctrine of words, were such a thing as they suppose it to be. They consider it as amounting to nothing more than the derivation of words from one another; and as the process is generally confined to a perception of some prima facie resemblance of two words, it seldom rises beyond the dignity of an ingenious pun; and, though amusing enough at times, is certainly neither an instructive nor an elevated employment of a rational being. The only real etymology is that which attempts a resolution of the words of a language into their ultimate elements by a comparison of the greatest possible number of languages of the same family. Derivation is, strictly speaking, inapplicable farther than as pointing out the manner in which certain constant syllables, belonging to the pronominal or formative element of inflected languages, may be prefixed or subjoined to a given form for the expression of some secondary or dependent relation. In order to arrive at the primary origin of a word or a form, we must get beyond the narrow limits of a single idiom. Indeed, in many cases the source can only be traced by a conjectural reproduction based on the most extended comparison of all the cognate languages; for when we take some given variety of human speech, we find it in systems and series of words running almost parallel to one another, but presenting such resemblances in form and signification that convinces us that, though apparently asymptotes, they must have converged in the form which we know would potentially contain them all. This reproduction of the common mother of our family of languages, by a comparison of the features of all her children, is the most general object to which the efforts of the philologer should be directed; and this—and not a mere derivation of words from one another-constitutes the etymology that is alone worthy of the name.-Preface to the New Cratylus. THE UTILITY OF PHILOLOGICAL STUDIES. Education is of two kinds: It is either general or professional; it is either designed for the cultivation of the intellect and the development of the reasoning fac ulties which all men have in common, though not perhaps to the same degree-or it is calculated to adapt him for some particular calling, which the laws of society -on the principle of the division of labor-have assigned to him as an individual member of the body politic. Now the education of the individual for this particular purpose is not an education of man as such; he might do his particular work as well or better if you deprived him of all his speculative faculties, and converted him into an automaton. In short, the better a man is educated professionally, the less he is a man; for, to use the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The planter, who is a Man sent out into the world to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of Man on the farm. The tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal worth to his work, but is ridden by the routine of his craft, and the soul is subject to dollars. The priest becomes a form; the attorney, a statute-book; the mechanic, a machine; the sailor, a rope of a ship." It was for this reason that the clear-headed Greeks denied the name of education (Paideia) to that which is learned for the sake of some extrinsic gain, or for the sake of doing some work, and distinguished formally between those studies which they called "liberal," or worthy of a free man, and those which were merely mechanical and professional. In the same way Cicero speaks of education, properly so called, which he names "humanity" (Humanitas), because its object is to give a full development to those reasoning faculties which are the proper and distinctive attributes of man as such. Now we do not pretend that philology is of any mechanical or professional use; for we do not call Theology a profession; it is merely a branch or application of philology. We do not say that philology will help a man to plough or to reap; but we do assert that it is of the highest use as a part of humanity, or of education, properly so called. The test of a good education is the degree of mental culture which it imparts; for education, so far as its object is scientific, is the discipline of the mind. The |