even to celeftial invelopment. Our rafh and intrusive philofophy, like Homer's Patroclus, ftrikes even against the cloud which veils Apollo or Destiny from our nearer view, and, fcorning all that once was reckoned awful, feeks to tear down the very branches of that tree, whose fruit, even when carefully gathered, proved fatal to us all. MYSTERIES, like monarchs, are now found easy to get rid of; and indeed those who first began to infult Heaven were likelieft above all people to murder an anointed king. The punishment of fuch abominable fins is as yet concealed from our eyes in SACRED OBSCURITY; but not lefs certain is it for that reafon-perhaps not lefs near. NAME, NAME, NOUN PROPER, NOMINAL THE firft of these is the word in converfation use, unless when fome accidental combination forces from us one of the others. As if a person should say "I only called the man a Hércules or a Solomon by way of APPELLATIVE, because he is fo eminently wife or ftrong; his NAME is Richard, I have been told and with regard to his family, it has but lately acquired any NOMINAL DISTINCTION at all, unless perhaps Norton or Sutton were added by the villagers on his first settling there, if they observed his coming from the north town, or the fouth town, a common reason enough; but fomething must be done to fubdivide the word man into NOUN PROPER and noun common. So far the example. Auguftus Cæfar met an an afs, fays Swift, and he had a lucky name; I meet affes enough, continues the merry Dean, but they have never lucky names. 'Tis ftrange, however, where onomancy was fo much regarded as it was in Rome, that a man fhould ever have been tempted to give his fon an unlucky one; yet we find Livy calling Atrius Umber abominandi ominis nomen; and the name Lyco was as unpleafing to Plautus. Edmund Smith, ever attentive to antiquity, keeps that name for the betrayer of Hippolytus in his Phædra, I remember; and there has been always an idea of good hope going with a name, however such fancies may be disclaimed. Why elfe do Romanifts ftill call their fons Evangelifta or Natale? Nothing can be more fenfelefs, scarce any thing more abfurd; except chriftening a baby Giambattifia, as they do in all parts of Italy for ever, without reflecting that he might as rationally be called Charlemagne, or Alexander the Great, thofe being mere APPEL LATIVES LATIVES that agreed only with the parti cular individuals on whom they were first bestowed: and I remember Dr. Johnson reprimanding a lady of his and my acquaintance for baptizing her daughter Augufta. The truth is, puritans who to obtain heaven for their young ones give the NAMES Of Hold-the-faith or Stand-faft, are wiser than these; and a gentleman of undoubted veracity told me once of a pious friend he had, who promised if his wife brought him a daughter that year, in which he had received some signal mercy from heaven, that he would in gratitude call the girl Mefopotamia, which is known by those who understand Greek to mean the middle of rivers, or furrounded by waters, and was the name of a province fo difcriminated. This however is at worst but idiotifm; while the calling any human creature Emmanuel or Salvador profanation if not blafphemy. Surnames, being mere family distinctions, take a wider range, range, and have spread ftrangely fure in every country-all trades, all colours, ferving for cognomina; and even appellations of beafts, birds, and fishes, which Cambden feems to think were originally figns where certain perfons kept shops, but that usage is by other authors fupposed to be of later date. Men were named from brutes before figns were known, I am told. Local names, as field, rivers, meadows, and the like, are innumerable of course; and honorary ones not unfrequent-from fome of the family having been a bishop, a baron, an earl, &c. Nor do the foufbriquets fail of coming in for their fhare, when the first man of the race was noted for a great or broadhead, or for being armftrong, or was eminent for fome peculiar action in war, as Shakespeare, &c. The first of these in England are almost all Yorkshire families originally, and bore arms under King Edward the First, in his contentions with the Welch. So |