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SEPT. 1860.]

LITERATURE, THE SCIENCES, AND THE ARTS.

them a pang,-that he never forgot his mother's pains and
care. On the margin of a biographical notice, published in
My mother was my only teacher. I hope I was a comfort
the Medical Gallery, he, in later life, penned these words :-
to her. On her death-bed, John [his brother] said, 'Let
it be a pleasure to you to reflect that you were always her

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the notice of all who have gardens, who, though they may
not realize all the author's imaginings in regard to successful
gardening, may yet attain approximate advantages. Lay out
and cultivate your ground, and spend time, money, and toil
upon it all with thought and on a system,-such is the moral
of the book. Especially does the author insist upon the
importance of the young ladies of our time devoting them-consolation.'"
selves to gardening pursuits. "My honour, had I a daugh-
ter, she should be a botanist. Her studies should be in the
open air, her deportment should spring from healthy exer-
cise." And so he places the dibble and the watering-can
high above the use of the globes, and that dreadful play which
women call "work." In the justice of these views we concur,
but it must be remembered that it is only of late that even the
manly mind has taken much thought about physical educa-
tion and development. In good time, there is no doubt,
the daughters of England also will lean to healthful pursuits
a little more. Then there will be a much better chance than
there is now of every man's garden paying his rent.

Charles Bell's subsequent education, which was completed.
at the famous "High School" of Edinburgh, passed without
his exhibiting any sign of future eminence, or any marked' pre-
dilection for a particular calling. His brother John, already
established as a private teacher of anatomy and as a surgeon,
decided his vocation for him, and took him as his pupil. Besides
the medical lectures in the university, he attended those of
Dugald Stewart, whose impassioned style deeply impressed
the mind of the future author, as is evident in many passages
of the Commentary on Paley's Natural Theology, and the
by John Bell over his younger and more sensitive brother was
Bridgewater treatise On the Hand. The discipline exercised
rather severe, as Charles himself afterwards occasionally

THE LIFE AND DISCOVERIES OF SIR CHARLES mentioned. During his pupilage Charles had cultivated a

BELL.*

gift which nature had early bestowed upon him, viz., a power of drawing, and a taste for the fine arts generally. David ALTHOUGH the nature and importance of the discoveries of Allan, the so-called Scottish Hogarth, detected this faculty Sir Charles Bell, in connexion with the nervous system, are in the boy, generously encouraged and taught him, and used now thoroughly known and appreciated by the profession to to call him his "young brother-brush." John Bell, too, had a which he belonged, and though his well-known work On the similar taste, but did not choose to cultivate it. "On one occaAnatomy of Expression, and his Bridgewater treatise On the sion," relates Sir Charles, "I had drawn with great care a Hand, are familiar to and esteemed by not only artists, but Venus in the most graceful attitude that could be imagined, also the general literary and reading world, it is, perhaps, a when returning to my work, I found that, with a stroke of the little remarkable that, with the exception of ordinary obituary pencil, he (John) had given her the unbecoming support of a notices, encyclopaedic biographies, and an article in the Quar-pole fixed in the ground, on the side to which she unfortucheck the ardour and talent of a child." This little anecdote, terly Review for 1843, no memoir of the life of so distin- nately leaned too much. Such an ill-timed joke tends to guished a man has ever been published in Great Britain. and its record many years after by one of the actors, speaks volumes as to the character of the two brothers and their relations with each other.

M. Amedée Pichot, a literary physician, who, it appears, once had some slight acquaintance with our scientific countryman, and now retains a strong regard for his claims as a discoverer, has recently expanded into a little volume a sketch which he some years since prepared from the article in the Quarterly Review. It is well known that both Sir Charles and his elder brother John, the celebrated Edinburgh anatomist and surgeon, left lengthened journals and correspondence, which, with personal reminiscences by surviving friends and relatives, would afford materials for a complete biography of both brothers. In the meantime, with M. Pichot for our chief authority, for he is defective on some points, and we cannot agree with him on others, we present the readers of the REGISTER with some account of the life and works of one who, as the pioneer of certain discoveries in the functions of the nervous system, will have his name permanently recorded in the annals of physiological research.

The frugality of the Scotch, and the nobility of spirit dis-
played by many amongst them, even of the humblest classes,
in submitting cheerfully to severe privations for the sake
of obtaining an education for themselves, or of giving one to
their children, are highly creditable national characteristics.
The father of Charles Bell, an Episcopalian minister at
Doun, in Monteath, whose salary was only twenty-five pounds
a year, affords a fair example of a large class of which Scot-
land may indeed be proud. On this and other very limited
resources, the worthy minister had contrived to educate for
learned professions his three eldest sons,-Robert, who rose
to great practice as a writer to the signet; John, the second,
a man of bold and decided character, who gained a wide and
lasting fame as a surgeon in Edinburgh, and must unques-
tionably be regarded as having been, in his own day, without
a rival as a practical surgeon; and George Joseph, the third,
who, gentle and generally beloved, was rewarded for his
talents as an advocate with the Chair of Scottish Law in the
University of Edinburgh. Charles, the youngest and most
distinguished of this intellectual brotherhood, born in 1774,
the Benjamin of his parents' later years, was still young at
his father's decease, so that his early education devolved upon
his mother. The kindly-disposed of our readers will learn
with pleasure,—and the undutiful must pardon us if it causes

Discipline and ability, however, soon bore good fruit. Charles rapidly rose from pupil to assistant, and from assistant a pupil, he published a Manual of Dissection, with plates to an occasional substitute for his elder brother. Whilst yet engraved from his own designs; and he afterwards prepared the description of the nervous system which is published in his brother's Anatomy of the Human Body. He also executed very skilfully pathological models in wax, some of which are still preserved in the museum of the College of Surgeons in Edinburgh.

In 1799, Charles Bell was admitted to practice, and, in the Royal Hospital, was soon enabled to show his skill as an opebrother John. After some time, changes were introduced into rator, though in that capacity he was always inferior to his the management of the hospital, which excluded the two brothers from its clinical practice and teaching. John, in a temper, shut up his private class of anatomy: Charles continued to lecture, but, dissatisfied with his progress, soon resolved to seek in London a new and wider field for his exertions as a teacher and practitioner. This resolution cost some pangs, since he already numbered, in Edinburgh, many warm friends, not a few of whom were destined to become illustrious in literature, science, and art. Amongst them were Jeffrey, Smith, Horner, and Brougham, the founders of the Edinburgh Review. To his brother George, too, the brother nearest to himself in age, he was tenderly attached; and it is related that in the close communion of their youthful hearts, they enjoyed the mutual anticipation of each other's future successes. Even thus early the one was engaged in preparing some book on the law, and the other meditating the outlines, and preparing parts, of his interesting work On Anatomy for the use of Painters. On the eve of Charles Bell's departure for London, Edinburgh, as now, was animated by a volunteer movement, in which Lord Hope, and Scott, Brougham, Playfair, Brown, Grahame, Horner, Jeffrey, Gregory, and others, Bell arrived in London at the end of 1804. Thirty years marched and manoeuvred with the subject of this notice. of age, with limited means, being in part dependent on hi brother George, confident in his powers, but reserved or timid

The Life and Labours of Sir Charles Bell, K.G.H., F.R.S.S, L. and E. By and, perhaps, already impatient of the success of inferie

AMEDEE PICHOT, M.D. London: Bentley, 1800,

29

men, he experienced at first the usual isolation of a stranger and then seems to have matured those views, and made those in the great metropolis. Professional jealousy was arrayed against him; some regarding him, with that narrow. minded and coarse tendency to envy and detraction which even now sometimes requires to be checked, as a "meddling Scotchman,' come to turn everybody out of his place. But, after all, he had no great reason to complain, for he speedily became intimate with Dr. Baillie, Sir Joseph Banks, Mr. Lynn, Clive, Astley Cooper, and Abernethy; and he also renewed his acquaintance with Henry Brougham, then as now the true and warm friend of struggling talent. In his leisure, too, for at the end of his first year in London he had mustered only three pupils in his class, and practice was yet to come, he enjoyed the silent company of the great artists of former days, whose works he studied in both the public and private galleries with which even then London abounded. Assisted doubtless by such visits and musings amongst the relics of the illustrious dead, he prepared for the press the MS. of his work On the Anatomy of Expression, which he had brought from Edinburgh, and completed the drawings for that work, the first edition of which was published in 1806.

experiments, on the nerves, which have given him a lasting position as a discoverer. Still, however, he hesitated to appeal to the public judgment; for his pamphlet of 1811, entitled An Idea of a New Anatomy of the Brain, was printed only for private distribution. It attracted at the time very little attention, and he began to think that his genius was an "illusion." Marriage, a determination to realize a fortune, the up-hill work of raising his class (then a part of the Hunterian School of Medicine, in Windmillstreet) from the "fatal figure" of three to ninety, his appointment as one of the surgeons to the Middlesex Hospital, his celebrated visit to the hospitals of Brussels and the field of Waterloo, the fame procured for his picturesque journal and letters, and his graphic sketches of gun-shot and other injuries, and, lastly, an increase in his practice, are the chief incidents which we have to note up to the year 1821, when the reading of his Memoir on the Nerves before the Royal Society, and the publication of a series of illustrative papers on the same subject by his brother-in-law, Mr. John Shaw, at last excited the attention he had so long waited for. Roused to animation, he wrote, "I have made a greater discovery than ever was made by any one man in anatomy, and I have not yet done." But his discovery was, as we shall see, rather a physiological than an anatomical addition to our knowledge.

On the first appearance of this now celebrated work, of which the second edition appeared in 1824, and a third in 1814, a year after the author's death, Jeffrey justly pronounced it superior to anything extant on the subject. Its object was to show how the emotions and passions are For three thousand years the nervous system, like the cirexpressed by certain movements of the features, and by what culation of the blood, had been the subject of conjectures and mechanism of muscles, and under what guidance through surmises. From Hippocrates,-who confounded under the nerves, all this is accomplished; and it furthermore pointed out, one term "neura" all the white tissues, such as tendons and for the first time, that expressional acts are more or less asso-ligaments, as well as nerves,-down to Cuvier and Bichet, no ciated with the movements of respiration. This interesting one had penetrated its mystery. Its complicated anatomy book, which carries our knowledge much beyond the writings was becoming more and more unravelled; but no one had of Lavater, Brisbane, and Le Brun, exhibits not only a pro- supplied a key by which it could be read. It was admitted found acquaintance with the then existing knowledge of that the brain was the organ of sensation and the controller anatomy and physiology, and a vast fund of original thought, of voluntary motion, the motor power itself having been, but an exquisite taste for art, and a fine moral and religious once for all, clearly shown by Haller to be resident in the sentiment. The illustrations, engraved from its author's own muscles. Galen had sagaciously explained the condition of drawings, were most admirable; and in the work itself we partial paralysis, i.e. a loss of sensation or of motion in a trace the germs of that theory of special respiratory nerves and part, whilst the opposite faculty was entire, by saying that nervous centres, which, though not now admitted in the form there must be different nerves for the two functions; and in which he announced it, has contributed to render his name our countryman, Dr. Willis, as well as Semering and others, so widely known. had classified certain nerves of the head as motor, because they were distributed only to muscles, and others a sensory, such as the olfactory, optic, and auditory nerves, which were evidently concerned in the sensations of smell, sight, and hearing. But in the body generally the same nervous cords appeared to serve the opposite functions of transmitting sensations from the surface to the brain, and volitions from the brain to the muscles. This was the riddle to be solved.

The merits of this work were but slowly acknowledged, and the author himself either had not the faculty or the good fortune of winning support. Wilkie and a few others, in their enthusiasm and delight, attended his lectures; but three times did he seek to occupy the anatomical chair of the Royal Academy, and thrice was the appointment bestowed, instead, on men who had not been guilty of proving either their genius, their learning, or their capacity.

Charles Bell's ill-luck followed him even to his home, for, having taken a house in Leicester-street, now demolished to make way for improvements in that neighbourhood, it turned out to have been occupied by the "invisible girl," an exhibition devised for the credulous of that day. Passages existed under the floors, noises were heard, sensations experienced, and the house, much to his vexation as a sober-minded man sensitive to all the proprieties, got the reputation of being haunted, a notion that was easily maintained in the case of premises used as a private anatomical school.

During 1807, Bell was already pondering over the subject of the nervous system; drawing out careful descriptions of the brain, studying its internal masses and their comexions with the nerves, and recognising a sort of distinction to be made between the sensory nerves, which he saw were connected with one set of parts, and the nerves concerned in voluntary motion, which were connected with another set of parts of the nervous centres, establishing, as he then expressed it, a sort of circulation in the nervous system. Already he felt, as he said, that he was "burning," or on the eve of a great discovery. Timid, or uncertain of himself, he sought encouragement in the opinions of his friends, Jeffrey and Playfair; but having submitted his views to them, he allowed the subject to rest, and returned to his ordinary pursuits.

In 1809 he went down to Haslar to aid in attending on the wounded from Corunna; after which, he suffered in health,

The nerves of the neck, body, and limbs, arise on each side from the spinal cord, which is a prolongation from the brain, extending a good way down the spinal column. Each of these spinal nerves had long been shown to arise from the spinal cord by two roots, which blend together at a little distance into a common trunk, from which all their branches are given off. On the posterior root, as already shown by Monro in 1783, there is a small knot or ganglion of grey nervous substance ;-otherwise the nerves are white. It occurred to Charles Bell's mind that in their double roots might lie the explanation of the double function of these nerves. Again, from the base of the brain nine pairs of nerves, called cranial nerves, are given off; and the fifth of these it was known also arose by two roots, on one of which there was likewise a grey ganglion. The different anatomical connexions of the two roots of all these nerves, when they were deeply traced into the cord, or into the base of the brain, strengthened Bell's original idea of their being different in office. In this state of mind he might well be said to be "burning." At length he resolved on an experiment on a living animal (an ass). "On laying bare the roots of the spinal nerves," he says, "I found that I could cut across the posterior fasciculus (or root), without convulsing the muscles of the back; but that on touching the anterior fasciculus with the point of the knife the muscles of the back were immediately convulsed." On the day on which he performed that single experiment,-we know not its date,-he

laid the foundation of an imperishable fame. Henceforth, though some tried to do so, no man could rob him of his scientific glory. The conclusion at which he arrived was, that the anterior was the motor root; and, as has been often remarked, though he did not experimentally decide the question, he left it as a matter of inference that the posterior or ganglionic root was devoted to the other function of sensation. Proceeding next to the study of the cranial nerves, he experimented on the two roots of the fifth, and also on the facial part of the seventh, which arises by a single root destitute of a ganglion; and although, from some inexactness of his knowledge as to the mode in which in the two roots of the former nerve are intermixed in its branches, his inferences were not perfectly correct, still he clearly established that the functions of its two roots were similar to those of the two roots of the spinal nerves; and in regard to the single-rooted non-ganglionic facial nerve, he distinctly proved that it had a purely motor function. Numerous cases of partial paralysis of the fifth and seventh nerves, analyzed and described by Bell himself and by Mr. John Shaw, most admirably and luminously established the accuracy of his beautiful dis

covery.

shown that the functions of the supposed distinct respiratory system are not in any way peculiar, but form part of what are now termed the "reflux functions" of the nervous system generally.

Having thus fulfilled our object of tracing up the history of Charles Bell, in connexion with the discovery which will immortalize his name, we can only briefly allude to the rest of his career.

He wrote an elegant Essay on Animal Mechanics, published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge,-the Commentary on Paley's Natural Theology, in conjunction with Lord Brougham,-and that most interesting and instructive of the Bridgewater treatises, the one On the Hand, in which he explained the beautiful adaptations, not only of the upper limb in all vertebrate creatures, including Man, but many other correlated parts of their complicated organiza tion.

Of honours he henceforth had plenty. He was, in succession, Professor of Anatomy and Surgery to the Royal College of Surgeons in London, Professor of Physiology in the new London University, and, on his return to Scotland, chagrined by his want of pecuniary success in the south, Professor of The value of what he thus demonstrated can only be tho-Surgery in the University of Edinburgh. He was knighted roughly appreciated by those who are versed in the subsequent on the accession of William IV., and, when travelling in history of neurological research. It must here be stated France and Italy, in 1841,-a journey which served to enrich generally, however, that the value consists not merely in the the last and posthumous edition of his Anatomy of Expresimmediate and brilliant results arrived at, but in the fact that sion with many excellent and characteristic criticisms,-he in directing attention to the two roots, as parts analyzed by received a perfect ovation from his brother anatomists and nature and open to separate experiment, it revealed a new physiologists, both at Paris, and at all the other great towns mode of investigation as to the functions of the nerves, and at which he stayed. of the nervous tracts with which they are connected; and of this mode other physiologists, from that time to the present, have constantly availed themselves in perfecting and extending Bell's researches.

It is, perhaps, remarkable that Bell did not push home his discovery by direct experiments on the sensibility of the posterior root, or by other advances on the line he had marked out. But he disliked the torturing of animals; his own mind, so long intent on what after all is but the opening chapter of the subject, was satisfied; and we think that in his exclamation about his discovery being "in anatomy,"-in his anatomical inference that nerves owe their functions to the deep connexions of their roots, and not to any anatomical differences in themselves,-and in his application of his discoveries, mainly to a new mode of classifying the nerves into symmetrical nerves, or nerves with double roots, and superadded nerves, or nerves with single roots,- -we can perceive a tendency in his mind to anatomical rather than to strictly physiological research. Be this as it may, he left a rich harvest of knowledge in his own particular field to be reaped by a long list of distinguished successors, some of whom are living amongst us. He had done enough for "any one man." He had pioneered a road through an hitherto unexplored region of discovery; and Providence, it would seem, does not intend that all the secrets of nature shall be unlocked by the " open sesame of any one individual.

In 1842, after having just completed a course of lectures în Edinburgh, he died at a friend's house, near Worcester, when on his way to pay a visit to London.

Sir Charles Bell lived and died a disappointed man. As M. Pichot says, bis "Venuses" in after life were corrected by ruder hands than his brother John's. But we cannot, like that biographer, class him with the marty of science. Honour, not profit, is her true reward; and Bell obtained the former, though, mainly through want of worldly wisdom and tact, he failed to realize the latter. Well, "all of us cannot do all things!" His life was pure and his actions unselfish. Devoted to that science which is supposed, but not always truly, to harden the feelings and materialize the soul, he remained to the end sensitive and devout. He never overcame his repugnance to the repetition of experiments on living animals; he chose, indeed, rather to be satisfied with too few such experiments; and he declared, in every operation which he performed in his later years, that he still felt the same nervous sense of responsibility, and the same dislike of inflicting pain as on the first occasion. Anatomy and physiology to him were not merely sciences, they were insights into the works of our common Maker; and although he knew and keenly felt,-and often bitterly expressed the feeling,-that his merits were not fully estimated in his own time, and that such worldly success as he had pictured in early life had not attended his labours, yet he was at heart a kindly disposed man, and was thoroughly imbued with Christian faith.

STREET LANGUAGE.*

We must pass briefly over the floundering attempts of M. Magendie to deprive Bell of his claim to priority, the disingenuous efforts of one of our own countrymen to assist the pretensions of the foreign savant, and the bitter contests to which all this led ;-remarking, however, that to Bell's almost HOWEVER we may affect to close our eyes to the fact, all those culpable hesitation and delay in making generally known his of us who live in large cities live in an atmosphere of street valuable experiments, and his want of boldness in announcing language which few of us can understand. We are surthe legitimate inferences from them, those unworthy dis.rounded by people who converse in a strange tongue; and we putes were mainly due. From 1811, when he distributed find that many words and phrases are constantly coming up his private pamphlet, to 1821, when he read his memoir to from the kitchen and taking their places in our drawingthe Royal Society, was too long a period for any such dis-rooms with the choicest diction of the schools. Setting covery to be allowed to be neglected by its own author.

aside street tramps and vagabonds, who have certain hieroglyphics which serve them as a secret medium of communication with each other, there are nearly one hundred thousand costermongers and street hawkers, in and about London alone, who are striving, day by day, to get an honest living, and who converse in a cant language which is known as peculiar terms and idioms, the meaning of which can be "back slang." In their playful moments they indulge in

Neither can we find space to explain at length Charles Bell's very ingenious and interesting views as to the special character of his so-called superadded or respiratory nerves, and of the respiratory tracts of the nervous centres with which they are connected; more especially since,-though he himself dwelt greatly on them in his Anatomy of Expression, and Abernethy, in his blunt way, expressed the general opinion of his contemporaries by writing, " what stupid chaps Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words; with a Vagabond's Map. London: we have all been not to think of this before,"-it has been J. C. Hotten. Second Edition. 1800.

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are many more yet remaining to be searched out, explained, and arranged.

partly guessed by the uninitiated, if not thoroughly understood; but in their business moments, when the price of a cargo of fruit or the result of a day's hawking has to be con- Another genteel piece of street "chaff" is to ask a person veyed to a fellow-costermonger, they invariably make use of "how he is off for soap?" when you are inquiring as to the their secret language, or back slang. The principle of con- amount of money he may have in his pocket. If the person struction in this language is very soon explained. With a spoken to is in no humour to be trifled with, he will tell the few unimportant exceptions, every word is pronounced back- inquirer to "shut up;" but if he is communicative, and not wards; and man becomes "nam," and woman, namow." very well off in purse, he will say he is "out of coals." There is another variation of secret street language, known When a street boy alludes to the policeman as a man who has as the rhyming slang, which is chiefly confined to street beg-"boned the goose," he expresses his contempt for the whole gars and vagabonds. In this jargon, "split pea" stands for constabulary force, and uses an old English verb at the same tea, "turtle doves" for a pair of gloves, and "sugar and time. When, in modern street language, people speak of honey" for money. A certain amount of education, fancy," making no bones" of a matter, or say a thing is "crack" and rhyming power may be observed in this branch of slang, which originated with that class of street beggars who sing ballads or deliver orations and last dying speeches in the public thoroughfares, and who are known by the technical names of chaunters and patterers. There is another kind of slang, called marowskying, under which, by a slight transposition of the initial letters of each word, a pint of stout becomes a "stint of pout," and a mutton chop a "chutton mop." This perversion of language originated with a class considerably above the costermonger, but it has obtained no permanent footing where slang is popular.

The language of slang proper is of considerable antiquity. It may be traced upwards through the Gipsies into the dimmest regions of our history; and it is known in Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Finland, and South Africa, as well as in England. Our literature can boast more than a hundred recognised books which treat of this subject; and in the description of England three centuries ago, prefixed to Hollinshed's Chronicle, the writer, speaking of beggars and Gipsies, says, "they have devised a language among them. selves which they name canting, but others pedlars' Frenche."

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We are indebted to the Gipsies, the Hindoos, and the Persians, for such familiar terms as "bosh," dadi," or "daddy;" "mul," to spoil; "pal," a brother; "rig," a performance; "mami," or mammy;" and "cheese," an article or thing.

There is a wonderful elasticity or figurative expressiveness about street slang, and what is called "street chaff," irrespective of any antiquity or philological interest that may give them a value in the eyes of the learned. Any man who has travelled about London with his ears open as well as his eyes, must often have been amused with little word-combats between rival omnibus conductors, coalheavers, and luggagewaggon drivers, potboys and cabmen, or costermongers and sharp errand boys.

"Bill," an omnibus conductor will say, as he passes a rival vehicle, "how's your mother ?"

"Go an' put your 'ed in a bag," is the polite response. "Hallo!" replies the first conductor, "go home an' tell your mother to chain up ugly!"

"Does your mother know you're out?" asks the second conductor, his voice fast fading in the distance.

"She does," shouts his tormentor, as loudly as his lungs will allow him, "an' she's sold 'er mangle."

This last remark has very little reference to the previous conversation, but it is a move in advance; and if the second conductor had been within hearing, it would have taken a well-known reply completely out of his mouth.

"Sam," a cabman will say to a companion when his horse begins to show a falling off in appetite, “"my old mare's orf 'er feed."

"Go on," the other cabman will say, 'your mother's orf 'er feed;" which means that he prides himself upon knowing the condition of the animal much better than its master does.

It will be seen from this that a good deal is made out of allusions to each other's mothers, but it must not be supposed that street chaff is by any means limited to variations on this one phrase. Its vocabulary is rich in words and idioms, even without including the overflowing dictionary of slang. With regard to this latter, the excellent little work compiled by Mr. Hotten has just added three thousand words in regular to this irregular excrescence of our language, and there

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when they mean that it is excellent, or speak of "cracking it
up" when they talk of praising it, they are using nothing but
old English words and phrases that were once fashionable and
respectable, but which have now fallen into polite disuse. In
calling a cunning trick "an artful dodge," the street boys are
employing language that comes from the Anglo-Saxon; and
when they say "they have got a person's dander up," and mean
that they have annoyed him, they adopt an old English and
not a modern American phrase. A "flabbergasted party'
(or astonished person); "hold your gab" (be quiet); "you're
doing it gingerly" (doing it carefully); "its clean gone;" "it
won't fadge" (it won't do); "make him buckle under;"
'pepper him well;" "two of a kidney;" a jolly lark;"
"bung it over" (give it over); "a pretty pickle;""; a crusty
party" (an ill-tempered person), are all phrases that are now
only popular in the streets, but which have once seen better
days in old English palaces and mansions.

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It must not be supposed that street chaff is the only modern conversational vehicle for the use of slang words and idioms, There is a workman's slang, a shopkeeper's slang, and a money and civic slang, embodying many technical terms that are peculiar to certain trades and businesses. There is a literary slang, a theatrical slang, a legal slang, and an university slang, almost as difficult to understand, by those who are uninitiated, as the back-slang of the costermonger or the chaff of the streets. There is a parliamentary slang, a military slang, a dandy slang, and a fashionable slang, besides many other class slangs that are continually inserting words into the recognised body of our language. What is slang in one age becomes fashionable minted language in another, or else dies out of use altogether. Even names of persons are not free from slangy twists in pronunciation; and Cowper (in fashionable life) becomes Cooper; Mr. Carew, Mr. Carey; Ponsonby, Punsunby; Eyre, Aire; Powell, Poel; Teague, Tighe; Cholmondeley, Chumley; Majoribanks, Marchbanks; St. John, Sinjon; and Derby, Darby.

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In the slang of the workshop, workmen are called "brother chips;" they dine at "slap bang" shops, and are often paid at "tommy shops." Their salary is a screw," and when they are discharged they "get the sack." They call themselves "hands" and their labour "elbow grease;" and when they leave work they "knock off."

In the slang of the shop, an industrious man is a "pushing tradesman;" a forced sale is an "awful" or an "alarming sacrifice;" much business is called "a roaring trade;" credit is called "tick;" a creditor is "taken in" or "let in;" & tailor is known as a sufferer;" and a failure is "bu'sting up or "going to pot."

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In the money-market a "bear" is a speculator, in the slang of the Stock Exchange, who "operates" for a fall; and a "bull" is another speculator, who "operates" for a rise in the funds. A stock-jobber who cannot pay his debts is called a "lame duck," and one hundred thousand pounds sterling is known as a "plum." Money itself has between one and two hundred slang words applied to it. Amongst these are, stiff" for bills of exchange, "rags" for bank. notes, and "brads, chips, dust, feathers, haddock, horsenails, rhino, pewter, and needful," for metal coin. Each coin has its long and particular list of slang equivalents, amongst the most popular of which are, " fiddles" for a farthing, "brown' for halfpenny, "copper" for a penny," deuce" for twopence, "thrums" for threepence, "Joey' for a fourpenny-piece, "kick" for a sixpence, "bob" for a shilling, "half-a-bull" for half-a-crown, a "bull" or a "cart-wheel" for a five

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shilling piece," half a couter " for half a sovereign, and a quid" for a pound.

In the slang of the law a made-up balance-sheet is "cooked," a mortgaged property is "dipped," a man who is asked for payment is "dunned," a lawyer is a "limb of the law," a counsel is a "mouthpiece," a bankruptcy is a smash," and to take the benefit of the Insolvent Debtors' Act is to be "whitewashed."

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In military and university slang a vehicle is a drag," a dinner is a "spread" or a "feed," a friend is a "trump," a difficulty is a "screw loose," a house is a "crib," a male parent is a "governor," or the "relieving officer," and empty wine-bottles are "dead men,"-though they often tell tales. The slang of Parliament would fill a volume, and might very properly comprise a great number of those phrases which express the absurd and antiquated forms of the House. From this it will be seen that slang is not by any means confined to what are called the lower orders of society. If thieving and tramping have their technical terms, so also has every other exclusive calling, class, or profession. Many of the purely modern slang expressions, belonging strictly to the streets, may certainly claim to carry away the prize for figurative poetry of expression. Canister-cap" for one of our modern hats is very happily descriptive of a detested article of clothing. "Choker" is another instance of the same kind, which has obtained a world-wide acceptance as a recognised term for a cravat. "Chariot-buzzing" for picking pockets in an omnibus is another happy phrase, and "loblolly" for gruel seems to lie upon the tongue like that particularly solid liquid. "Leg it" is not a bad equivalent for run; and "swaddy "for a soldier is an excellent term, when we consider the way in which he is bandaged under the Horse Guards' clothing system.

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We might multiply instances of this kind, if we thought proper, as the slang dictionary is rich in such materials for those who will search for them. Without professing any particular sympathy with street tramps and thieves, it is well, perhaps, to consider whether some of these phrases cannot be sifted from the mass of rubbish and vulgarity which surrounds them, and incorporated at once with the recognised body of our language.

LIFE OF SIR MARTIN ARCHER SHEE.* POOR Gilbert Stuart Newton declared that the election of a president of the Royal Academy would be determined by the test of "who wore hair powder." And certainly some such condition as this seems indispensable in the appointment of such officers. Is it not required that the Speaker of the House of Commons should be a tall man with an aquiline nose? Have not chancellors been nominated solely on the ground that they looked wise? Is it not always the biggest supernumerary who is entrusted with the raising of the stage banner? Do not the army and the volunteers ever dress their ranks with the tallest and showiest of their men on the outside? Deportment is a great power. For a president of painters it has always been felt that a gentleman was more necessary than a genius. So the late Sir Martin Archer Shee was president of the Royal Academy from 1830 to 1850, and wore hair-powder, and was very bland and suave, genial and gentlemanly, a pleasant speaker, painting portraits; and at his death a very great artist, named Turner, was passed over, and a certain courtly Sir Charles Eastlake succeeded to the office.

The late president was born in Dublin, on the 20th of December, 1769, of a family claiming descent from one of the old royal houses of Ireland,-a not singular claim with an Irish family. The father, George Shee, a merchant, was afflicted with blindness, brought on by injudicious cupping. He married, notwithstanding his infirmity, a Miss Archer, of great personal attractions, and many years his junior. After giving birth to four children, two only of whom survived infancy, Mrs. Shee died of consumption. The blind father then wound up his affairs, retired to a small cottage near

The Life of Sir Martin Archer Shee, President of the Royal Academy, F.R.S., D.C.L. By his Son, MARTIN ARCHER SHEE, of the Middle Temple, Esq.,

Barrister-at-Law. London: Longmans,

Dargle, county of Wicklow, and devoted himself to the edu cation of his two sons.

The condition of art in Ireland sixty years ago was not very flourishing. Mr. Shee had reason in opposing the desire of his son Martin to embrace the profession of a painter. But it was before the days of Roman Catholic emancipation. There were few professions open to a member of that church, and young Martin accordingly, after some discussion, entered the school of design of a Mr. West, under the control of the Royal Dublin Society. Old Mr. Shee died in 1783, leaving his sons in very precarious circumstances. Martin was received into the house of an aunt, but one day, on being cruelly reminded of his dependency, he determined thenceforward to support himself, took a very humble lodging, and earned his first ten-and-sixpence by painting the figures on the face of a clock. He soon after acquired fame by some clever crayon portraits, life-size, a style then much in vogue,—and moved to fashionable apartments in Dame-street, Dublin. He now attracted considerable attention, and before he was seventeen was in full occupation. His oil paintings, which he first commenced about this time, brought him still more into notice, and he received a silver palette from the Dublin Society, in token of their approbation of his pictures.

In 1788 he arrived in London, and took lodgings in Southampton-street, Strand. He was armed with letters of introduction, many of which proved as abortive as such letters usually are, and some were found among his papers at his death, sixty-two years afterwards, undelivered and unopened. Soon after his arrival he writes :

"I have been to wait on Sir Joshua Reynolds, and was received, as I was taught to expect, with much politeness, but nothing more. Indeed, from several questions he asked me, I am apt to imagine he had very little, if any, acquaintance with the General Cuninghame who gave me the note to him. He showed me a very fine historical picture he has painted,-the Death of Cardinal the best painter now living, and is considered as such here.” Beaufort, from the play of Henry VI. He is certainly altogether

In another letter he makes mention of another artist :"I have been introduced to Mr. Opie, who is in manners and appearance as great a clown and as stupid a looking fellow as ever I set my eyes on. Nothing but incontrovertible proof of the fact could force me to think him capable of anything above the sphere of a journeyman carpenter, so little, in this instance, has nature proportioned exterior grace to inward worth. He approved be glad to see me any time at all. I intend calling on him occaof my copy, and told me, to use his own expression, that he would sionally, for I know him to be a good painter, and, notwithstanding appearances are so much against him, he is, I am told, a most sensible and learned man."

"Never

With Edmund Burke, Shee was distantly connected by marriage, and he was fond and proud of relating the friendly reception accorded him by the great master spirit. shall I forget the flood of eloquence which poured from his lips, as, while holding my hand and pressing it with affectionate cordiality, he expatiated in glowing terms on the claims and glories of the art to which I was about to devote myself, and sought to kindle my ardour by the prospects of fame and distinction that might be the reward of my exertions in the honourable career which lay before me."

What was perhaps of greater importance to the young painter than these fine periods, was a second introduction, through Burke, to Sir Joshua. The reception accorded on this occasion was much more urbane and warm than before. Shee was invited to breakfast, and to bring with him some effort of his pencil for examination and discussion. Sir Joshua quietly but decidedly applauded the work. He put away his ear-trumpet, he seems to have made rather histrionic play with that instrument, snatching it up and resuming the look of doubt and appearance of deafness, when a third person entered the room,-encouraged the young painter to persevere in his exertions, ending with a recommendation that he should at once obtain admission as a student of the Royal Academy. To Shee, who fancied that he had quite done with the status pupillaris, this was a little galling, but he wisely followed the counsel of the oracle, and, in 1790, was admitted as a student of the Academy. With a companion in the Life School he commenced an acquaintance which ripened subsequently into great friendship. This was

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