sailors, probably from some celebrated ideal hag of that name. Others regard the words as a characteristic English corruption of Mater Cara (that is, dear mother), an affectionate appellation said to be given by Italian sailors to the Virgin Mary the special patroness of mariners-for her kindness is sending these messengers to forwarn them of impending tempests; but this explanation is more ingenious than probable. When it is snowing, Mother Carey is said by the sailors to be plucking her goose; and this has been supposed to be the comical and satirical form assumed by a myth of the old German mythology, that described the snow as the feathers falling from the bed of the goddess Holda, when she shook it in making it.

Mother Carey.-Among the unsolvable riddles which nature propounds to mankind, we may reckon the question, Who is MOTHER CAREY, and where does she rear her chickens ?-H. BRIDGE.

Mother-wit.-SPENSER, Faerie Queen. MARLOWE, Prol. Tamberlain the Great. SHAKESPERE, Taming of the Shrew.

Motley.-MOTLEY's the only wear.-SHAKESPERE, As You Like It.

Mountains.

To me

High MOUNTAINS are a feeling, but the hum

Of human cities torture.-BYRON, Childe Harold.

See, the MOUNTAINS kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;

No sister flower would be forgiven

If it disdain'd its brother.-SHELLEY, Love's Philosophy.

Mourn.

He that lacks time to MOURN lacks time to mend.
Eternity mourns that. 'Tis an ill cure

For life's worst ills to have no time to feel them.
Where sorrow's held intrusive and turned out,
There wisdom will not enter, nor true power,
Nor aught that dignifies humanity.

Sir H. TAYLOR, Philip Van Artevelde.

Mourns. He MOURNS the dead who lives as they desire.

YOUNG, Night Thoughts.

Mouse. The MOUSE that always trusts to one poor hole
Can never be a mouse of any soul.

POPE, The Wife of Bath, Her Prologue.

Multitude.-Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish MULTITUDE.-ED. BURKE.

The MULTITUDE is always in the wrong.

Earl of RosCOMMON.

Mumbo Jumbo.-A strange bugbear, common to all the Mandingo towns, and resorted to by the negroes as a means of discipline.

Mumbo Jumbo.-The grand question and hope, however, is, will not this feast of the Tuileries' MUMBO JUMBO be a sign, perhaps, that the guillotine is to abate ?-CARLYLE.

Munchausen.-The fictitious author of a book of travels filled with the most extravagant fictions. The name is corrupted from that of Jerome Charles Frederick von Munchhausen, a German officer in the Russian service, who died in 1797. He must not be confounded with Gerlach Adolphus, Baron von Münchhausen, one of the founders of the University of Göttingen, and for many years a privy councillor of the Elector of Hanover, George II. of England.

Murder. For MURDER, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ.-SHAKESPERE, Hamlet.

One MURDER made a villain,

Millions a hero. Princes were privileged

To kill, and numbers sanctified the crime.--Bishop PORTEOUS.

One to destroy is MURDER, by the law,
And gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe;
To murder thousands takes a specious name,-
War's glorious art,--and gives immortal fame.

YOUNG, Love of Fame.

Muse. For his chaste MUSE employed her heaven-taught lyre
None but the noblest passions to inspire,

Not one immoral, one corrupted thought,
One line which, dying, he could wish to blot.

Lord LYTTELTON, Prologue to Thomson's Coriolanus.

Music. I am never merry when I hear sweet MUSIC.

-

SHAKESPERE, Merchant of Venice.

If MUSIC be the food of love, play on.
Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again;—it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour.—Ibid., Twelfth Night.

MUSIC hath charms to soothe the savage breast,
To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.

CONGREVE, The Mourning Bride.

MUSIC is a kind of inarticulate unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of the infinite, and lets us for moments gaze into that.-CARLYLE.

Music. MUSIC is nothing else but wild sounds civilised into time and tune. Such the extensiveness thereof, that it stoopeth so low as brute beasts, yet mounteth as high as angels. For horses will do more for a whistle than for a whip, and, by hearing their bells, jingle away their weariness.--THOMAS FULLER.

The man that hath no MUSIC in himself,
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:

Let no such man be trusted.

SHAKESPERE, Merchant of Venice.

Musical.-Sweet bird that shunn'st the noise of folly,

Most MUSICAL, most melancholy !-MILTON, Il Penseroso.

Mutual Admiration Society.-[Fr. Société d'Admiration Mutuelle.] A nickname popularly given in Paris to the "Sociéte d'Observation Médicale." It is used, in English, in a more general way, usually with reference to any persons who are lavish of compliments from a desire to be repaid in kind.

Who can tell what we owe to the MUTUAL ADMIRATION SOCIETY of which Shakespere, and Ben Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher were members? Or to that of which Addison and Steele formed the centre, and which gave us the Spectator? Or to that where Johnson, and Goldsmith, and Burke, and Reynolds, and Beauclerc, and Boswell, most admiring among all admirers, met together?. Wise ones are prouder of the title M. S. M. A. than of all their other honours put together.-O. W. HOLMES.

Mystery.-The MYSTERY of iniquity.--1 Timothy.

Within this awful volume lies

The MYSTERY of mysteries.—SCOTT, The Monastery.

N.

Naked. The NAKED every day he clad

When he put on his clothes.-GOLDSMITH, Elegy on a Mad Dog.

Name. And last of all an admiral came,

A terrible man, with a terrible NAME,

A name which you all know by sight very well;
But which no one can speak, and no one can spell.

SOUTHEY, March to Moscow

Name.--Good NAME, in man and woman, dear my lord,

Is the immediate jewel of their souls.

Who steals my purse, steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,

And makes me poor indeed.-SHAKESPERE, Othello.

A good NAME is rather to be chosen than great riches.

A good NAME is better than precious ointment.

Proverbs xxii. 1.

Ecclesiastes vii. 1.

He left the NAME at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral, or adorn a tale.

Dr. JOHNSON, Human Wishes.

I cannot tell what the dickens his NAME is.

SHAKESPERE, Merry Wives.

I do beseech you-chiefly that I may set it in my prayers-what is your NAME?-SHAKESPERE.

My NAME and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and to the next ages.—BACON, From his Will.

Named softly as the household NAME

Of one whom God hath taken.

Who hath not owned, with rapture-smitten frame,
The power of grace, the magic of a NAME.

CAMPBELL, Pleasures of Hope.

Names. How many NAMES in the long sweep of time, that so foreshortens greatness, may but hang on the chance mention of som fool that once brake bread with us, perhaps.

Then shall our NAMES,

TENNYSON, Queen Mary.

Familiar in their mouths as household words,-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Glo'ster,-
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.

SHAKESPERE, Henry V.

Nation. Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant NATION rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam.MILTON, Areopagitica.

Nation of Shopkeepers. From an oration purporting to have been delivered by Samuel Adams at the State House, in Philadelphia, August 1, 1776. Philadelphia, printed; London, reprinted for E Johnson, No. 4 Ludgate Hill, 1776. To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers may at first sight appear a project fit only for a NATION OF SHOPKEEPERS. — ADAM SMITH, Wealth of Nations.

Native Land.-Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my NATIVE LAND!

Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned

From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonour'd and unsung.-SCOTT, Last Minstrel.

My NATIVE LAND-good night!-BYRON, Childe Harold.

Nature.--All NATURE is but art, unknown to thee;

All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;

All discord, harmony not understood;

All partial evil, universal good;

And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,

One truth is clear, whatever is, is right.-POPE, Essay on Man