thoughts and meanings, makes even the words he utters luminous of Divinity, and, to the same extent, subjects of love and reverence.”
This is the passage we mean:—
“And if the outer world is the vast dictionary and grammar of thought we speak of, then it is also an organ throughout of intelligence. Whose intelligence? By this question we are set directly confronting God, the universal Author; no more to hunt for him by curious arguments and subtle deductions, if haply we may find Him; but He stands expressed everywhere, so that, turn whichsoever way we please, we behold the outlooking of His intelligence. No series of Bridgewater treatises, piled even to the moon, could give a proof of God so immediate, complete, and conclusive.”
It is not the purpose here to give an abstract of the little book, called the “Significance of the Alphabet.” Indeed, it would be impossible. One peculiarity of it is, that it is so condensed it admits of no farther condensation. It rather needs a paraphrase, and it certainly ought to have a sequel of some practical elementary books which may make it possible to apply its principles for the purpose of transforming the present system of language-teaching in schools. It is said the author is superintending the preparation of some. A whole series is necessary, from the a b c book to a manual of the Sanscrit. Indeed, from him might be expected the realization of that idea of a lexicon which Herder has sketched in his “Conversations on the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry.” One of the interlocutors of the conversation asks,—after having granted, with respect to the Hebrew, “the symbolism of the radical sounds, or the utterance of the feeling that was prompted, while the object itself was present to the senses; the sound of the feelings in the very intuition of their causes:—But how is it with the derivations from these radical terms? What are they but an overgrown jungle of thorns, where no human foot has ever trod?
“eutyphron.
“In bad lexicons this is indeed the case, and many of the most learned philologists of Holland have rendered the way
