consonant between two vowels is accompanied with the dropping of the initial consonant, as in athar, father, pronounced aar, where as in lan, for plenus, full, the initial p altogether disappears. The levelling influence of this h at the end of a word, as in tigh, a house, pronounced taoy, from Lat. tignum, is equally felt. A still more perplexing change on the body of the word as it is written appears in the liberty taken by an antecedent vowel or consonant to obliterate the initial consonant of a word, as in the case of saor, a carpenter, which when preceded by the genitive of the article becomes taor, familiar to the English ear in the proper name of Macintyre, the son of the carpenter. But perhaps, after all, it is not so much these consonantal changes and extrusions that occasion difficulty to the English ear, as the peculiar sounds of ao and ui diphthong, and the utterly unEnglish ch. For these he will find an analogy in the German oe and ue, as in Goethe and Müller; and the true sound of the Gaelic in this case, as in the German, he can learn only by practice. As to the aspirated form of k, or hard c, as it appears in so many Highland lochs and lochans, we can only say that, though unknown in Latin, it appears in Greek, in German, and in the beautiful musical dialect of English commonly called Scotch; and the sooner our esteemed big brother besouth the Tweed attunes his ear to this sound, the better not only for his sympathy with the Macs, but for his linguistic faculty generally, which in this, as in some other of his peculiarities, is altogether insular in its range, and pernicious in its exercise. Let him understand that this Gaelic ch, like the Greek X, is not a rough guttural, as it is

sometimes called, but an aspirated (spiro, to breathe) or smooth form of the sharp k and the blunt g, which are the true gutturals.

So much for the peculiar features of the Gaelic species of the great Aryan family, worked out from an original identity by the internal varieties to which all languages, when left to themselves, without any foreign interference, are naturally subject. But there is a borrowed element also in Gaelic which, though small in geographical amount, is historically of great significance. In the Hebrides, and all along the west coast of the Highlands, as above mentioned, the Norse element asserts itself in local names with unmistakable prominence: thus uig, Danish vig, which appears in Wick and Wigtown, is the familiar Norse name for a bay; ness, a nose or jutting promontory; fiord, a firth or inlet of the sea; and oe, an island, as it occurs in Iona, and elsewhere. Noticeable also in this region is the dale-German theil, English deal, to divide- —a part or portion of land, always in the last syllable of the name; known also in Gaelic as dal, but always as the initial syllable, as in Dalnaspidal, Dalwhinnie, &c., &c. But Latin, the language of the Church, the great medieval civiliser, was naturally much more powerful than the speech of the sea-marauders, over all the length and breadth of the hill country, where the original British inhabitants knew to hold their ground; and in this way in the language of common intercourse not a few words became current in the talk of Highlanders, borrowed either directly from Latin, the language of the Church, or from the Norman-French element of our English tongue, radically one with the speech of the Romans, who at an early period

had planted their foot on French ground, when they were only pointing with their finger to the more distant isles in the west. Such words manifestly are spiorad, spirit; eaglais, ecclesia; priosann, a prison; litrich, a letter; ministrealech, ministry; leabhar, liber; seomar, camera, chamber; sagart, sacerdos; pobull, populus; reusan, reason; searmoin, sermo-and so on. But what chiefly concerns us here is the word kil, which appears in a large number of sacred places, manifestly the Latin cella, a shrine, confounded, in our insular habit of pronouncing c like s before a soft vowel, with sella, a seat. This kil, in the case of a shrine or church, appears in more than a score of familiar place-names in the index to Sir Herbert Maxwell's valuable book: as in Kilbride, the Church of St Bridget; Kilmalcolm, the Church of the shavelings of St Columba (maol, a bare poll);1 and Kilninian, either from Ninian, the founder of the Church of Whithorn in Galloway, or from Nennidius, a later saint, a follower of the great St Bridget of Ireland. One of the most famous of these kils is Kilribhinn, the old Gaelic name for St Andrews, but in nowise signifying what it seems to mean, when printed as it is pronounced. Judging by the ear only, a person with a smattering of Gaelic might say that it meant the Church of the Virgin, Ribhinn, Mary of course; but the moment an appeal is made from the ear to the eye, Kilrigh mhonadh stands out in royal dignity, the Church of the King's muir, now St Andrews. Originally, before the bones of the great Scottish saint were brought by Regulus from Greece, in the

days of the Picts who peopled the east coast of our country in the oldest times, this learned city rejoiced in the most undignified appellation of Muc Ross, the PIG's SNOUT! Instead of kil, we have sometimes in Scotland eccles from ecclesia, Gr. EKKλnoía, as in Ecclefechan, Church of St Vigean, the birthplace of our great Scottish prophet, Thomas Carlyle. Strange enough, beside this eccles we have another Greek word for the name of the Lord's house in Scotland, Kirk, but so curtailed in its dimensions as that its Greek original, kupιakós, will only strike the eye of a scholar.

Of the Scottish names of places commencing with this so thoroughly naturalised Greek word, of which the topographical student will find at least half a hundred in the Ordnance Gazetteer,' we shall name only two that stand out with a special historical significance, Kirkcudbright and Maidenkirk. The first of these bears the stamp of one of the most famous holy men of the seventh century, a Northumbrian by birth, but whose name stands enshrined in the Scottish memory, not only by the modern county and county-town which bear his name visibly on their front, but by his early connection with beautiful Melrose, and his position in the leading Presbyterian church of the west end of Edinburgh. In the second of these Galloway names local story has stereotyped the memory of a beautiful Irish girl, Madana, in the fifth century, consecrated to the service of God by the famous St Patrick in the severe monastic fashion of the age. Her great

beauty had attracted the amorous regards of a Hibernian noble in

those passionate times, and he pursued her with importunate attentions, and with such persistent entreaty, that to escape from his importunity she was obliged to cross the water, and seek a home with a colony of chaste sisters in Wigtownshire. But even here, the story goes on to tell, her persecutor followed her; and she, to break the charm, by an act of selfsacrifice, put the question directly to her admirer, what it was about her that so enslaved him to her track? "Your bright blue eyes," was the reply. "I am drawn to them irresistibly, as the flower is to the sun." This was enough for the holy maid. Forthwith she plucked out her lovely orbs, and threw them at her persecutor's feet on the ground, and was for ever free from his unsanctified admiration.

Historical allusions of this patent kind of course speak for themselves as plainly as Fort William and Fort George in the north certify to all times the defences which William of Orange and our Hanoverian "wee German lairdie" were obliged to set up to keep down the fretful feeling of clanship with which the Highlanders clung to the abused royalty of the Stuarts. But not seldom in the names of old centres of medieval life allusions occur which require the patient research and the discriminating eye of men familiar with ancient records: and as Scotland is unfortunately almost a blank in these ancient annals of which Ireland boasts so rich a store, the curious in local names must betake himself to family charters, and local or general law registers; and these occasionally, for philological purposes, may become as slippery as for purely legal right of possession they are

firm ground and sure,-for an old charter of the fifteenth century may not always agree with an older one of the fourteenth, and both the one and the other may possibly have been put into the law Latin of the period by scribes altogether ignorant of the language to which the property owed its original title. In such cases, even a visitor starting on such inquiries with all the caution that Sir Herbert so strongly accentuates in his first lecture, may occasionally be mistaken; but such instances of topographical misinterpretation from documentary mistakes are quite exceptional, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the intelligent tourist may rest with perfect satisfaction on the analysis of the names given in the index to the book on 'Scottish Land-Names' which stands first on our list. Along with Sir Herbert, however, it will always be wise in doubtful cases to consult Mr Johnston's excellent work ; for in topographical philology, as in the law courts, even in cases of certainty, two witnesses are always better than one. of special difficulty belonging to Argyllshire, no wise topographer will fail to call into court a man of such professional skill in these matters as Professor Mackinnon; and the like deference will justly be paid to Mr MacDonald in all questions of places belonging to the far north district of Strathbogie: but for the significance of Scottish topographical names, as well as for large views on topographical philology generally, we know no book which we can more confidently recommend to the intelligent Scottish tourist than the work of the learned member for Wigtownshire.

In cases

JOHN STUART BLACKIE.

"I PROPOSE in this paper to deal mainly with two considerations: how the home training can prepare boys for the temptations and difficulties of school life; and how, when the boys are at school, the home ties can be kept strong, and the home influence exerted for good." Most delicately and most sensibly does Mrs Creighton deal with her subject in that most charming and practical of periodicals, Mothers in Council.' If every mother in England joined this council, and carried into practice many of its precepts, the work of the preparatory schoolmaster would be materially lightened. And if in Mrs Creighton's paper we detect some impatience of the existence of the preparatory school, and here and there a faint note of encouragement to parents to dispense with this intermediate stage between home life and public school life, we readily admit that if all parents were as highly gifted as Mrs Creighton, or took the same sensible view of the responsibilities of their position in the matter of the education of their children, the raison d'être of the preparatory school would disappear. And with it would also disappear the possibility of the home-educated boy of twelve being placed at a disadvantage, real or imaginary, when called upon to compete against the school - prepared compeer in scholarship examinations or outdoor pursuits. Unfortunately, all parents are not by nature qualified to educate their children beyond a certain standard; and even if exactly the same holds good as regards schoolmasters, the latter, to whom teaching is a trade, have more opportunities of correcting natural deficiencies by practice;

and the conscientious member of the latter class-for there is conscience even among schoolmasters

will, if extended practice only serves to heighten the impression of his own incompetence to teach, sever his connection with scholastic life.

"What are you thinking of?" we once asked a man who was wrapped in deep and apparently painful thought.

"I am thinking," was the quiet answer, "whether it's I who am the fool or that boy."

He solved the question later on to his own satisfaction, and made a fortune on the Stock Exchange.

We are not among those who regard the parents-quá parents, we may be allowed to insert-as "their natural foes ; we should neither lay it down, as an American schoolmistress did the other day, as the first rule for our model school, that "all parents should be drowned," nor should we endorse the impertinent remark quoted by Mrs Creighton as emanating from an elementary schoolmaster that "there is nothing the average parent knows less about than what is good for the child." But we will plead guilty to a feeling that here and there a parent leaves undone much that he or she might have done to help us, or even does much to retard our work. make liberal allowances, more liberal in some ways than Mrs Creighton does, for circumstances such as household cares, which must occupy more time in one establishment than another, large families which distract a mother's attention, and many other things besides; but as we contrast boy with boy as they come from home,

We

we often feel that much has been left undone for one which has been done for another in the way of preparing him for school life.

We will not advert to the question of the moral preparation. There the ground has been fairly cut from beneath our feet by Mrs Creighton, and we could not hope to rival the delicacy of touch with which she has handled this most important subject. Our question rather shall be this, What standard of knowledge is required of boys who come to a preparatory school? By the schoolmaster, we answer, a very modest standard. Great expectations are seldom found to exist in the mind of the teacher of the small boy. A few years' experience will have taught him that in his profession great expectations are synonymous with great delusions and precursors of great disappointments. And what are the attainments of the ordinary urchin of nine or ten? Commonly a something which falls short of the modest expectation; not unfrequently a something which might be termed a minus quantity; here and there a delicious surprise, a something to vary the monotony and make the life of a schoolmaster liveable. Without these occasional surprises the existence, except for the earthworm, who is content to let things slide, and only regards boys as representing so many £ s. d. in his pocket, would be intolerable.

First, then, in the matter of religious knowledge: first on all grounds,-first not merely because more has been said and more has been written lately on the subject of religious instruction in schools than about any other one branch of education; but first, perhaps, most of all, because we strongly feel that religious instruction in some form should be the earliest lesson of each day. And of re

ligious instruction we recognise two distinct sides-church-teaching and knowledge of the Bible; and the former of these, at all events, it is a mother's province to impart. We are interested to note that Mrs Creighton is entirely with us in this matter; and we would gladly know whether this apparent agreement is only the accidental result of the circumstance that she was writing to mothers as opposed to fathers in council, or whether she feels as strongly as we do that a boy must, in most cases, either imbibe his views on church subjects from a woman or have no views.

It is not perhaps the case that religion actually does appeal more to the feminine mind than to the masculine, or that the existence of a religious feeling is more necessary to the one than to the other; it is rather that the woman has less solid work to occupy her time than the bread-winner, and that religious observances and church services seem to form part of her daily life. And we, as men, do not merely tolerate this difference, but we seem to expect more religion-outward religion, at all events-from our wives and sisters than we ever dream of exacting from ourselves. It is a sort of shock to our moral nature if women in the upper classes are not outwardly more religious than we ourselves are; and though our animal nature may admire, we cease, except in rare cases, to respect a woman who does not wear what may be a mere garb of religion. We do not condemn a man for staying away from church on a Sunday: we glance hurriedly at his pew to see if he happens to be present, but are prepared to find that he is absent. But if we miss his wife, we at once conclude that there is illness in the house, or that she is away