Correspondence.

SIR-Judging from my own observation of the literary compositions of the present day, there appears to me to be great doubt in the minds of many writers as to the correct spelling of certain derivative words such as bigoted, worshiping, traveling, &c., as if there was no rule by which the orthography might be guided. One's eyesight is constantly annoyed by seeing two ts, two ps, two ls, respectively in the words just instanced, the doubling of which letters must either be the result of ignorance or carelessness. Perhaps you will be kind enough to aid in reforming this abuse by making it known that in the preface to Webster's American Dictionary of the English language will be found these words:-" On this subject Walker observes, in his Rhyming Dictionary, Dr. Lowth has justly remarked that this error (that of doubling the final consonant when not under the accent) frequently takes place in the words worshiping, counseling, etc., which, having the accent on the first syllable, ought to be written worshiping, counseling, etc. An ignorance of this rule has led many to write bigotted for bigoted, and from this spelling has arisen a false pronunciation; but no letter seems to be more frequently doubled improperly than l. Why we should write libelling, revelling, and yet offering, suffering, reasoning, I am at a loss to determine; and unless I can give a better plea than any other letter in the alphabet for being doubled in this situation, I must in the style of Lucian, in his trial of the letter t, declare for an expulsion.' In this expulsion, it is believed, the public will finally concur, when they reflect, that this violation of analogy takes place in the derivatives of comparatively few words, in opposition to multitudes of instances in which the general rule prevails.

The general rule, then, is that when the accent is on the first syllable in those derivative words, the final consonant of the primitive is NOT to be doubled.

I offer these remarks as a useful hint to your younger readers, and
Mr. Thomas Cooper.

Remain yours respectfully, OMICRON.

[I wish we had among us, an acknowledged literary tribunal, like the French Academy, to which all disputes on spelling, pronunciation, grammar, &c., could be referred. In default of this, I fear our irregularities must continue for many years to come. No one likes to take upon himself the singularity of omitting the two is in libelling '—although Omicron has shewn us, in the quotation given above, that analogy demands but one l. Landor, who ought to be considered an authority, adopted several reforms in spelling in the first edition of his splendid 'Imaginary Conversations;' and yet nobody would follow him. It is discouraging to attempt reform when so great a writer's example proved a failure.-T. C.]

To Correspondents.

Correspondents will please address "Thomas Cooper, 5, Park Row, Knightsbridge,

London."

J. H. Y., Haggerstone.-I would not recommend you to do any such thing. Try cold water sponging, and take more exercise.

T. M., Macclesfield.-Send me the name of your London agent. I can do nothing without that.

J. E. J., Bethnal Green; Journeyman Carpenter;' T. W., Bristol; Anglicus;' 'Radical.'-Their poetry is most respectfully declined.

'Gustavus,' Edinburgh.-Will he send me his full address, that I may write to him, privately?

A. B.-I leave London, for the North of England, if all be well, on Monday, May 27have to talk at Coventry that night and the next-at Hull on the three next nights-and journey, on Saturday, to Newcastle-on-Tyne, where I am to talk twice on Sunday, June 2nd, and also on the two following Sundays. On the week-days, during the first fortnight in June, I shall be ready to attend to such appointments in the neighbourhood of Newcastle, as the friends may fix upon. If I find it possible to stay from home longer, I shall be happy to visit the friends at Sheffield, Bradford, Keighley, and other towns, with which I have corresponded. But if circumstances should call me home in the middle of June, I will take the first opportunity of setting out again to visit them.-T. C.

THINKINGS, FROM ARCHDEACON PALEY.

OF PROPERTY. If you should see a flock of pigeons in a field of corn; and if (instead of each picking where and what it liked, taking just as much as it wanted, and no more) you should see ninety-nine of them gathering all they got in a heap ; reserving nothing for themselves but the chaff and the refuse; keeping this heap for one, and that the weakest, perhaps worst, pigeon of the flock; sitting round, and looking on, all the winter, whilst this one was devouring, throwing about, and wasting it; and if a pigeon, more hardy or hungry than the rest, touched a grain of the hoard, all the others instantly flying upon it, and tearing it to pieces; Lif you should see this, you would see nothing more than what is every day practised and established among men. Among men you see the ninety and nine toiling and scraping together a heap of superfluities for one (and this one too, often times, the feeblest and worst of the whole set-a child, a woman, a madman, or a fool ;) getting nothing for themselves all the while, but a little of the coarsest of the provision which their own industry produces; looking quietly on, while they see the fruits of all their labour spent or spoiled; and if one of the number take or touch a particle of the hoard, the others joining against him, and hanging him for the theft.

EXAMPLE OF PARENTS.—A good parent's first care is to be virtuous himself; his second to make his virtues as easy and engaging to those about him as their nature will admit. Virtue itself offends, when coupled with forbidding manners; and some virtues may be urged to such excess, or brought forward so unseasonably, as to discourage and repel those who observe and who are acted upon by them, instead of exciting an inclination to imitate and adopt them. Young minds are particularly liable to these unfortunate impressions. For instance, if a father's economy degenerate into a minute and teasing parsimony, it is odds but that the son, who has suffered under it, sets out a sworn enemy to all rules of order and frugality. If a father's piety be morose, rigorous, and tinged with melancholy, perpetually breaking in upon the recreation of his family, and surfeiting them with the language of religion on all occasions, there is a danger lest the son carry from home with him a settled prejudice against seriousness and religion, as inconsistent with every plan of a pleasurable life; and turns out, when he mixes with the world, a character of levity or dissoluteness.

The

IMITATION.—Amongst the causes assigned for the continuance and diffusion of the same moral sentiments amongst mankind, may be mentioned imitation. efficacy of this principle is most observable in children indeed, if there be anything in them which deserves the name of an instinct, it is their propensity to imitation. Now there is nothing which children imitate, or apply more readily, than expressions of affection and aversion, of approbation, hatred, resentment, and the like; and when these passions and expressions are once connected, which they soon will be by the same association which unites words with their ideas, the passion will follow the expression, and attach upon the object to which the child has been accustomed to apply the epithet. In a word, when almost everything else is learned by imitation, can we wonder to find the same cause concerned in the generation of our moral sentiments?

INFLUENCE OF HABIT.-Mankind act more from habit than reflection. It is in few only and great occasions that men deliberate at all; on fewer still that they institute any thing like a regular enquiry into the moral rectitude or depravity of what they are about to do, or wait for the result of it. We are for the most part determined at once; and by an impulse, which is the effect and energy of pre-established habits. And this constitution seems well adapted to the exigencies of human life, and to the imbecility of our moral principle. In the current occasions and rapid opportunities of life, there is oftentimes little leisure for reflection; and were there more, a man who has to reason about his duty, when the temptation to transgress it is upon him, is almost sure to reason himself into an error. If.we are in so great a degree passive under our habits, where, it is asked, is the exercise of virtue, the guilt of vice, or any use of moral and religious knowledge ?—I answer, in the forming and contracting of these habits.

TO KENILWORTH CASTLE.

THE TALE OF LOVE.

TO POVERTY.

O poverty, thine is a cheerless den,
Sad, drear, and gloomy, as a polar night;
Chill, and unwholesome, as a sunless.fen
Deprived of all real comfort, and delight;
Where the poor wretch exists as in a dream,
Nor knows that life has joys he may receive;
And looks, and speaks withal, that one might deem
He felt unworthy in the world to live.
His mind to every form of slavery bowed,-
Truth, beauty, liberty, are nought to him:
Its strength and light obscured, as with a cloud,
Inactive sleeps, nor e'er shoots forth a gleam:
No grand, ennobling thought, can e'er engage
His youth or manhood, listless as his age!

MORAL AND POLITICAL LESSONS OF

‘GULLIVER'S TRAVELS.'

An Oration; delivered at the Literary Institution, John-Street, Fitzroy Square: September 23rd, 1849.

BY THOMAS COOPER.

(Continued from last number.)

THE courage of these tiny people amazes Gulliver-for they mouut upon his body, and walk to and fro upon him, till he feels inclined to seize a score or two of them and punish them; but he reflects that he might suffer by it, since their numbers are so great, and so resigns himself to patience, believing they will eventually liberate him. He falls asleepthey had mingled a sleepy potion with the wine they gave him--and when he wakes, he is being drawn towards their capital city on a machine seven feet long, raised three inches from the ground, moving upon two and twenty wheels, and dragged by one thousand five hundred Lilliputian horses, each four inches and a half high!

Gulliver's adventures when he arrives at the capital of Lilliput-his interview with the emperor-his description of the council held as to what was to be done with himself,- Quinbus Flestrin,' or the Man-mountain, as they termed him-their search of his person, and inventory of the articles found upon him, such as his watch, his snuff-box, his comb, his sword, and his pistols-afford proofs of Swift's singular ingenuity. You will not expect me to complete the detail. My aim is to induce you to read for yourselves. You will not fail to observe with what remarkable skill Swift has proportioned the appearance of the objects he has described -with what mathematical instinct, in the lessening of the size of the Lilliputians, he has also squared the dimensions of their houses, their dress, their arms, and all other circumstantials surrounding them. The calm, quiet satire with which he has depictured the pomp and absurd forms of courts, in his portraiture of this diminutive people, is equally admirable. Not seldom, he has a stroke at some real character. Thus, in describing the games performed, before the emperor of Lilliput, Gulliver is made to say:

"I was diverted with none so much as that of the rope-dancers, performed upon a slender white thread extended about two feet, and twelve inches from the ground: upon which I shall desire liberty, with the reader's patience, to enlarge a little.

"This diversion is only practised by those persons who are candidates for great employments, and high favour at court. They are trained in this art from their youth, and are not always of noble birth, or liberal education. When a great office is vacant, either by death or disgrace (which often happens), five or six of those candidates petition the emperor to entertain his majesty and the court with a dance on the rope; and whoever jumps the highest, without falling, succeeds in the office. Very often the chief ministers themselves are commanded to show their skill, and to convince the emperor that they have not lost their faculty. Flimnap, the treasurer, is allowed to cut a caper on the straight rope, at least an inch higher than any other lord in the whole empire. I have seen him do the summerset several times together, upon the trencher fixed on a rope which is no thicker than a common packthread in England."

Sir Robert Walpole, the prime minister of the period is the real Flimnap. Swift belonged to the Tory party, at the time he wrote the 'Travels;' and he could not forbear the opportunity of having a satirical blow at the Whig premier.

The 'articles' upon which Gulliver is allowed to have his liberty, are introduced by a royal preamble which contains an admirable satire of the ridiculous claims of sovereigns. Thus it reads:

"Gulbasto Momarem Evlame Gurdilo Shefin Mully Ully Gue, most mighty emperor of Lilliput, delight and terror of the universe, whose dominions extend five thousand blustrugs (about twelve miles in circumference) to the extremities of the globe; monarch of all monarchs, taller than the sons of men; whose feet press down to the centre, and whose head strikes against the sun; at whose nod the princes of the earth shake their knees; pleasant as the spring, comfortable as the summer, fruitful as autumn, dreadful as the winter. His most sublime majesty proposes to the man-mountain, lately arrived at our celestial dominions, the following articles, which by a solemn oath, he shall be obliged to perform."

The articles consist of several provisions-the chief being that Gulliver shall not depart from Lilliput-that he shall render himself useful while there-shall especially aid the emperor against his enemies of Blefuscuand shall, on the observance of said conditions be allowed daily as much meat and drink as would be sufficient for 1728 Lilliputians. Gulliver swears to the conditions, and then the chain which had been fastened to his legs in sleep, is unlocked, and he is set at liberty. Swift makes his hero conclude the account of the treaty with a passage which contains a piquant parody on the grave descriptions of travellers:

"The reader may please to observe, that in the last article of the recovery of my liberty, the emperor stipulates to allow me a quantity of meat and drink sufficient for the support of 1728 Lilliputians. Some time after, asking a friend at court how they came to fix on that determinate number, he told me that his majesty's mathematicians, having taken the height of my body by the help of a quadrant, and finding it to exceed theirs in proportion of twelve to one, they concluded, from the similarity of their bodies, that mine must contain at least 1728 of theirs, and consequently would require as much food as was necessary to support that number of Lilliputians. By which the reader may conceive an idea of the ingenuity of this people, as well as the prudent and exact economy of so great a prince."

The High and Low Church parties of the time of George the 1st, are pointedly satirised in the picture of the High and Low Heel parties of Lilliput; and the prince, afterwards George 2nd, is ridiculed for his characteristic trimming in the portrait of the imperial heir' who had one high, and one low heel to his shoes. But the most skilful satire is that of the Big and Little Endians. The Lilliputians broke their eggs at the smaller end, the inhabitants of Blefuscu at the larger. Both asserted they were right in their interpretation of the 54th chapter of the Blundecral, which declared that all true believers should break their eggs at the convenient end.' Six rebellions had been raised in Lilliput, and 11,000 persons had suffered death,-all for the precious right of breaking their eggs at the larger end, according to ancient custom. The Blefuscu people being Big-Endians, were at war with the emperor of Lilliput as an abettor of heresy. England and France- or the Protestant and Roman Catholic states-are ridiculed under these figures. Gulliver is, at length, pressed to assist in the war, and performs the famous feat of drawing to shore 50 of the Blefuscu men-of-war ships. The emperor desires him to draw all their ships to the Lilliputian shore, to reduce Blefuscu to a province, and compel all the Big Endians to break their eggs at the smaller end! Gulliver, however, refuses to be made the instrument of completely enslaving that people-the emperor is offended with him—and, thenceforth, intrigue against him is rife in the court, and is headed by one who had been all along his enemy-Skyresh Bolgolam, the highadmiral. An important accident brings the plot against him to a crisis: the royal palace is on fire, and Gulliver puts out the fire in a natural way, which in spite of his having saved her life, the queen declares to be unpardonable. Modern taste is offended with these strokes of Swift; but his strong mind had wondrous skill in adapting them to the exposure of the ridiculousness of pride and false delicacy.