ch as it is in
truth, we have gone _forward_ and made from it the noun _happiness_,
and, in more modern days, are using the verb _happify_, a word, by the
way, in common use, but which has not yet been honored with a place in
our dictionaries; altho Mr. Webster has given us, as he says, the
_unauthorised_ (un-author-ised) word "_happifying_." Perhaps he had
never heard or read some of our greatest savans, who, if not the
authors, employ the word _happify_ very frequently in the pulpit and
halls of legislation, and at the bar, as well as in common parlance.

_Happy_ is the past participle of the verb _to hap_, or, as afterwards
used, with a nice shade of change in the meaning, _to happen_. It means
_happied_, or made happy by those favorable circumstances which have
_happened_ to us. Whoever will read our old writers no further back than
Shakspeare, will at once see the use and changes of this word. They will
find it in all its forms, simple and compound, as a verb, noun, and
adjective. "It may _hap_ that he will come." It happened as I was going
that I found my lost child, and was thereby made quite happy. The man
desired to _hap_pify himself and family without much labor, so he
engaged in speculation; and _hap_pily he was not so _hap_less in his
pursuit of _hap_piness as often _hap_pens to such _hap_-hazard fellows,
for he soon became very _hap_py with a moderate fortune.

But to the question. There are many adjectives in our language which are
borrowed from foreign words. Instead of _adjectiving_ our own nouns we
go to our neighbors and _adjective_ and anglicise [english-ise] their
words, and adopt the pampered urchins into our own family and call them
our favorites. It is no wonder that they often appear aukward and
unfamiliar, and that our children are slow in forming an intimate
acquaintance with them. You are here favored with a short list of these
words which will serve as examples, and enable you to comprehend my
meaning and apply it in future use. Some of them are regularly used as
adjectives, with or without change; others are not.

ENGLISH NOUNS. FOREIGN ADJECTIVES.

Alone Sole, solitary
Alms Eleemosynary
Age Primeval
Belief Credulous
Blame Culpable
Breast Pectoral
Being Essential
Bosom Graminal, sinuous
Boy, boyish Puerile
Blood, bloody Sanguinary, sanguine