_,) if, as has been
conjectured, there be any radical affinity between that and _schwaermen_,
whose primitive sense of crawl or creep is seen in the _swarming_ of
bees, and _swarming_ up a tree.]

[Footnote c: That is, unless he takes the _rag_ in _dragan_ to be the
same thing, which he might support with several plausible analogies,
such as E. _rake_, It. _recare_, etc.]

But the same subtilty of mind, which sometimes seduces Mr. Wedgwood into
making distinctions without a difference and preferring an impalpable
relation of idea to a plain derivative affinity, is of great advantage
to him when the problem is to construct an etymology by following the
gossamer clews that lead from sensual images to the metaphorical and
tropical adaptations of them to the demands of fancy and thought. The
nice optics that see what is not to be seen have passed into a sarcastic
proverb; yet those are precisely the eyes that are in the heads and
brains of all who accomplish much, whether in science, poetry, or
philosophy. With the kind of etymologies we are speaking of, it is
practically useful to have the German gift of summoning a thing up from
the depths of one's inward consciousness. It is when Mr. Wedgwood would
reverse the order of Nature, and proceed from the tropical to the direct
and simple, that we are at issue with him. For it is not philosophers
who make language, though they often unmake it.

Mr. Wedgwood's most successful application of his system may be found,
as we think, under the words, _dim_, _dumb_, _deaf_, and _death_. He
might have confirmed the relation between dumbness and darkness from the
acutest metaphysician among poets, in Dante's _ove il sol tace_. We have
not left ourselves room enough to illustrate Mr. Wedgwood's handling of
these etymologies by extracts; we must refer our readers to the book
itself. Apart from its value as suggesting thought, or quickening our
perception of shades of meaning, and so freshening our feeling of the
intimate harmony of sense and spirit in language, and of the thousand
ways in which the soul assumes the material world into her own heaven
and transfigures it there, the volume will be found practically the most
thorough contribution yet made to English etymology. We are glad to hear
that we are to have an American edition of it under the able supervision
of Mr. Marsh. Etymology becomes of practical importance, when, as the
newspapers inform us, two members of a New York club hav