ne. She lives and suffers not so many miles
from where I write. Indeed, you may say of our peasantry very much
what French people will tell you of their marriage custom, that love
at its best follows that ceremony. It is not bred by romance, but by
intimacy. The romantic attachment flames up, and satiety quenches it.
The other kind glows red-hot but rarely breaks into a flame. You may
have which you choose: you are lucky indeed if you get both.

To return, however, to dialect, intonation, as I say, has much to do
with it. It is attractive, and in poetry can be very touching. I have
had the advantage of hearing Barnes's poems read by a lady who has the
accent perfectly. One does not know Barnes or Wessex who does not
hear him read. That is true of all poetry, no doubt--but Barnes is
uncommonly dull to read. As for words, we have enough of our own to
support a small lexicon, which I used to possess, but have just been
hunting, in vain. Perhaps after the pattern of the arrow, I shall find
it again in the shelf of a friend. I remember that we call the roots
of a tree the _mores_; that a dipper is a _spudgell_; that we say
"_dout_ the candle" when we mean extinguish it. We say "to-year" as
you say "to-morrow," and call the month of March "Lide." February used
to be "Soul-grove," but I have never heard it called so. The pole of
a scythe is the _snead_; the two handles are the _nibs_. They are
fastened by rings called _quinnets_. Isaac Taylor says that the few
remaining Celtic words we have in use (other than hill or river
names) are words for obscure parts of tools. We have some queer
intensives--"terriblish" or "tarblish" is one, and "ghastly," meaning
ugly, is another. "A terrible ghastly sight" we say, meaning that a
thing looks rather ugly.

Our demonstrative pronoun is _thic_, or more properly _dhic_; "dhic
meaed" means "that meadow." _Suent_ means pleasant or proper--really
both. It always has a sense of right consequence, of one thing
following another as it ought. "Suently" would be "duly." But that
now is common to the West, and will be heard from Land's End to
Hengistbury Head, as well as in every one of Mr. Phillpotts' novels.

Doubtless it is too late to protest--since I am upon words--against a
current barbarism which is at least ten years old, and against which
I have publicly cried out at least twenty times. For the twenty-first
time, then, let me object to "wage" for "wages." _Is_ the wages of sin
death, or