imes, fashioning them mainly from the Greek, no other
language within our reach yielding itself at all so easily to our needs.

Of non-scientific words, both Greek and Latin, some have made their way
among us quite in these latter times. Burke in the House of Commons is
said to have been the first who employed the word 'inimical'{68}. He
also launched the verb 'to spheterize' in the sense of to appropriate
or make one's own; but this without success. Others have been more
fortunate; 'aesthetic' we have got indeed _through_ the Germans, but
_from_ the Greeks. Tennyson has given allowance to 'aeon'{69}; and
'myth' is a deposit which wide and far-reaching controversies have left
in the popular language. 'Photography' is an example of what I was just
now speaking of--namely, a scientific word which has travelled beyond
the limits of the science which it designates and which gave it birth.
'Stereotype' is another word of the same character. It was invented--not
the thing, but the word,--by Didot not very long since; but it is now
absorbed into healthy general circulation, being current in a secondary
and figurative sense. Ruskin has given to 'ornamentation' the sanction
and authority of his name. 'Normal' and 'abnormal', not quite so new,
are yet of recent introduction into the language{70}.

{Sidenote: _German Importations_}

When we consider the near affinity between the English and German
languages, which, if not sisters, may at least be regarded as first
cousins, it is somewhat remarkable that almost since the day when they
parted company, each to fulfil its own destiny, there has been little
further commerce between them in the matter of giving or taking. At any
rate adoptions on our part from the German have been till within this
period extremely rare. 'Crikesman' (Kriegsmann) and 'brandschat'
(Brandschatz), with some other German words common enough in the _State
Papers_ of the sixteenth century, found no permanent place in the
language. The explanation lies in the fact that the literary activity of
Germany did not begin till very late, nor our interest in it till later
still, not indeed till the beginning of the present century. Yet
'plunder', as I have mentioned elsewhere, was brought back from Germany
about the beginning of our Civil Wars, by the soldiers who had served
under Gustavus Adolphus and his captains{71}. And 'trigger', written
'tricker' in _Hudibras_ is manifestly the German 'druecker'{72}, though
none