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upon fish and game, have few of the requirements of more civilised men; and it is easier for them to carry their furs to the more southern markets than for the merchants to come in search of them. Thus there is a total absence of any class of persons by whom it is at all likely that observations on the climate would be made; and we are not aware that any exist. Respecting the south we are better informed: Mr. Hill's volumes contain two meteorological journals, one kept by himself at Tomsk; the other by a Russian gentleman in the town of Irkoutsk (52° N. lat. 105° E. long.), showing the temperature and state of the weather from the 1st of December, 1847, to the 5th of May in the following year. Both journals excite great pity for the formidable amount of cold which the inhabitants even of southern Siberia have to endure. The Russian gentleman's journal shows that the ordinary temperature between the beginning of December, 1847, and the end of March, 1848, was about ten degrees below the zero of Fahrenheit; the average of the month of January reaching still four degrees lower. The warmest day is marked at 32° Fahrenheit; while the coldest was 60° below zero. It should be remembered that the observations refer on each day to the time of sunrise, which is commonly as cold as any period of the twenty-four hours. The most careful attention to its warming is necessary in every dwelling; the scientific 'Amossor' stove consumes little fuel, and with proper management gives the amount of heat that is required. In the larger 'houses of the wealthy, there is a servant kept, and in some 'more than one, expressly to attend to the fires.'* The temperature kept up within the rooms of the Russo-Siberians is very high, from 66° to 77° of Fahrenheit.

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In addition to the severity of the cold, the gloom of a Siberian winter is augmented by its melancholy darkness. The shortest days have but three hours' daylight. No wonder that every symptom that the dreary season of winter is drawing to a close, and that the spring is coming, is greeted with the warmest welcome. Wearied with the past and present, the mind must hail every object that draws its attention to the future. No wonder that the advent of the black cuckoo of the north should be hailed with shouts of joy.

Siberia, 'I heard
This word was
At last the door

'One morning,' says the writer of Revelations in in the street a shout of "The crow! The crow!" taken up and echoed loudly by many other voices. of my apartment was opened, and a boy fourteen years old, putting in his head, exclaimed "The crow is come!" and then ran away,

Vol. i. p. 335.

slamming the door behind him. God bless them! What has happened? I mentally exclaimed, "Have they become crazy?" and went out to inquire what could have occasioned all this hubbub.

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Scarcely had I passed the threshold when I saw that all eyes were fixed on me, and every one pointed before me, still crying See the crow, the crow!" "And where is it?" I inquired. "Am I, too, to see it? What does it mean?" "The crow brings the spring," was the joyful answer.' (Revelations of Siberia, vol. ii. p. 212.)

Released from the rigorous winter, the inhabitants hail the temperate spring and the great heat by which it is rapidly succeeded. Not that these genial seasons can be enjoyed (at all events in the north and east) with unalloyed satisfaction, for swarms of musquitoes, gnats, and flies cause continual discomfort and irritation, while the sudden transition from extreme cold to intense heat gives rise to apathy and languor, and is a shock to all but the strongest constitutions. The long duration of daylight, also, becomes irksome, and in some instances produces an extraordinary excitement injurious to the health of persons who are unused to it.

It was across the whole breadth of this kingdom, useful to Russia as a penal settlement, enriching it by supplies of furs, and still more largely by its vast mineral wealth, but contributing little to its efficiency or strength either by its civil or military population, that Mr. Hill accomplished his arduous journey. He could not do so without leave from the government, by which every stranger's movements are carefully scrutinised; but he easily obtained it, wisely associating himself with companions whom from time to time he was enabled to change. After crossing the Ural mountains to Ikaterinberg, he pursued an eastern route, passing a little to the northward of the town of Omsk. Hither the government of western Siberia has been removed from Tobolsk by the present Emperor. The cause for his fixing it in a city on the main line of road from Russia to Thibet, from whose frontier Omsk is distant about 900 miles, is believed to be that he may promote a trade with India, and afford facilities for military operations in that quarter. Without entering that town, he passed through Tomsk and Krasnoyarsk to Irkoutsk, made an expedition over the frozen Balkal Lake into Chinese Tartary, that he might visit the Grand Lama, and see Buddhism as it is practised at Maimatchin. Returning to Irkoutsk, he resumed his easterly course, reached the river Lena, which he navigated to Yakoutsk. At Yakoutsk he engaged horses for a perilous land journey over desolate wastes and flooded swamps, which terminated at the Port of Ocholsk. Still unwearied, he visited Kamskatcha; and

he vanishes at the end of his second volume, with his sails set for further travels. We have given a fair sample of his observations; for the bulk of them we refer to his book, as well as for the narration of his personal adventures. It is scarcely necessary to say that these were of no ordinary kind. Attacked at the outset by fever, he afterwards travelled in the severest nights: he was upset in the snow; waited upon by murderers; once threatened with arrest; subsequently actually arrested; he was distressed also for food; but his severest and most perilous labour was the crossing of a swamp, which tried to the utmost, during several days, the endurance both of the traveller and his horses. It is well that he escaped from all these hardships and dangers, so as to be able to lay before the public the recital of his travels, and thus to confer upon his readers the somewhat selfish pleasure described by Lucretius, which the spectator on shore enjoys, when he sees the mariner buffeted by the winds and waves.

ART. III.-1. Essai Historique et Philosophique sur les Noms d'Hommes, de Peuples, et de Lieux. Par EUSEBE SALVERTE. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris.

2. On the Names, Surnames, and Nicknames of the AngloSaxons. By J. M. KEMBLE, Esq. 8vo. London: 1846. 3. An Essay on Family Nomenclature. By MARK ANTHONY LOWER. 3rd edition, 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1846.

4. Die Personennamen insbesondere die Familiennamen und ihre Entstehungsarten auch unter Berücksichtigung der Ortsnamen. Von AUGUST FRIEDRICH PоTT, Professor der allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft an der Universität zu Halle. 1 vol. 8vo. pp. 721. Leipzig, Brockhaus: 1853.

WHEN Adam delved and Eve span,' there were not only no gentlemen in the world, but every body was contented with a single name; and the good old rule, one person ' one name,' sufficed among all the children of men long after their language had been confounded at the Tower of Babel, and their races scattered abroad upon the face of the earth. In the early state of society, Abraham and Moses among the Jews, Achilles and Ulysses among the Greeks, were known to their respective contemporaries by the single names by which they are mentioned in Holy Writ, and in the poetry of Homer. A later and higher state of civilisation was accompanied, both in Greece and Rome, by the use of surnames. Distinctive

additions, patronymical or local, added to the single name, will be familiar to most of our readers. Hecatæus of Miletus, Herodotus of Halicarnassus, Thucydides the son of Olorus, Socrates the son of Sophroniscus, Demosthenes the son of Demosthenes, were such. Of the three names which it became usual for Romans to bear, the first, or prænomen, corresponded to our baptismal name; the second indicated the gens; and the third, or cognomen, may be considered as corresponding to our hereditary family name. Marcus Tullius Cicero makes it known by his name that he is a member of the Cicero family, and that that family belonged to the gens Tullia.

If we pass from the Roman world to that which arose on its ruins, we shall find the earlier practice restored. Neither the Germanic hero Arminius, nor the Celtic Caractacus, was distinguished by any additional epithet. The same simple practice prevailed generally throughout England during the whole of the Saxon period; and on the Continent under Charlemagne and many of those who followed him. The learning of antiquaries has discovered numerous instances of a surname or nickname being given in Saxon times, in addition to the ordinary name. Mucel (big), from which our modern name Mitchell is derived, is one of them. The names used by our Saxon population before the Conquest may, from the time of their conversion to Christianity, be called names of baptism, but are not derived from the names of Christian saints, as John and James, Gregory and Lawrence, and so many other names introduced after the Conquest were.* Each of the ordinary Saxon names had its well-known meaning, as Edward (Truth-keeper), Wulfhelm (Wolf head).

In the present day the name of baptism is but seldom heard in England, except from master to servant, in conversation between persons who are extremely intimate, and on the celebration of ceremonies, such as those of baptism and marriage. But in some parts of the Continent the Christian name is, in the main, alone used; and we have ourselves known cases in which English gentlemen have spent much time in Calabria and La Puglia, and other parts of Italy, in daily intercourse with natives, by whom they were severally addressed as Signor Cristoforo or Don Roberto, and by whom the surname of either gentleman was rever pronounced. In England, under Queen

The special devotion of parents to one particular Saint, frequently caused the bestowal of such Saint's name on their child. Thus the parents of St. Colette, très devots envers St. Nicolas, 6.66 "gave their child" au baptême le nom de Colette, e'est à dire petite 'Nicole.'

Elizabeth and James I., 'special heed was taken to the name 'of baptism,' because, as Lord Coke lays it down, a man 'cannot have two names of baptism, as he may have divers 'surnames.' The name of baptism could be changed at Confirmation only. And thus,' says the same great lawyer, was 'the case of Sir Francis Gawdie, late Chief Justice of the 'Court of Common Pleas, whose name of baptism was Thomas, and his name of confirmation Francis; and that name of Francis, by the advice of all the Judges in anno 36 Hen. 8. 'he did beare, and after used in all his purchases and grants." Such change must, however, have been known to, and sanctioned by, the Bishop in confirmation.*

The importance of the origin and meaning of the names of persons is great, both in historical and in antiquarian investigations. Instances of this are unnecessary. The origin of the greater part of our existing surnames is to be sought for in many distinct sources. Such surnames mainly consist of the following classes: 1st. Norman names dating from the Conquest. 2nd. Local English names. 3rd, Names of occupation. 4th. Derivatives from the Christian names of father or mother. 5th. Names given on account of personal peculiarities. 6th. Names derived from the animal, mineral, and vegetable kingdoms. 7th. Names derived from the celestial hierarchy. 8th. Irish, Scotch, French, Flemish, Dutch, German, Spanish, and other continental names, mainly imported within the last two centuries.

I. The first and smallest class consists of the Norman names brought into England at the Conquest. Domesday Book is the only accurate and trustworthy authority, showing the names of those Normans among whom the length and breadth of the land of England was then divided. It is these names alone which became hereditary as early as the eleventh century. Some of the names of landowners recorded in that great survey have been inherited by their descendants down to the present day. The interpolated untrustworthy Roll of Battle Abbey, as Camden has justly observed, is not to be compared with Domesday Book as an authority on this subject.

These ancient Norman names may be arranged under three

In 1515, one Agnes Sharpe was sentenced by the Consistorial Court of the Bishop of Rochester to do penance, for having voluntarily changed at confirmation the name of her infant son to Edward, who, when baptized, was named Henry. Her sentence was to make a pilgrimage to the Rood at Boxley, and to carry in procession, on five Lord's days, a lighted taper, which she was to offer to the image of the Blessed Virgin.

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