ever, some words like parasang or far- Hindustani. Persian, already copious sang, which fell on the ears of the Ten and abounding in compound epithets, Thousand with wearying iteration; and was swelled by a torrent of Arabic. The there are proper names which, in spite of framework of the language remained in Laconian brevity or Athenian amplifica- all its simple solidity. The grammar, tion, can be tracked to their sources. Sir with its verbs and nouns. or as Oriental W. Jones, it is true, talks about "learned lexicographers put it, with its words for trifling," and sets little value on the cata-actions and for names, modified neither logue. But, as can easily be seen, Alex- conjugation nor declension; and the faander and Xenophon must have heard miliar and common expressions for aninames pronounced which are surprisingly mals, natural objects, and things in daily similar to modern Persian. Roxana is use held their ground. But an enormous Roshan, or Roshana. Parysatis can be addition was made to the power of exnothing else but Pari-zadi, or Fairy-born. pression possessed by educated and litStatira is the Persian Sitara, the Star. erary men, and, with the change of The distance between Darius and Dara religion, even the colloquial use of many or Darab is nothing. Xerxes, though Arabic words and phrases was gradually derived by divines and Orientalists from adopted. The result is that a Persian Khshayarsha, is marvellously like Shir- writer, poet, historian, philosopher, or Shah; and Artaxerxes, if Artakhshasta divine, can at will vary his style, and exin the cuneiform character, is at this day, press his meaning by recourse to profuse with the Parsees of Western India, Arde- and seemingly inexhaustible stores. The shir, or the Strong Lion. Persian and Arabic Dictionary of RichOur business, however, is with the ardson now before us, is a bulky volume modern Persian, and its origin and his- of more than seventeen hundred pages, tory are somewhat as follows. If the with two columns to each page. Taking arrow-headed Persian was like Sanscrit, the number of words in each column, on the former certainly contrived to get rid the average, to be twenty, we have a total of all grammatical complications and sub- of nearly seventy thousand for the comtleties, for nothing can be simpler than bined forces of these two great tongues. declensions and conjugations in the mod- An eminent Orientalist has calculated ern tongue. The story runs that the the total at eighty thousand. English Sassanian dynasty, about the third cen- students need not, however, imagine that, tury of our era, patronized literature, and to become a fair Persian scholar, familset the fashion of a pure and elegant iarity with one-quarter or even one-tenth dialect. There were, about that time, of these is imperative. If we are cortwo forms of Persian - Farsi, that of rectly informed that fifteen hundred Persia proper, and the Pehlevi or Pah- words supply the materials for a long lavi, rough and uncourtly, and peculiar to evening's debate in the House of ComMazanderan and the mountainous parts mons, it will be soon understood that a of the Empire. This latter variety was foreigner with a good ear and an aptitude discountenanced, and the best or most for languages may, by the mastery of a elegant form of Farsi was eventually few thousand words, say from five thou known as the Zabani Dari, or language sand to ten thousand, appreciate Sadī, of the Court. Not long after this period dictate a letter in Persian, and discourse came Mahomet and his successors, and fluently with merchants and officials at carried everything before them. Reli-Tabriz and Teheran. The main difficulgions, manners, and language were either | ties are encountered at the outset. An swept away or modified by the victorious Englishman may be inclined to think Khalifs, and though Firdusi composed other nations barbarians because they put his great epic mainly in the old unadul- words on paper from the right hand to terated Persian, the language was en- the left, because they only express some riched and adorned by a copious infusion three vowels, and because they have of Arabic words and phrases. What ruled that there is a certain sound inhetook place has been remarked on other rent in each consonant which need not occasions in the formation or develop- be otherwise written. We write sun, bud, ment of mixed or composite languages; and milk. A Persian contents himself with in England, when Norman French came sn, bd, and mlk, which to him signify, rein contact with Old-English; in India, spectively, "a year," the adjective “bad," when the rustic Hindi was expanded by and the legal term "property." It must the aid of Persian into Urdu, the lan- be admitted, for all this, that Persian guage of the camp, commonly called 'caligraphy is a stumbling-block and a

sore trial to the temper. Oriental pen-conjugations, are, for all practical purmen have three styles. The first is poses, conjugated according to one methtermed Nishki, is nearly upright, and od, and have three changes of tense. must be learnt before any man can read a Then the auxiliary verbs to be, to become, simple sentence in a book. The second and to be willing, are called in for suppleis Talik, and though words, especially at mentary tenses, or to form the passive the end of a line, are in this form written voice. Now and then a Persian imperaslantingly, one above another, this partic- tive is referred to some obsolete verb, ular department must be studied by all and no polished language is wholly withwho aspire to become fair Persian schol- out some grammatical vagary, or some ars. In the third, called Shikastah or eccentric deviation from rule; but hisbroken, diacritical points are nobly disre- tory may be fairly challenged to produce garded, many letters are run into those any vehicle of thought and expression that follow them, and the result is a cross which combines equal regularity of conbetween an expanded shorthand and struction, equal simplicity of syntax, and those hieroglyphics which Sidney Smith equal wealth of phrase. declined to decipher twenty-four hours Persian, too, is not merely adapted to after he had put them on paper. The the development of a great national literShikastah is to all appearance a series ature: to the subtleties of the casuist, to of deterrent strokes and intemperate the flowing narrative of the historian, to flourishes; but consummate practice en- the raptures of the sonneteer. Writers ables a class of clerks and accountants to of original talent have excelled in all read it off with a certainty and a celerity these departments, and others have emabsolutely marvellous. This running- bellished history with memoirs and hand, with other legacies, was bequeathed correspondence teeming with personal to the British Government in India by anecdotes and picturesque details. But its Mussulman predecessor; and it is a Persian, in a large portion of the proof of the versatility and suppleness of East, has monopolized the field of State, the Hindu character, that natives of the diplomacy, and social affairs. For these older religion, accustomed to a language latter purposes it is unquestionably and a literature written from left to right, superior to Arabic, and it distances were able to master the intricacies of the Sanskrit and its numerous derivatives. Persian character, and as penmen or It has not unjustly been styled the readers to compete with, and even dis- French of the East. A Persian diplotance, Mahometans on their own ground. matist or petitioner can command every A Hindu has often been seen to get at variety and degree, from extravagant and the purport of a mass of papers discol- highflown metaphors to short and peroured by age, mildewed by damp, and spicuous phrases. A Viceroy can pubpierced by the inertes tinea, while a Mus- lish an edict, can promulgate a set of sulman has looked on hopelessly, like the rules, can prescribe duties and threaten Bohemian in Quentin Durward at the penalties in a fashion to be comprehendscroll presented to him by Toison d'Or. ed at a glance by nomads and rustics. When an Englishman, however, has mas- Or, if so minded, he can, in controversy, tered the easiest form of the letters, he is resort to "less accurate language," and struck at once by the similarity between veil his purpose in profuse sentences his own language and Persian, though where no diplomatist can be certain of a the likeness is not in sound or sense. meaning, and no grammarian detect a Genders may be said to be unknown. flaw. We really could conceive Mr. Inanimate things are neuter, and living Gladstone laying down "a choice of things of the two sexes either have dif- three courses" in correct and flowery ferent names or are distinguished by the Persian, of harmonious cadence, so as to affixes nar male, and madah female. bewilder the House; and we fancy that The declension of nouns causes no per- we could see our way to transmuting a plexity. There is a short sign for the polished epigram by Mr. Disraeli into a genitive, and an extra syllable for dative distich which would be appreciated in the and accusative; two terminations distin- bazaars of Shiraz. Indeed, so copious guish the plural, with occasionally a third and diversified is the language, that it is specially borrowed from the Arabic. The possible to go even further, and to imrules for degrees of comparison are sim-agine the Chief Commissioner of Public plicity itself; and verbs, instead of being Works crushing a subordinate and a erratic, irregular, traceable to two or savant, or rebuking a deputation, in the three roots, divisible under four or five style of the "Life of Tamerlane," known

to Persian scholars as the Zafar-namah, | faction in thus briefly drawing attention or "Book of Victory." It is curious that to the antiquity, gradual improvement, the great Arabian lawgiver is credited and sterling merits of that elegant lanwith a saying that Persian ought to be guage; to its copiousness and comprespoken in Paradise, and to this day unan- hensiveness, which enable writers to conimous testimony to its praise and honour dense thought into an epigram, or to is borne by diplomatists who have con- spread it out over a page; to the exquisducted affairs in Iran, by residents and ite simplicity of its grammatical rules; travellers who have made any progress in to its splendid specimens of caligraphy; speaking it, and by Indian officials who to its historical and poetical legacies: have either studied it on the frontiers of and to its merits as a medium of commuthe Punjab, or who were familiar with nication, whereby, whether in the Court, that less perfect and pure form which the Council, the tribunal of justice, the was once in use, as the exponent of law counting-house, or the mart of commerce, and justice, in the courts and tribunals it is emphatically the dialect of articulateof a large portion of India. It is admir- speaking men. We have endeavoured as ably suited to repartee, proverbs, pithy sayings, and polished reproof; and a language must have possessed a wonderful strength and simplicity of its own to have enabled those who spoke it to resist successfully all great or substantial changes at the hands of conquering Tartars and fiery and zealous Arabs. Few languages have passed through such an ordeal, or have survived such a strain.

much as possible in this paper to avoid the use of Oriental phraseology; but we may be pardoned for concluding with one specimen of Persian, the point of which it requires no great Eastern learning to catch. We are often told that in this world there are two kinds of folly; one which is aware of its own deficiency and is modest and retiring, and the other which is the reverse. A Persian sage has expressed this in the following couplet, neat and probably unsurpassed for terseness:

know. The compound (murakkab) fool is he who does not know that he does not know." Let us devoutly hope that the "Great King" during his visit may be so fenced against unconscious stupidity and jaunty impertinence as seldom to be led to meditate on the applicability of the above epigram to any of the countrymen of Palmerston and Peel.

We must, however, candidly admit that its poetical and even its prose works are too ornate, florid, and metaphorical to disarm a rigid censor or to suit a classical taste. The supremacy of Horace is in Jáhil-i-basit án ast, keh dánad na dánad, no danger from the odes of Hafiz. Zu- Jáhil-i-murakkab án ast, keh na dánad na dánad. leikha will never speak and smile as In English, "the simple (basit) fool is he sweetly as Lalage; and we are soon who knows (dánad) that he does not wearied with verses crammed full of jasmines and violets, thorns and roses, lovers like moths perishing in the flame of the candle, Shirin pouting with the lips of the tulip, and Leila distinguished by the stature of the cypress and the cheek of the rose. We may therefore rest assured that, in spite of the Shah's visit, our obvious interest in the integrity and independence of his dominions, and its own intrinsic merits, Persian will not be heaped up on the curriculum of our schools and colleges, nor will it add a new terror to competitive ordeals. It will probably remain what it has been hitherto; a vast field of which the harvest is occasionally reaped by eminent linguists, or by servants of the Foreign Office, or by members of the Indian Staff who have found time for study in the monotony of the hot season, or have heard the dialect spoken in the cantonments of Peshawur or the Derajat. But there has not been a time since the days of Hadji Baba, now more than half a century ago, in which Persia and its inhabitants have so justly claimed a share of public notice; and we have some satis

From The Spectator. THE SERMONS ON HOSPITAL SUNDAY.

LONDON has not responded at all magnificently to the call for help to the Hospitals. It is probable that the collection may reach £25,000, or even £30,000, being, if we estimate means by popula tion, about in the proportion of one-half as much, relatively, as was raised by Liverpool on the last occasion, though London, at this time of year at all events, must have a far larger fraction of the wealth of the country in it, even propor tionally to its population, than Liverpool, or Manchester, or the richest provincial

city. As this, however, is the first effort, to keep him happy in his creed and and as London, when its imagination is not its injunctions, it does not naturally greatly excited, is the most difficult of all strengthen the force or the applicability great cities to stir, on account of the vast of the charitable injunction itself. Pernumber of people who live in the metrop- haps the Archbishop of Canterbury's olis of the world without being bound appeal to the tenderness of Christ's by any religious ties, the experiment personal sympathy with suffering has cannot be regarded as a failure, though more of specific religious claim in it on we still hold that London could very the sources of a Christian's compassion, easily indeed quadruple her annual con- but then it is not in this case so much tribution, if she would. That, however, the feeling of pity which needs to be is not our present concern. stirred, still less the conviction, which is No one can read the abstracts which perhaps only too deep already, that by a have been published of the sermons little very cheap sacrifice we are earning preached on this occasion without feeling a blessing for ourselves, but the conthat the Clergy feel a charity sermon of viction that there is a good deal more this kind a real difficulty, and that they than the relief of suffering involved in struggle very earnestly, though not un- doing all that is possible for the relief of frequently very unsuccessfully, to give suffering - that the difference between freshness and life to their appeals. What relieving and not relieving it, is all the the sermons seem to us mostly to want, difference between helping the sufferers so far as we can judge by the brief ex- to believe in the providence and goodness tracts,- by which, perhaps, it is not very of God, and leaving a great many of them fair to judge them at all, is a reason to doubt, and even deny it. And this connecting more closely the religious seems to us precisely what a Christian faith of the hearers with the special preacher should urge, as distinguished appeal. Mere humanity and tenderness from a professor of the religion of hufor suffering are so wide-spread in the manity. To the latter, it is just as open present day, even amongst those who to descant on the ties which should make repudiate ordinary Christian beliefs, that Man so much grander an idea than the they may be assumed in all, whether individuals of the human race taken admitting the additional pressure of together, as to the Christian. But it is religious motives to give, or not. Nor is not open to the Positivist to point out it sufficient to show, as many of the that in numberless cases the belief in preachers did, by very picturesque con- God depends, for its energy and reality, trasts between the great buildings of the and to some extent rightly, on the actions ancient and the great buildings of the of men; that the minds of sufferers may modern world, that Christianity has made be thrown into sceptical, not to say the difference, whether our modern hu- atheistic moods, by neglect; that they manity be now independent of Christian- may be warmed with gratitude and faith, ity or not. The Roman baths and am- by disinterested care. Such states of phitheatres, of course, occupied a very mind are natural, because every sign of much more magnificent position in human love is a witness to divine love, relation to the ancient civilization than and every want of human love a failure in the places for the amusement of the that witness. Every man who resists a people do now; and our modern Hospi- legitimate impulse of pity, makes himself tals occupy a position for which there is to that extent a non-conductor of the pity perhaps hardly any precedent in the which God has put into his heart; and ancient States. It may be true, too, as robs somebody else therefore of a revelaone eloquent preacher pointed out, that tion, as well as himself of the blessing of if Lazarus had been a modern pauper he transmitting it. There is no greater trial would have had a good chance of hospi- to faith than human neglect and physical tal treatment as admirable as that of suffering, together. The latter, the sufDives himself,- though the Lancet's fering, lowers the patient's vital power, reports a few years ago on the Infirmaries and therefore, his power of faith; and of the Workhouses would hardly bear the former, the neglect, is a real veil this out. Still, all this line of argument between him and the most natural and only leads to this, that the Christian moving sign of the divine love. Despair is, has tangible proof of the power which his of all states of mind, the one most deadly faith has exerted in remodelling our to faith, and there is no source of despair treatment of suffering and helplessness; so frequent as the sense of desolate sufferand though that consideration may tend 'ing, the sense of helpless dependence

and nothing to depend upon, the shock | sciousness of need and help. Without that the heart feels when it instinctively the help, the sense or need would be apt stretches forth the hand for help, and no rather to degenerate into a sense of help is near. Almost anyone who stifles injury, into an irritating and misanthropa real impulse of genuine pity may be ical, rather than a uniting and organizing making an atheist, or clouding the faith feeling. The strong conviction which of a Christian. One of the preachers last even Mr. Fitzjames Stephen has exSunday remarked that nothing was so pressed, in spite of his declared hatred great an equalizer as suffering, and that of all namby-pamby philanthropy, -by consequently in the hospital not only did which he seems too often to mean all the poor get as much attention as the disinterestedness whatever, that in one rich, but the rich would get the same sense we are all members one of attention as the poor; that Dives, in his another," is never so keen as after a last illness, would, if he had been in a period of weakness and suffering, unless modern hospital, have had as much atten- that weakness or suffering has brought tion as Lazarus. And the preacher with it no new ties. If it has, the sense might have added, that that would possi- of unity is wonderfully increased. If it bly have proved a much greater benefit has not, it is at least too likely to be greatly to Dives than even the resurrection from diminished. There are men strong enough the dead, from which, for his brothers at to translate their own sufferings into a least, he hoped so much, that it might lesson as to their neighbour's sufferings, have been a far more convincing revela- without any of the help towards doing so tion of God's love than any such resur- which a little tenderness gives. But they rection, and might, therefore, have saved are comparatively few. Suffering is apt him from a place of torment. There is to make selfish, to harden, instead of nothing inexplicable in the power we soften, unless there be counteracting have of making atheists or believers of influences at work. There are plenty of each other. It follows almost necessarily, people who are apparently more improved from the power of transmitting or not by happiness than suffering, but they are transmitting the light we receive. usually people on whom a little suffering has very much the same effect as a great deal on the average man. Some amount of suffering is always needful in order to humanize, but how much depends entirely on individual circumstances of all kinds; -one may always say, however, that any amount must be too much which shuts out for the moment the belief in human sympathy, and leaves for any length of time the spirit of mere endurance, in all its bareness and hardness, unrelieved by any sense of fellowship. The clergy might, we suspect, have insisted far oftener than they did on the specific effect which help and comfort have, not merely in making pain and weakness endurable, but in making pain and weakness humanizing,-in giving them that influence on the heart for which, in all probability, they were chiefly designed as elements of moral discipline.

There was another kind of specific appeal apparently addressed by some of the clergy to their people which might probably have been effectually used much more generally than it was. In the Inner Temple Church, where, by the way, the Barristers, probably rather ashamed of the tardy assent given by their Benchers to the collection, subscribed more freely than the congregations of most other churches, the Reader, Rev. A. Ainger, seems to have urged on his hearers how much physical suffering is apt to deepen the sense of fellowship between man and man; but then the condition that it shall do so, seems, except in the very strongest natures, to be, that it shall be suffering alleviated by sympathy and help, not suffering borne in grim solitude. It is not the mere pain which creates the sense of fellowship, but the simultaneous con

A CURIOUS Symptom of the present social THE Sonnet "The Pine," copied from the condition of Germany is, that one of the heads "Dublin University Magazine," where it was under which the contents of the Illustrirte Zei-published as original, into No. 1502 of the tung are divided is "Strike-Angelengeheiten." LIVING AGE, was written by our distinguished The half-column devoted to this subject is countryman, Alfred B. Street.

well filled.