the so-called "Tartar" race is properly Tatar, and they are now endeavouring to restore this, its correct orthography. The intrusion of the r is accounted for in the following manner. When, in the reign of St Louis of France, the hordes of this savage race were devastating eastern Europe, the tale of their ravages was brought to the pious king, who exclaimed with horror: "Well may they be called Tartars, for their deeds are those of fiends from Tartarus." The appositeness of the metamorphosed appellation made it take, and from that time French authors—and, after their example, the rest of Europe—have called the Tatar "Tartars." Whether the story is incontestably authentic or not is of small consequence: any one can see that it might be true, and that such causes may have produced such effects times innumerable.
The speakers of language thus constitute a republic, or rather, a democracy, in which authority is conferred only by general suffrage and for due cause, and is exercised under constant supervision and control. Individuals are abundantly permitted to make additions to the common speech, if there be reason for it, and if, in their work, they respect the sense of the community. When the first schooner ever built, on the coast of Massachusetts, slid from her stocks and floated gracefully upon the water, the chance exclamation of an admiring by-stander, "Oh, how she scoons!" drew from her contriver and builder the answer, "A scooner let her be, then," and made a new English word. The community ratified his act, and accepted the word he proposed, because the new thing wanted a new name, and there was no one else so well entitled as he to name it; if, on the other hand, he had assumed to christen a man-of-war a scooner, no one but his nearest neighbours would ever have heard of the attempt. The discoverer of a new asteroid, again, is allowed to select its title, provided he choose the name of some classical goddess, as is the established precedent for such cases—although, even then, he is liable to have the motives of his choice somewhat sharply looked into. The English astronomer who sought, a few years since, with covert loyalty, to call his planetling
