Welsh Journals

Graviora. 5°7 or framed, to support such a practice (most plausibly, at first sight) will, I believe, all turn out to be conven¬ tional abridgments, where the mind readily supplies the ellipsis, or apprehends the irony, without note or com¬ ment. An actor may say, " / am Hamlet to-night:" when " Hamlet" evidently means one dressed and speaking as Hamlet: and it is superfluous to look for any strange meaning in the verb " am." The speaker actually IS that which any hearer would naturally understand by 'Hamlet,1 as uttered by him. And a man in a wheel-barrow may say, "this is my coach and six :" when "coach and six" would be at once understood as his jocular term for the one wheeled vehicle, without troubling the verb to assume any extraordinary meaning [if it could, in that case (?) ]. " C'est ca que c'est Toulon," said young Napoleon, with his finger on the map. The General corrected his Geo¬ graphy ! not from misunderstanding the verb "est" but from taking Toulon literally ; whilst his " little Corporal" meant the very spot that commanded Toulon, and expressed it in one word. " L'Empire c'est la paix," said Napo¬ leon the Third, with the family conciseness. Our news¬ papers rendered it FREELY, "The Empire means peace:" rightly enough, as zfree translation. But, if you take the *phrase to pieces, and conclude that the French verb " est" of itself, ever signifies " means," you are, I believe, in serious error. In Matthew, xiii. 37, we have what is called a " convertible proposition." Both o-ireipcov and u/09, having the article, the sentence might run the opposite way, " The Son of man is the sower." In that case, " is " would not be (by your friend) supposed equivalent to " meaneth " or " representeth," but, on the contrary to " is meant by," or " is represented by." Does it not strike you as being rather unlikely, that the same verb should, of