§ 192. Let there be a period in the history of a language wherein the _sun_ and _moon_ are dealt with, not as inanimate masses of matter, but as animated divinities. Let there, in other words, be a time when dead things are personified, and when there is a _mythology_. Let an object like the _sun_ be deemed a _male_, and an object like the _moon_, a _female_, deity. We may then understand the origin of certain genders. The Germans say the _sun in _her_ glory_; the _moon in _his_ wane_. This difference between the usage of the two languages, like so many others, is explained by the influence of the classical languages upon the English.--"_Mundilfori had two children; a son, Mâni (Moon), and a daughter, Sôl (Sun)._"--Such is an extract out of an Icelandic mythological work, viz., the prose Edda. In the classical languages, however, _Phœbus_ and _Sol_ are masculine, and _Luna_ and _Diana_ feminine. Hence it is that, although in Anglo-Saxon and Old-Saxon the _sun_ is _feminine_, it is in English _masculine_. _Philosophy_, _charity_, &c., or the names of abstract qualities personified, take a conventional sex, and are feminine from their being feminine in Latin. As in all these words there is no change of form, the consideration of them is a point of rhetoric, rather than of etymology. § 193. The remainder of this chapter is devoted to miscellaneous remarks upon the true and apparent genders of the English language. 1. With the false genders like _baron_, _baroness_, it is a general rule that the feminine form is derived from the masculine, and not the masculine from the feminine; as _peer_, _peeress_. The words _widower_, _gander_, and _drake_ are exceptions. For the word _wizard_, from _witch_, see the section on augmentative forms. 2. The termination -ess, in which so large a portion of our feminine substantives terminate, is not of Saxon but of classical origin, being derived from the termination -ix, _genitrix_. 3. The words _shepherdess_, _huntress_, and _hostess_ are faulty; the radical part of the word being Germanic, and the secondary part classical: indeed, in strict English Grammar, the termination -ess has no place at all. It is a classic, not a Gothic, element. 4. The termination -inn, is current in German, as the equivalent to -ess, and as a feminine affix (_freund_ = _a friend_; _freundinn_ = _a female friend_). In English it occurs only in a fragmentary form;--e.g., in _vixen_, a true feminine derivative from _fox_ = _füchsinn_, German. _Bruin_ = _the bear_, may be either a female form, as in Old High German _përo_ = _a he-bear_, _pirinn_ = _a she-bear_; or it may be the Norse form _björn_ = _a bear_, male or female. _Caution._--Words like _margravine_ and _landgravine_ prove nothing, being scarcely naturalised. 5. The termination -str, as in _webster_, _songster_, and _baxter_, was originally a feminine affix. Thus, in Anglo-Saxon,