Nor indeed can it be said that this adoption and naturalization of foreign words ever ceases in a language. There are periods, as we have seen, when this goes forward much more largely than at others; when a language throws open, as it were, its doors, and welcomes strangers with an especial freedom; but there is never a time, when one by one these foreigners and strangers are not slipping into it. We do not for the most part observe the fact, at least not while it is actually doing. Time, the greatest of all innovators, manages his innovations so dexterously, spreads them over such vast periods, and therefore brings them about so gradually, that often, while effecting the mightiest changes, we have no suspicion that he is effecting any at all. Thus how imperceptible are the steps by which a foreign word is admitted into the full rights of an English one; the process of its incoming often eluding our notice altogether. There are numerous Greek words, for example which, quite unchanged in form, have in one way or another ended in finding a home and acceptance among us. We may in almost every instance trace step by step the naturalization of one of these; and the manner of this singularly confirms what has just been said. We can note it spelt for a while in Greek letters, and avowedly employed as a Greek and not an English vocable; then after it had thus obtained a certain allowance among us, and become not altogether unfamiliar, we note it exchanging its Greek for English letters, and finally obtaining recognition as a word which however drawn from a foreign source, is yet itself English. Thus ‘acme’, ‘apotheosis’, ‘criterion’, ‘chrysalis’, ‘encyclopedia’, ‘metropolis’, ‘opthalmia’, ‘pathos’, ‘phenomena’, are all now English words, while yet South with many others always wrote ἀκμή, Jeremy Taylor ἀποθέωσις and κριτήριον, Henry More χρυσαλίς, Ben Jonson speaks of ‘the knowledge of the liberal arts, which the Greeks call ἐγκυκλοπαδείαν’{59}, Culverwell wrote μητρόπολις and ὀφθαλμία, Preston, φαινόμενα--Sylvester ascribes to Baxter, not ‘pathos’, but πάθος{60}. Ἠθος is a word at the present moment preparing for a like passage from Greek characters to English, and certainly before long will be acknowledged as an English word{61}. The only cause which has hindered this for some time past is the misgiving whether it will not be read ‘ĕthos,’ and not ‘ēthos,’ and thus not be the word intended.