Etymologists are a race who frequently need to be drawn up with a somewhat tight rein. Our Celtic fellow-subjects will not, perhaps, be much gratified by MR. CROSSLEY's tracing the first indications of their paternal tongue to the family of Cain; and as every branch of that family was destroyed by the deluge, they may marvel what account he can give of its reconstruction amongst their forefathers. But as his manner of expressing himself may lead some of your readers to imagine that he is explaining Cain, Lamech, Adah, Zillah, from acknowledged Hebrew meanings of any parts of those words, it may be as well to warn them that the Hebrew gives no support to any one of his interpretations. If fancy be ductile enough to agree with him in seeing a representation of a human arm holding a sling with a stone in it in the Hebrew letter called _lamed_, there would still be a broad hiatus between such a concession, and the conclusion he seems to wish the reader to draw from it, viz. that the word _lamed_ must have something to do with slinging, and that consequently _lamed_ must be a slinger. The Hebrew scholar knows that _lamed_ indisputably signifies to _teach_; and though perhaps he may not feel sure that the Hebrew consonant _l_ obtained its name from any connexion with that primary meaning of the root _lamed_, he will not think it improbable that as the letter _l_, when prefixed to a noun or verb, _teaches_ the reader the construction of the sentence, that may have been the reason for its being so named. As to a legend not traceable to within some thousand years of the facts with which it claims to be connected, those may take an interest in it who like so to do. But as far as we may regard Lamech's address to his wives in the light of a philological curiosity, it is interesting to observe how naturally the language of passion runs into poetry; and that this, the most ancient poetry in existence, is in strict unison with the peculiar character of subsequent Hebrew poetry; that peculiarity consisting of the repetition of clauses, containing either the same proposition in a slightly different form, or its antithesis; a rhyme of thoughts, if we may so say, instead of a rhyme of sounds, and consequently capable of being preserved by a literal translation. And Lamech said unto his wives,-- "Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; Ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech, For I have slain a man to my wounding, And a young man, to my hurt. If Cain shall be avenged seventy-fold, Truly Lamech, seventy and seven-fold." The construction is more favourable to the belief that the _man_ of line third is the same as the _young man_ of the parallel clause, than that he had slain two; the word rendered _hurt_ is properly a _wheal_, the effect of a severe strife or wound.