REPLIES TO MINOR QUERIES:--Mitigation of Capital Punishment to a Forger--Chronograms and Anagrams-- Abigail--Burial in unconsecrated Ground--"Cob" and "Conners"--Coleridge's Unpublished MSS.--Selling a Wife--Life--Passage of Thucydides on the Greek Factions--Archbishop King--Devonianisms--Perseverant, Perseverance--"The Good Old Cause"--Saying of Pascal-- Paint taken off of old Oak--Passage in the "Tempest" 42 MISCELLANEOUS:-- Notes on Books, &c. 45 Books and Odd Volumes wanted 45 Notices to Correspondents 46 Advertisements 46 * * * * * Notes. THE EYE: ITS PRIMARY IDEA. I do not remember to have remarked that any writer notices how uniformly, in almost all languages, the same primary idea has been attached to the eye. This universal consent is the more remarkable, inasmuch as the connexion in question, though of course most appropriate and significant in itself, hardly seems to indicate the most prominent characteristic, or what we should deem to be _par excellence_ the obvious qualities of the eye; in a word, we should scarcely expect a term derived from a physical attribute or property. The eye is suggestive of life, of divinity, of intellect, piercing acuteness (_acies_); and again, of truth, of joy, of love: but these seem to have been disregarded, as being mere indistinctive accidents, and the primary idea which, by the common consent of almost all nations, has been thought most properly to symbolise this organ is a spring--_fons_, [Greek: pege]. Thus, from [Hebrew: `IYN], _manare, scatere_, a word not in use, according to Fuerst, we have the Hebrew [Hebrew: `AYIN], _fons aquarum et lacrimarum_, h. e. _oculus_. This word however, in its simple form, seems to have almost lost its primary signification, being used most generally in its secondary--_oculus_. (Old Testament Hebrew version, _passim_.) In the sense of _fons_, its derivative [Hebrew: MA`YAN] is usually substituted. Precisely the same connexion of ideas is to be found in the Syriac, the Ethiopic, and the Arabic. Again, in the Greek we find the rarely-used word [Greek: ope], a fountain, or more properly the _eye_, whence it wells out,--the same form as [Greek: ope], _oculus_; [Greek: ops, opsis, optomai]. Thus, in St. James his Epistle, cap. iii. 11.: [Greek: meti he pege ek tes autes opes bruei to gluku kai to pikron]. In the Welsh, likewise, a parallel case occurs: _Llygad_, an eye, signifies also the spring from which water flows, as in the same passage of St. James: _a ydyw ffynnon o'r un llygad_ (from one spring or eye) _yn rhoi dwfr melus a chwerw?_