Then with respect to "noise," MR. HICKSON scouts the idea of its being the same word with the French "noise." Here again he is at odds with Doctor Johnson, although I doubt very much that he has the odds of him. MR. HICKSON rejects altogether the _quasi_ mode of derivation, nor will he allow that the same word may (even in different languages) deviate from its original meaning. But, most unfortunately for MR. HICKSON, the obsolete French signification of "noise" was precisely the present English one! A French writer thus refers to it:-- "A une époque plus reculée ce mot avait un sens différent: il signifiait _bruit, cries de joie_, &c. Joinville dit dans son _Histoire de Louis IX_.,--'La noise que ils (les Sarrazins) menoient de leurs cors sarrazinnoiz estoit espouvantable à escouter.' Les Anglais nous ont emprunté cette expression et l'emploient _dans sa première acception_." MR. HICKSON also lays great stress upon the absence, in English, of "the new" as a singular of "the news." In the French, however, "_la nouvelle_" is common enough in the exact sense of news. Will he allow nothing for the caprice of idiom? A.E.B. Leeds, July 8. 1850. _News, Noise_ (Vol. ii., p. 82.).--I think it will be found that MR. HICKSON is misinformed as to the fact of the employment of the Norman French word _noise_, in the French sense, in England. _Noyse_, _noixe_, _noas_, or _noase_, (for I have met with each form), meant then quarrel, dispute, or, as a school-boy would say, a row. It was derived from _noxia_. Several authorities agree in these points. In the _Histoire de Foulques Fitz-warin_, Fouque asks "Quei fust _la noyse_ qe fust devaunt le roi en la sale?" which with regard to the context can only be fairly translated by "What is going on in {138} the King's hall?" For his respondent recounts to him the history of a quarrel, concerning which messengers had just arrived with a challenge. Whether the Norman word _noas_ acquired in time a wider range of signification, and became the English _news_, I cannot say but stranger changes have occurred. Under our Norman kings _bacons_ signified dried wood, and _hosebaunde_ a husbandman, then a term of contempt. B.W. * * * * * "NEWS," "NOISE," AND "PARLIAMENT." 1. _News._--I regret that MR. HICKSON perseveres in his extravagant notion about _news_, and that the learning and ingenuity which your correspondent P.C.S.S., I have no doubt justly, gives him credit for, should be so unworthily employed. Does MR. HICKSON really "very much doubt whether our word _news_ contains the idea of _new_ at all?" What then has it got to do with _neues_? Does MR. HICKSON'S mind, "in its ordinary mechanical action," really think that the entry of "old newes, or stale newes" in an old dictionary is any proof of _news_ having nothing to do with _new_? Does he then separate _health_ from _heal_ and _hale_, because we speak of "bad health" and "ill health"?