_Gradely_.--It seems rather a rash step to differ from the mass of critical authority with which your last number has brought this shy, old-fashioned provincial word into a blaze of literary notoriety. Yet I cannot help conceiving the original form of this adverb to be _grathedly_ ([Old English: geraethlic], root [Old English: raeth], with the preteritive prefix [Old English: ge]) or _gerathely_. In our Yorkshire dialect, to _grathe_ (pronounced _gradhe_) means, to make ready, to put in a state of _order_ or _fitness_. A man inconveniently accoutred or furnished with implements for the performance of some operation on which he was employed, {362} observed to me the other day, "I's ill grathed for't job"--rather a terse Saxon contrast to my latinized paraphrase. _Grathedly_ would then mean, "In a state of good order, fitness, readiness, or perfection." To the cognate German _gerade_ adv., I find the senses, "directly, just, exactly, _perfectly_, rightly." The prevailing impression given by your numerous testimonials as to the character of the word _gradely_, is one of decency, order, rightness, perfectness. I fancy the whole family (who might be called the children of _rath_), viz. [Old English: raeth], _rathe_ (_gerathe, grathedly, gradely_), _rather_ (only a Saxon form of _readier_), have as a common primeval progenitor the Sanscrit [Sanskrit: radh] (_radh_), which is interpreted "a process towards perfection;" in other words, "a becoming ready." G. J. CAYLEY. Wydale, Oct. 21. P.S.--_Greadly_ is probably a transposition for _geradly_. The Yorkshire pronunciation of _gradely_ is almost as if written _grared-ly_. I think it probable that the words _greed, greedily_, are from the same radicle. By the way, is _radix_ perhaps derived from [Sanskrit: rad] (_rad_), a tooth (from the fang-like form of roots), whence _rodere_ and possibly _radius_? * * * * * COLLAR OF ESSES.