s. 278. Just as there are in English fragments of a gender modifying the declension, so are there, also, fragments of the second element of gender; _viz._, the attribution of sex to objects naturally destitute of it. _The sun in _his_ glory_, _the moon in _her_ wane_, are examples of this. A sailor calls his ship _she_. A husbandman, according to Mr. Cobbett, does the same with his _plough_ and working implements:--"In speaking of a _ship_ we say _she_ and _her_. And you know that our country-folks in Hampshire call almost everything _he_ or _she_. It is curious to observe that country labourers give the feminine appellation to those things only which are more closely identified with themselves, and by the qualities or conditions of which their own efforts, and their character as workmen, are affected. The mower calls his _scythe_ a _she_, the ploughman calls his _plough_ a _she_; but a prong, or a shovel, or a harrow, which passes promiscuously from hand to hand, and which is appropriated to no particular labourer, is called a _he_."--_English Grammar_, Letter V. Now, although Mr. Cobbett's statements may account for a sailor calling his ship _she_, they will not account for the custom of giving to the sun a masculine, and to the moon a {221} feminine, pronoun, as is done in the expressions quoted at the head of this section; still less will it account for the circumstance of the Germans reversing the gender, and making the _sun_ feminine, and the _moon_ masculine. Let there be a period in the history of a nation wherein the sun and moon are dealt with, not as inanimate masses of matter, but as animated divinities. Let there, in other words, be a period in the history of a nation wherein dead things are personified, and wherein there is a mythology. Let an object like the _sun_ be deemed a male, and an object like the _moon_ a female, deity. The Germans say the _sun in _her_ glory_; the _moon in _his_ wane_. This difference between the usage of the two languages, like so many others, is explained by the influence of the classical languages upon the English.--"_Mundilfori had two children; a son, M[^a]ni (Moon), and a daughter, S[^o]l (Sun)._"--Such is an extract (taken second-hand from Grimm, vol. iii. p. 349) out of an Icelandic mythological work, _viz._, the prose Edda. In the classical languages, however, _Phoebus_ and _Sol_ are masculine, and _Luna_ and _Diana_ feminine. Hence it is that, although in Anglo-Saxon and Old-Saxon the _sun_ is _feminine_, it is in English masculine. _Philosophy_, _charity_, &c., or the names of abstract qualities personified, take a conventional sex, and are feminine from their being feminine in Latin. As in these words there is no change of form, the consideration of them is a point of rhetoric, rather than of etymology. Upon phrases like _Cock Robin_, _Robin Redbreast_, _Jenny Wren_, expressive of sex, much information may be collected from Grimm's Deutsche Grammatik, vol. iii. p. 359.