Here have I pursed their paltry _silverlings_. Fie! what a trouble 'tis to count this trash! Well fare the Arabs, that so richly pay For what they traffick in with wedge of gold. The word _silverlings_ has troubled the commentators. _Burst their silverbins_ has been proposed as the true reading. The word, however, is a true diminutive, as _siluparlinc_, _silarbarling_=_a small silver coin_, Old High German. A good chapter on the English diminutives may be seen in the Cambridge Philological Museum, vol. i. p. 679. * * * * * {288} CHAPTER XVI. GENTILE FORMS. s. 341. These have been illustrated by Mr. Guest in the Transactions of the Philological Society. The only word in the present English that requires explanation is the name of the principality _Wales_. 1. The form is plural, however much the meaning may be singular; so that the _-s_ in _Wale-s_ is the _-s_ in _fathers_, &c. 2. It has grown out of the Anglo-Saxon from _wealhas_=_foreigners_, the name by which the Welsh are spoken of by the Germans of England, just as the Italians are called Welsh by the Germans of Germany: _wal-nuts_=_foreign nuts_. 3. The transfer of the name of the _people_ inhabiting a certain country to the _country_ so inhabited, was one of the commonest processes in both Anglo-Saxon and Old English.--Guest, Phil. Trans. * * * * * {289} CHAPTER XVII. ON THE CONNEXION BETWEEN THE NOUN AND VERB, AND ON THE INFLECTION OF THE INFINITIVE MOOD. s. 342. In order to understand clearly the use of the so-called infinitive mood in English, it is necessary to bear in mind two facts, one a matter of logic, the other a matter of history. In the way of logic, the difference between a noun and a verb is less marked than it is in the way of grammar. Grammatically, the contrast is considerable. The inflection of nouns expresses the ideas of sex as denoted by gender, and of relation in place as denoted by cases. That of verbs rarely expresses sex, and never position. On the other hand, however, it expresses what no noun ever does or can express; _e.g._, the relation of the agent to the individual speaking, by means of person; the time in which acts take place, by means of tense; and the conditions of their occurrence, by means of mood. The idea of number is the only one that, on a superficial view, is common to these two important parts of speech.