lively mind is apt to cry out against the creative fancies of the antiquarian poet, and to exclaim in the language of Shakspeare, ――――As imagination bodies forth The form of things unseen, the Poet’s pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. But this spirit of exclamation should be checked. What depends in any degree upon imagination, may by minds without imagination be easily turned into ridicule. What is only to be inferred by slow and painful collation of circumstances, will be ridiculed at once by those who are too brisk to be slow, and too lively to take pains. And the very ingeniousness of antiquaries themselves, will at times be a snare to them also, by inducing them to cut short the labour of investigation, to ridicule the dull laboriousness of conjecturing industry, and to leap over the difficulty which it will not take the trouble to remove. On the whole, therefore, I think Mr. Tonkin’s etymology of Elerky to be the only one which is easy and natural, and his reference to “remains of a large pool under the house,” to be sufficiently grounded. There has evidently been something of the kind there. A little dam below would easily make one now. The remains were probably more in Mr. Tonkin’s time than they now are. And these corroborating, and corroborated by the positive import of Eala, (I.) Alarch (W.) and Elerk, Elerchy (C.) a swan, and the undoubted signification of the latter when thus combined Elerch Chy (C.) for a swan’s house, compel us to adopt the etymon.