By the exclusion of atmospheric air, the most delicate flower may be handed down to future ages. Here a similar process seems to have been applied to man: the cause of change is excluded in the one case--change itself in the other: elsewhere, letters graven upon brass and marble, are our guides through the evolution of ages; but here man himself is the undying and unchangeable record of himself. This morning I was watching a Negress who rejoiced in the Punic name of Barca, washing and cooking in the court below. Her extreme and minute cleanliness suggested the question: “In what could cleanliness have consisted before the discovery of soap?” Soap comes next to absolute necessaries. What must have been the condition of nations without either soap or the bath? What a benefit to the human race the discovery of either;--where neither was known, filth would be as habitual as clothing: there could be nothing clean or unclean. The use of the bath must then have made that difference between one people and another, that exists between filthy and cleanly animals, altering their very nature. Yet I could not tell when it was discovered, or who were the inventors. Why should it alone be without honour, or parentage? Whence its name?[237] Our word is from the Latin, but soap has no Latin etymon. The name is not derived from the Greek; it has, in that language, no corresponding term. The modern Greeks use the same--either their soap has travelled eastward since the decline of the Roman Empire, or it belongs to the East at an earlier time. In this dilemma I apply to Barca, and at once obtain the solution. Soap, in Arabic, is _Saboon_. They have the verb, _Sabeïn_, which does not mean to ‘soap,’ but, to ‘wash.’ The Arabs did not adopt the name from Rome, and coin out of it a verb for so primitive a usage as washing.