see a gentler and nearer vision, the show of
flying machines promised for midsummer next
by the Aëronautical Society. Many most curious
machines are already prepared for inspection.
The illustrations of mathematical,
mechanical, chemical, and physiological truths,
already existing in museums, laboratories, and
workshops, if collected together for study,
cannot fail to enlarge, correct, and deepen the
opinions of all who have studied the subject,
and especially by enabling the men of science
and the men of skill to understand each other.
Machines and engines are sure to be plentiful,
and I suppose every kind of balloon and kite,
skeletons and dissections of every kind of flying
animal, and as many as possible of the living
animals themselves. But there are two things
which may be overlooked— gases and toys—
which I submit would be injurious omissions.
The whole series of the experiments of Cigna,
Priestley, and Lavoisier, on the composition of
air, if exhibited, would show why the flying
animals have the warmest blood and the least
specific gravity, and how pure air, or oxygen,
burns fixed air, or carbon; and how inflammable
air, or hydrogen, produces buoyancy. And
aërial toys ought not to be overlooked. The
toys are the boys for inventions and discoveries,
as the histories of inventions and discoveries
prove to all who read. As for grave and grey,
reverend and rheumatic seniors, what could be
better for them than to get new leases of life
from the enjoyment of new toys, to see cars
from China flying along English swards, or
kites up in the English blue sky, which had
come all the way from Japan, representing
elderly gentlemen walking arm-in-arm, or gigantic
crawling centipedes? As for Barmacide
desserts of gaseous fruits, without preceding
courses of solid refreshment, they might not
be popular in England. On the whole, and
seriously, those of us who have seen steam
making travel marvellously easier on the earth
and over the water may, at the coming
exhibition, have our hopes strengthened of the
approach of the day when men shall become
freedmen of the airy sphere.

CHAUCER-ENGLISH IN THE DALES.

WHAT we call provincialisms, are very often
the echoes of the long-forgotten national
language, and the last remains of primitive national
habits. This is certainly the case in the north
country— which I will call "Cumberland"
broadly; the slight differences existing among
the four northern counties not being sufficiently
wide to need a separate classification.

The old writers of the fourteenth century are
full of Cumberland peculiarities. When Chaucer
says of the Wife of Bath that she was "somdel
deef," he was talking pure Cumberland. The
Jobby of to-day, saying the same thing of Aggy,
might exchange some-deal for summut if he
thought fit, and he might probably add, "an'
that's a pity," instead of Chaucer's "and that
was skathe," for he is fond of the phrase "an'
that's a pity;" but he would understand the
line as it runs, without the glossary which the
puir daft Southron body needs. Jobby would
also understand the knight's troubles in
husbandry though only metaphorical.

I have God wot a large field to ere,
And wayke ben the oxen in my plough.

But he would undoubtedly laugh as he
lounged against the chimley-lug in his heavy
broad-shouldered way, and would most
probably call out as his comment, "But la'avin
days! wha' iver heerd tell ov a bodie, not
fairlie daft an' dune, pleughing wi' beests!"
And, by the way, that word daft is good old
English, though Chaucer and his contemporaries
use daf for the noun— as a daf, a fool—
and bedaffed for the past tense of the verb to
bedaf or to be bedaffed— made a fool of. We
have it only as an adjective; though sometimes
I have heard a man called "a dafty" as well.

Chaucer elides the o in to, and the e in the,
before a vowel; so do our dalesfolk. Tathens,
themperor, thexperiens, are all written and
pronounced according to the rules of good
Cumberland; and saistow, seestow, for sayest
thou, seest thou, are also of our manner. The
dalesfolk always say seeste for see thou,
look here; talking Chaucerian without knowing
it. "Seeste, lass! t'kye's in't garth out by!
hie thee ways an' put them oot!" or, "sayste
sae? surely!" for "do you say so? surely!"
with the last syllable strongly accented.
Another word also well descended is wax, in the
sense of to grow. "Ay! he waxes finely!" is
the common expression for he grows well; but
how the modern slang meaning of anger came
to be given to it, I do not know.

Chaucer uses pure for very, and we of the
dales have purely in the same sense; also gaily,
which I do not find in the old writers. "I'se
gaily weel," says Jobby; or more shortly, "I'se
gaily;" or more shortly still, "gaily," if even
yet more laconic than usual; and he has never
a great flux of words; said with a side-fling of
his head by way of salutation in the mode most
used by him, as he swings his tall figure down
the fells, with his colley at his heels, or gathering
in the sheep far ahead. If the wind is
rising as he walks, it is "soughing" in the trees
and down the sharp ravines. Those two
pictorial lines in the Knight's Tale,

In which ther ran a swymbul in a swough,
As it were a storm schuld berst every bough—

expressive of the sighing that ran through the
deeper soughing of the winds, would be quite
understood down in the dales; but "the cruel
ire as reed as any gleed" would puzzle Jobby
and all his household. For to him a glede is a
kite, and he knows no other meaning— to the
men and women of the fourteenth century it
was a burning coal, a red-hot living ember; and
to them the description held good, and the
analogy was perfect. But to Jobby's
understanding a red glede or kite would be difficult.

"Al ful of chirking was that sory place,"
says Chaucer; and "t' lite geslings' churking
gaily amang t' bracken," says Jobby— chirking