the name by which any thing is known or distinguished when spoken of. Nothing can be more foreign to the original meaning of many words and proper names than their present or vulgar appellations; frequently owing to the history of those things being forgotten, or an ignorance of the language in which they were expressed. Who, for example, would dream that the legal proclamation called "O yes," was a proclamation commanding the talkers to become hearers, being the French word Oyez, listen, retained in our courts ever since the law pleadings were held in French? Or would any person suppose that the headland on the French coast near Calais, called by our seamen Blackness, has been so entitled from its French name of Blane Nez, or the White Head-land?

King Henry the Eighth having taken the town of Boulogne in France, the gates of which he brought to Hardes in Kent, where they are still remaining, the flatterers of that reign highly magnified this action, which, Porto Bello like, became a popular subject for signs; and the port or harbour of Boulogne, called Boulogne Mouth, was accordingly set up at a noted inn in Holborn. The name of the inn long outliving the sign and fame of the conquest, an ignorant painter, employed by a no less ignorant landlord to paint a new one, represented it by a bull and a large gaping human mouth; answering to the vulgar pronunciation of bull and mouth. The same piece of history gave being to the bull and gate, originally meant for Boulogne gate,