smallest and the greatest! what a travelling of the poet's eye, with
the power which is the privilege of that eye, from earth to heaven, and
from heaven to earth, and of linking both together. So too, call up
before your mind's eye the 'lavish gold' of the drooping laburnum when
in flower, and you will recognize the poetry of the title, 'the golden
rain,' which in German it bears. 'Celandine' does not so clearly tell
its own tale; and it is only when you have followed up the [Greek:
chelidonion], (swallow-wort), of which 'celandin' is the English
representative, that the word will yield up the poetry which is
concealed in it.

And then again, what poetry is there often in the names of birds and
beasts and fishes, and indeed of all the animated world around us; how
marvellously are these names adapted often to bring out the most
striking and characteristic features of the objects to which they are
given. Thus when the Romans became acquainted with the stately giraffe,
long concealed from them in the interior deserts of Africa, (which we
learn from Pliny they first did in the shows exhibited by Julius
Caesar,) it was happily imagined to designate a creature combining,
though with infinitely more grace, something of the height and even the
proportions of the _camel_ with the spotted skin of the _pard_, by a
name which should incorporate both these its most prominent
features, [Footnote: Varro: Quod erat figura ut camelus, maculis ut
panthera; and Horace (Ep. ii. I, 196): Diversum confusa genus panthera
camelo.] calling it the 'camelopard.' Nor can we, I think, hesitate to
accept that account as the true one, which describes the word as no
artificial creation of scientific naturalists, but as bursting
extempore from the lips of the common people, who after all are the
truest namers, at the first moment when the novel creature was
presented to their gaze. 'Cerf-volant,' a name which the French have so