German, 'schadenfreude.' Cicero so strongly feels the want of such a
word, that he _gives_ to 'malevolentia' the significance, 'voluptas ex
malo alterius,' which lies not of necessity in it.] Nor are there
wanting, I suppose, in any language, words which are the mournful
record of the strange wickednesses which the genius of man, so fertile
in evil, has invented. What whole processes of cruelty are sometimes
wrapped up in a single word! Thus I have not travelled down the first
column of an Italian dictionary before I light upon the verb
'abbacinare' meaning to deprive of sight by holding a red-hot metal
basin close to the eyeballs. Travelling a little further in a Greek
lexicon, I should reach [Greek: akroteriazein] mutilate by cutting off
all the extremities, as hands, feet, nose, ears; or take our English
'to ganch.' And our dictionaries, while they tell us much, cannot tell
us all. How shamefully rich is everywhere the language of the vulgar in
words and phrases which, seldom allowed to find their way into books,
yet live as a sinful oral tradition on the lips of men, for the setting
forth of things unholy and impure. And of these words, as no less of
those dealing with the kindred sins of revelling and excess, how many
set the evil forth with an evident sympathy and approbation of it, and
as themselves taking part with the sin against Him who has forbidden it
under pain of his highest displeasure. How much ability, how much wit,
yes, and how much imagination must have stood in the service of sin,
before it could possess a nomenclature so rich, so varied, and often so
heaven-defying, as that which it actually owns.

Then further I would bid you to note the many words which men have
dragged downward with themselves, and made more or less partakers of
their own fall. Having once an honourable meaning, they have yet with
the deterioration and degeneration of those that used them, or of those
about whom they were used, deteriorated and degenerated too. How many,