EXCLAMATIONS.

Cold-blooded nations deal but little in exclamations; they belong to the petulance of strong impulses, and to ardent temperaments, national and individual. The Laplanders neither invoke, exclaim, nor imprecate; the French and Italians are continually doing all three. Quakers, whose education teaches them to “set a pulse and preach their blood to reason,” scarcely ever resort to exclamations, to express their feelings. The English are not exclaimers; their forms for this purpose are few and foolish; and when they go beyond the niaiserie of “dear me!” “bless me!” “my stars!” they fall into downright imprecation. The Irish, the petulant Irish, are great exclaimers. Like the Italians, they borrow their exclamations from their creed; and when under strong excitement, pronounce in piety, that which, to the Calvinistical severity of English protestant ears, would sound very like profanation!

The Italians borrow their exclamations alike from their religion and the antique faith of their great progenitors; and Per Bacco! Cospetto! “Jehovah, Jove, or Lord,” come with equal and frequent facility to their lips. They invoke, exclaim, and apostrophise, upon all occasions, trivial or important. A fishwoman in the piazza of the Pantheon, will resort to every vow and invocation of the ancient or modern faith of Rome, to dispose of her stale fish on the evening of a fast day; and will express her surprise or indignation at an undervaluing chapman, who rejects her eels, or resists her turbot, by a volley of “Madonna Mia’s!” “Sacro Sacramento’s,” and “Madre di Dio’s!” The French have a number of charming exclamations and apostrophes; they have also many that are quaint and simple, and extremely effective in low comedy. Molière abounds in them; and the humour and the à propos of his ouf! and ouais! is quite indefinable. Denon and I got into the habit of ouf-ing and ouais-ing at each other, until, with me, it became a tic, putting my native Irish “ahs!” and “ochs!” in abeyance; and it is as much as I can do to resist my interjectory oufs! and ouais! even on paper, and in the regular way of professed authorship!