all trades, professions, it may be added, all the accidents of the social hierarchy and all forms of intelligence, have their own slang. The merchant who says: “Montpellier not active, Marseilles fine quality,” the broker on ’change who says: “Assets at end of current month,” the gambler who says: “Tiers et tout, refait de pique,” the sheriff of the Norman Isles who says: “The holder in fee reverting to his landed estate cannot claim the fruits of that estate during the hereditary seizure of the real estate by the mortgagor,” the playwright who says: “The piece was hissed,” the comedian who says: “I’ve made a hit,” the philosopher who says: “Phenomenal triplicity,” the huntsman who says: “Voileci allais, Voileci fuyant,” the phrenologist who says: “Amativeness, combativeness, secretiveness,” the infantry soldier who says: “My shooting-iron,” the cavalryman who says: “My turkey-cock,” the fencing-master who says: “Tierce, quarte, break,” the printer who says: “My shooting-stick and galley,”⁠—all, printer, fencing-master, cavalry dragoon, infantryman, phrenologist, huntsman, philosopher, comedian, playwright, sheriff, gambler, stockbroker, and merchant, speak slang. The painter who says: “My grinder,” the notary who says: “My Skip-the-Gutter,” the hairdresser who says: “My mealyback,” the cobbler who says: “My cub,” talks slang. Strictly speaking, if one absolutely insists on the point, all the different fashions of saying the right and the left, the sailor’s “port” and “starboard,” the scene-shifter’s “court-side,” and “garden-side,” the beadle’s “Gospel-side” and “Epistle-side,” are slang. There is the slang of the affected lady as well as of the précieuses. The Hotel Rambouillet nearly adjoins the Cour des Miracles. There is a slang of duchesses, witness this phrase contained in a love-letter from a very great lady and a very pretty woman of the Restoration: “You will find in this gossip a fultitude of reasons why I should libertize.” 63 Diplomatic ciphers are slang; the pontifical chancellery by using 26 for Rome, grkztntgzyal for despatch, and abfxustgrnogrkzu tu XI for the Duc de Modena, speaks slang. The physicians of the Middle Ages who, for carrot, radish, and turnip, said “Opoponach, perfroschinum, reptitalmus, dracatholicum, angelorum, postmegorum,” talked slang. The sugar-manufacturer who says: “Loaf, clarified, lumps, bastard, common, burnt,”⁠—this honest manufacturer talks slang. A certain school of criticism twenty years ago, which used to say: “Half of the works of Shakespeare consists of plays upon words and puns,”⁠—talked slang. The poet, and the artist who, with profound understanding, would designate M. de Montmorency as “a bourgeois,” if he were not a judge of verses and statues, speak slang. The classic Academician who calls flowers “Flora,” fruits, “Pomona,” the sea, “Neptune,” love, “fires,” beauty, “charms,” a horse, “a courser,” the white or tricolored cockade, “the rose of Bellona,” the three-cornered hat, “Mars’ triangle,”⁠—that classical Academician talks slang. Algebra, medicine, botany, have each their slang. The tongue which is employed on board ship, that wonderful language of the sea, which is so complete and so picturesque, which was spoken by Jean Bart, Duquesne, Suffren, and Duperré, which mingles with the whistling of the rigging, the sound of the speaking-trumpets, the shock of the boarding-irons, the roll of the sea, the wind, the gale, the cannon, is wholly a heroic and dazzling slang, which is to the fierce slang of the thieves what the lion is to the jackal.

No doubt. But say what we will, this manner of understanding the word “slang” is an extension which everyone will not admit. For our part, we reserve to the word its ancient and precise, circumscribed and determined significance, and we restrict slang to slang. The veritable slang and the slang that is preeminently slang, if the two words can be coupled thus, the slang immemorial which was a kingdom, is nothing else, we repeat, than the homely, uneasy, crafty, treacherous, venomous, cruel, equivocal, vile, profound, fatal tongue of wretchedness. There exists, at the extremity of all abasement and all misfortunes, a last misery which revolts and makes up its mind to enter into conflict with the whole mass of fortunate facts and reigning rights; a fearful conflict, where, now cunning, now violent, unhealthy and ferocious at one and the same time, it attacks the social order with pinpricks through vice, and with club-blows through crime. To meet the needs of this conflict, wretchedness has invented a language of combat, which is slang.

To keep afloat and to rescue from oblivion, to hold above the gulf, were it but a fragment of some language which man has spoken and which would, otherwise, be lost, that is to say, one of the elements, good or bad, of which civilization is composed, or by which it is complicated, to extend the records of social observation; is to serve civilization itself. This service Plautus rendered, consciously or unconsciously, by making two Carthaginian soldiers talk Phoenician; that service Molière rendered, by making so many of his characters talk Levantine and all sorts of dialects. Here objections spring up afresh. Phoenician, very good! Levantine, quite right! Even dialect, let that pass! They are tongues which have belonged to nations or provinces; but slang! What is the use of preserving slang? What is the good of assisting slang “to survive”?

To this we reply in one word, only. Assuredly, if the tongue which a nation or a province has spoken is worthy of interest, the language which has been spoken by a misery is still more worthy of attention and study.

It is the language which has been spoken, in France, for example, for more than four centuries, not only by a misery, but by every possible human misery.

And then, we insist upon it, the study of social deformities and infirmities, and the task of pointing them out with a view to remedy, is not a business in which choice is permitted. The historian of manners and ideas has no less austere a mission than the historian of events. The latter has the surface of civilization, the conflicts of crowns, the births of princes, the