'Puritans,' 'Fifth-Monarchy men,' 'Seekers,' 'Levellers,'
'Independents,' 'Friends,' 'Rationalists,' 'Latitudnarians,'
'Freethinkers,' these titles, with many more, have each its
significance; and would you get to the heart of things, and thoroughly
understand what any of these schools and parties intended, you must
first understand what they were called. From this as from a central
point you must start; even as you must bring back to this whatever
further knowledge you may acquire; putting your later gains, if
possible, in subordination to the name; at all events in connexion and
relation with it.
You will often be able to glean information from names, such as, if not
always important, will yet rarely fail to be interesting and
instructive in its way. Thus what a record of inventions, how much of
the past history of commerce do they embody and preserve. The 'magnet'
has its name from Magnesia, a district of Thessaly; this same Magnesia,
or else another like-named district in Asia Minor, yielding the
medicinal earth so called. 'Artesian' wells are from the province of
Artois in France, where they were long in use before introduced
elsewhere. The 'baldachin' or 'baudekin' is from Baldacco, the Italian
form of the name of the city of Bagdad, from whence the costly silk of
this canopy originally came. [Footnote: [See Devic's Supplement to
Littre; the Italian _l_ is an attempt to pronounce the Arabic guttural
Ghain. In the Middle Ages _Baldacco_ was often supposed to be the same
as 'Babylon'; see Florio's _Ital.
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