Reprinted in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ of May 29th.
The Hebrews will not pronounce the sacred tetragrammaton [Hebrew: YHWH]. They substitute Adonai in reading the ineffable name. Jahwé (with the J pronounced as Y) is the correct pronunciation of the unspeakable name. Yet the learned hold that the true mirific name is lost, the word "Jehovah" dating only from the Masoretic innovation. See a discussion of the whole matter in _Isis Unveiled_ (Blavatsky), vol. ii. p. 398,--a work which contains a good deal of real learning mixed with infinite rubbish.
=Napoleon III.= See PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU.
=Nationality in Drinks.= Under this title we have three poems, originally published separately--namely, _Claret_, _Tokay_, and _Beer_. The first and second were published in _Hood's Magazine_, in June 1844. In 1863 the poems were brought under their present title in the _Poetical Works_. In _Claret_ the fancy of the poet sees in his claret-flask, as it drops into a black-faced pond, a resemblance to a gay French lady, with her arms held beside her and her feet stretched out, dropping from life into death's silent ocean. In _Tokay_ the bottle suggests a pygmy castle-warder, dwarfish, but able and determined, strutting about with his huge brass spurs and daring anybody to interfere with him. _Beer_ is in memory of the beverage drunk to Nelson's memory off Cape Trafalgar: it includes an authentic anecdote given to the poet by the captain of the vessel. He said they show a coat of Nelson's at Greenwich with tar still on the shoulder, due to the habit he had of leaning one shoulder up against the mizzen-rigging.
=Natural Magic.= (_Pacchiarotto and other Poems_, 1876.) Hindu conjurors are exceedingly clever, and will produce a tree from apparently nothing at all, in all stages of growth. In the case described the narrator locks a nautch girl in an empty room and takes his stand at the door; in a short time the conjuror is embowered in a mass of verdure, fruit and flowers. In the same way, by the magic of a charming personality, the singer's life has been transformed from coldness and gloom to warmth and beauty. The poem illustrates the supreme power which spirit exerts over matter. The power of the ideal world, the all-absorbing influence of faith in the unseen to the Christian, is always being exerted to produce such effects in the souls of men and women whose lives are spent in the most squalid and unlovely surroundings.