" Now Dr. Webster does not tell his
readers that the term is exclusively applicable to vessels; and we
should like to know whence a vessel is likely to proceed, unless from a
port,--and where ports are commonly situated, unless in countries? If
an American ship be "proceeding from" the port of Liverpool to some
port in the United States, how soon does she enter on what
lexicographers call "the state of being" homeward-bound? The narrow
limits to which Dr. Webster confines the word would not extend beyond
the jaws of the harbor from which the ship is sailing. Dr. Worcester's
definition is, "OUTWARD-BOUND. (_Naut_.) Bound outward or to foreign
parts. _Crabb_."
Under the word MORESQUE we find in Webster the following definition: "A
species of painting or carving done after the Moorish manner,
consisting of _grotesque_ pieces and compartments _promiscuously
interspersed_; arabesque. _Gwilt_." (The Italics are our own.) We have
not Mr. Gwilt's Encyclopaedia at hand; but if this be a fair
representation of one of its definitions, it is a very untrustworthy
authority. The last term to be applied to arabesque-work is
_grotesque_, or _promiscuously interspersed_; and the description here
given leaves out the most beautiful kind of arabesque, namely, the
inlaid work of geometrical figures in colored marbles, in which the
Arabs far surpassed the older _opus Alexandrinum_.
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