have predominated over the Latin element of our language."TRENCH. English, Past and Present.

In these examples the words in italics should be "to celebrate," "to render," "to indulge," "to hazard," "to make," to send," "to predo

minate."

Present Participle for the Infinitive Mood.

Of this inaccuracy there are several instances in George Gilfillan, a writer who, whatever may be his defects of style (and they are manifold, especially in his first " Gallery of Literary Portraits"), is generally very attentive to the requirements of grammar. The following are examples:

"It is easy distinguishing the rude fragment of a rock from the splinter of a statue."—Literary Portraits.

"It was great in him promoting one to whom he had done. some wrong.”—Ibid.

"It were indeed worth while inquiring how much of this coolness resulted from Crabbe's early practice as a surgeon." -Ibid.

"How fine sometimes it is accompanying the prattle of a beautiful child."-Ibid.

"It were not difficult retorting upon many passages of his own writing."— Ibid.

"It is indeed ludicrous looking back through the vista of forty years."-Ibid.

"It were worth while contrasting its estimate of Mahometanism with that of Carlyle."—Ibid.

"It was fine taking it out and finding in it a conductor to our own surcharged emotions."—Ibid.

SLANG TERMS AND FOREIGN WORDS.

The fifth blemish in English prose is the profusion of slang and foreign words by which it is disfigured. For the use of slang we have always shown a growing partiality; but its prevalence of late years is mainly owing to that quintessence of Rebellion and Radicalism; that amalgamation of Socialism and Slavery; that galaxy of Stars and Stripes; our encroaching, annexing, intermeddling, repudiating friend; our outlandish, off-handish, whole-hoggish, go-a-headish brother, Jonathan Yankee.

The foreign words may be classed as follows:1. Words relating to the art of war, most of which we have borrowed from the French. These have been adopted into the language, and are to be found in our dictionaries. 2. Theatrical and musical terms, which we have chiefly received from the Italians and French, and which are to be met with in the newspaper reports of our public entertainments. 3. Words of a technical import, which express matters and modes of being, originally foreign to our national habits, and for which, generally speaking, we have no equivalent terms. My list of these amounts to no less than two hundred and fifty. 4. Words which express ideas common to the homes and bosoms of all

men, and for which we possess corresponding terms, or expressions of a nearly similar import. Of this class I have noted upwards of one hundred and fifty that are constantly employed, without necessity, by our elegant writers. 5. Latin words which, with or without necessity, have become of daily use. By these I do not mean the words originally derived from the Latin, and which, both as to form and meaning, are now completely incorporated into the language. Neither do I allude to those Latin words and sentences, which enter into, what is called, "legal phraseology." The language of the law is a language apart. Its obscurity, diffuseness, stilted march and childish repetitions, are a disgrace to our age and country. The lawyers know best how to unravel its intricacies, and to them may be left the congenial task. The Latin words I speak of are those which, whether originally introduced into legal language or not, have now become of common use among our popular authors. The number of such words that has come under my notice exceeds three hundred.

Among these different classes of foreign words, there are some which the most fastidious stickler for unadulterated English is occasionally compelled to employ. This is an evil for which there is now no remedy, and from which indeed no modern language is wholly exempt. But the same cannot be said of the generality of such

expressions; and while the French and Latin words, for which we have terms of a nearly corresponding import, should be sparingly introduced, those for which we have acknowledged synonymes, should be discarded by every one who has the slightest pretension to be reckoned a correct writer.

It is chiefly to our modern novelists that we are indebted for this foreign flippancy and conceit. Were we to judge from the profusion of exotics with which those writers are continually embellishing their productions, exchanging the vitality and bloom of their native tongue for the gaudiness and glitter of Italian or French, we should be led to form a very unfavourable opinion of the copiousness of the English language. Happily, the use of such expressions bespeaks rather the poverty of the writer's mind than that of our noble mother-tongue.

In this, as in everything else, our Gallic friends rush into the opposite extreme. They have a rooted dislike to foreign words and idioms, and are very slow in adopting them. Their own language they regard as the most perfect and classical of all modern languages; and it is only on compulsion, and for want of corresponding terms, that they condescend to borrow from their neighbours. Even when they do adopt a new word, they handle it with such rudeness and so disfigure its spelling, that its parent tongue

would not know it again. They strip it by degrees of its foreign dress, and make it assume the costume of the country. When sufficiently disguised, they introduce it to their literary societies; and lest it should be said that any countenance or encouragement is given to the "detested foreigner," the Academy is requested to grant it letters of naturalization. There is that plain, John-Bullish, unmistakable, easilypronounced, little word "lord." Well! they will not have him in his native simplicity; but as they generally find him accompanied by a page, in the person of the pronoun "my," they toss the lord and his page in the same blanket, and then turn them adrift in the Siamese character of "milord." It is by this process that our "beefsteak" is battered into a "bifteck," and that "plum-pudding" assumes all the consistency of a "pouding de plomb."

I remember the time when the French wrote the word "partner" as an English word, with all the signs of its foreign extraction. They afterwards altered it to "partnère;" and, as if it was not sufficiently disguised in this dress, they have transformed it at last into "partenaire," as it is now commonly written. The italics and inverted commas have been dropped, and the spelling is as completely French, as if the word had been in use since the days of Philippe le Bel. Of a still more curious nature