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is the history of the word "redingote," that word being neither more nor less than our English 'riding-coat;" but so artfully appropriated by our ingenious neighbours, as to pass for an article of French manufacture. And now our fashionable tailors advertise their "redingotes," and our fashionable folk purchase them, being unconscious the while that they are borrowing an expression which our Gallic friends originally stole from us.

So much for the dislike of the French to foreign words and modes of expression. It is clear that, so far as language is concerned, they will have no partnership with us: and if they sometimes make use of an English word, they do so, like Beranger, only to express their derision or contempt :

"God damn! moi j'aime les Anglais."

BLUNDERS.

Nonsense often escapes being detected both by the writer

and the reader."

DR. CAMPBELL. Rhetoric.

:

BLUNDERS.

AMONG the many blemishes that disfigure English prose, not the least noticeable is a want of perspicuity. Of this defect I have cited some examples in the chapter on " Composition." It occurs, however, so frequently in the more offensive shape of contradictions, incongruities, and blunders, that I have taken the trouble to collect some samples for the instruction and entertainment of the reader. In accounting for the existence of such things, we are accustomed to assign them to that intellectual "drowsiness," from which even honest Homer was not exempt; but we do not perceive that this infirmity is daily assuming a more widespread and contagious character; and that the drowsiness which was merely occasional among the ancients, has degenerated in our time into habitual torpor.

Now for our samples :

"The robber was confined in an empty garret, three stories high, from which it seemed impossible for him to escape."SMOLLETT. Roderick Random.