its grand proportions. Without going into minute details, the colors employed in the interior decoration of the dome consist of blue, gold, and a warm cream-color, and the whole is exhibited to the utmost possible advantage by the brilliant flood of light poured from above, while the eye is further relieved and gratified by the variety and brilliancy of the binding of the 80,000 volumes which line the walls. In the center of the apartment is a circular inclosure, occupied by the Superintendent and other attendants, and around it are ranged the catalogues; and from this point radiate the tables at which the readers sit, and which are fitted up with every possible appliance for the comfort and convenience of the student. Accommodation is furnished for upward of three hundred readers, and the arrangements for warming and ventilation are as perfect as the science of the day can render them. The room, having just been completed at a cost of £150,000, or $750,000, was thrown open for a week to the inspection of the general public, who thronged by tens of thousands to admire it, as they had a very good right to do, having paid for it; but the public view has terminated, and it is now open only to those who, like your correspondent, have the privilege of a reader's ticket. From this prime object of attraction the art-loving public and a great many others who can enjoy "a thing of beauty" without knowing any thing of the principles of art have been rushing precipitately for a week past to Westminster Hall to view the designs for the proposed new government offices, which are at present submitted for public inspection there. Under the modest title of Designs for Government Offices," the authorities have invited and obtained competing plans from English, French, German, and Italian architects for alterations and improvements in the architectural arrangements of the entire district of Westminster lying between St. James's Park and the Thames, on the west and east respectively, and between Trafalgar-square, on the north, and the new houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, on the south. The vastness of the proposed improvements actually takes away one's breath, but it is not the less certain that the project, though modified in many of its details, will be accomplished in the main; that a vast portion of Whitehall, the whole of Parliament-street, and the entire net-work of streets, squares, lanes, courts, and alleys, extending from the treasury offices to the Abbey, and including the official Downingstreet, will be swept away; and that one uninterrupted range of street will present an unbroken perspective from the National Gallery, t one extremity, to the new houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, at the other. The present brick-and-mortar abominations removed, and the contemplated spacious avenue flanked by stately structures in enduring granite, and closed by the gorgeous halls of the legislature on one hand, and on the other by Westminster Abbey, grand in the vastness of its proportions, exquisitely beautiful in its minute adornment, crusted thick with the hoar of antiquity, intimately associated with nearly all the great historical events of five hundred years, in which America and England feel a common interest, and enshrining such heaps of royal and noble dust, with the still more honored remains of the chief statesmen, sages, warriors, poets, who have adorned, during that period, the history which is written in the language common to both countries-the grand result may be expected to prove one on which not only will the English lover of art look with honest pride, but the tourist from the United States will gaze with admiration. The number of designs, by English and continental artists, at present under the consideration of the commissioners, is about two hundred, and includes six hundred illustrative drawings. Whether any one of those designs will be adopted is very questionable, though many of them are exceedingly beautiful, and some propose plans for the reconstruction of a vast portion of the metropolis on both sides of the Thames, including new bridges across the river, Government having encouraged this enlargement of the original scheme. But this enlarged plan, and the proposed embankment of the Thames, with the construction of ornamental stone quays along both banks quite through London, open too wide a field of speculation to be entered on at present, and must stand over for a future communication. The designs, meanwhile, excite a perfect fever of interest in the public mind, and are daily visited by tens of thousands. The other special objects of artistic interest in the metropolis at present are the four picture exhibitions which, according to annual custom, have just now opened for the regular season-that of the Royal Academy, those of the original and of the new societies of painters in water colors, and the French exhibition. The great and almost absorbing attraction of this kind, however, is one to which I have already alluded as existing in a provincial district, and drawing thither for the time, even in the hight of the London season, half the fashionable world of the metropolis. I refer to the Art Treasures' Exhibition at Manchester. This extraordinary display is wholly unparalleled, neither the original great exhibition on Hyde Park nor the permanent one in the second Crystal Palace at Sydenham, neither the Dublin nor the New York exhibition, presenting any thing to rival it. And this for a very simple reason-it is wholly unique in its aim and character-it is strictly and literally a collection of "art treasures"-of specimens of the fine arts, and of nothing else; whereas all its predecessors represented the productions of every department of human art and industry, of science and commerce, and were thus compelled to allot only a small space to productions of the character to which the Manchester exhibition is exclusively devoted. From the sovereign downward, all classes in the land have freely lent their choicest treasures of art to contribute to the effectiveness of this demonstration. Some of the most precious pictures and sculptures of Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle are at this moment gazed upon by eager multitudes in the exhibition hall at Manchester, and the owners of nearly all the baronial halls, ancestral mansions, and quiet villas of England have followed the example of the Queen, and forwarded thither, regardless of the risk from accident, fire, or robbery, their most highly prized specimens of art on frail canvas or in fragile marble; and the whole presents an accumulation of the productions of human genius in painting, statuary, engraving, chasing, molding, and various cognate arts, such as was never before exhibited under one roof, nor ever dreamt of till the splendid success of the great exhibition of 1851 suggested the idea. The eagerness with which the manufacturing classes of the northern and middle counties have thrown themselves into the movement, and the enthusiasm which the exhibition excites among the humblest order of artisans there, seem to justify the expectations of its promoters that it will exert a powerful practical influence on the style of our staple manufactures, that the principles of high art will become developed through the instrumentality of trade, and that the produce of the looms of Lancashire, and of the forges of Warwickshire will henceforward exhibit the impress of the great artistic lesson now presented to the public mind. The exhibition was opened by Prince Albert, and the Queen is expected to visit it herself early in June. Without going into details respecting Prince Albert's visit to the metropolis of the north, it may be noted that one of the incidents connected with the occasion was the unvailing, in his presence, and that of a numerous and brilliant assemblage, of a marble statue of the Queen, erected on the spot where her Majesty was greeted with the National Anthem, from the voices of eighty thousand Sunday school children, in Peel Park, Manchester, in 1851, as mentioned in a former letter. The Prince adverted to that occurrence most feelingly, and in terms which proved the depth of the interest which, after the lapse of six years, it still retains in his regards and those of the Queen. The mention of this statue of the Queen, reminds one of the superiority of most of the great towns and cities of the provinces, over the metropolis, in this respect, at least as regards our out-of-door sculptures. The new houses of Parliament, St. Paul's, and Westminster Abbey, all contain some noble specimens of the sculptor's art; but the open-air statues of London are, almost without exception, mean and paltry in the last degree-so much so as to justify a recent assertion of Earl Stanhopebetter known in literary circles by his former title of Lord Mahon, the historian and essayist-that the best thing to be done with them would be to consign the metal ones to the melting-pot, and to employ those of granite and marble in repairing the streets. There is a tolerably decent, but certainly not a first-class, statue of the Queen in the quadrangle of the Royal Exchange, erected to commemorate the opening of that building, by her Majesty, in 1844; but, as it has been now exposed to the London smoke and fogs for thirteen years, during all which time the authorities appear to have been unable to afford it a little soap and water for detersive purposes, the Queen, as there represented, certainly exhibits the very dirtiest face in all her own dominions. The material is the finest white marble, yet the statue is, in point of en'or, that of a negress, save that the rest of the figure being in entire keeping with the face, it lacks the brilliancy of hue which the dark-skinned race affect in dress. The death of the Duchess of Gloucester is not an event of any political importance, as her advanced age, and the number of children with which the Queen has been blessed, practically precluded the possibility of her Royal Highness's accession to the throne. Her demise is, however, an event of much social interest, as in her has passed away the last of the numerous offspring of the best of" the Georges"-the third of the name. Reading the history of that monarch's reign, by the light of the hundred years which have almost elapsed since its commencement, it is very easy to detect his foibles and his weaknesses, his prejudice and his obstinacy; but, take him for all in all, it is impossible to withhold from him the tribute due to great moral worth, sincere and devoted attachment to the Protestant faith, and the practical consistency of his private life with his religious profession. True, he lost us America; but his feelings toward America were in reality not those of a despot, but merely those of a short-sighted and bigoted politician. After all, too, it merely fell to his lot to lose what must have been lost by some sovereign, for no one now believes that America could have been permanently governed from England. Had the tea and stamp questions never arisen the independence of America was as certain to arrive at is that of the British colonies in Australia, at no distant period; and when the demand for the latter shall arise, British statesmen, taught by the errors of their predecessors, will meet it in a different spirit from that which marked the former case, and will take care that the great southern state, unlike the western one, when taking its place in the family of nations, shall not have cause to start on its new career with feelings imbittered and inflamed against its parent. A matter connected with the death of the Duchess of Gloucester, shows how completely effete and obsolete in practice are many of the state customs to which, in theory and in form, we still cling. The Gazette which notified her Royal Highness's demise, contained also the Queen's mandate, that all persons in the United Kingdom should forthwith put themselves into "decent and suitable mourning apparel." Of the twenty-eight millions of inhabitants of the British Isles, probably not twentyeight individuals, except the Court officials, are, to this moment, aware that such a mandate was ever issued, and of those twenty-eight individuals of course not one paid the least attention to it. But even at Court, so little was the spirit of the royal mandate observed, that, while the remains of the Duchess were still lying unburied, at Gloucester House, Prince Albert went down to Manchester to open the exhibitions, according to previous arrangement, took his proper part in all the festivities of the occasion, and did not allow the death of the Queen's aunt, for whom in theory the nation was in mourning, to interfere for an instant with his previous plans. The Grand Duke, Constantine, Lord High Admiral of the Russian navy, has terminated his visit to the Court of the French Emperor, and is on the eve of becoming the guest of Queen Victoria, at her marine villa of Osborne in the Isle of Wight. He will, of course, visit London, and inspect the principal English dock-yards and arsenals; but there is not the slightest popular enthusiasm displayed respecting his arrival, and his sojourn here will probably prove even a greater failure, socially and politically, than his visit to the Court of France has confessedly been. His Imperial Highness is not only destitute of those personal qualities which not unfrequently convert a generous foe into a confiding and admiring friend; but he has an unhappy knack of perpetually saying things which, as the world goes, frequently converts the friend into a foc; and this tendency has been increased during his stay in Paris, by the frankness with which Louis Napoleon gave him to understand his determination to maintain the English alliance. "What! are you going to take the chestnuts out of the fire there, too?" exclaimed the Grand Duke, referring to the French preparations at Toulon for an expedition to the Chinese waters, in concert with the British force. The exclamation preceded him to Paris, and was reported to the Emperor; and the reply appeared in the form of an elaborate leading article in the Presse-which derives its inspiration from the Tuilleries-on the very day of the Grand Duke's arrival in the capital. The article showed that France had not been the cat's-paw of England, to "take the chestnuts out of the fire," in the war with Russia, and is not such in the Chinese affair that the interests of the two nations were identical in both cases-and that considerations alike of sound policy, honor, and national friendship dictated the maintenance of the Anglo-French alliance against the machinations of any, or all the states of Europe. The Grand Duke is not dull. He understood both the article and the purpose for which its appearance was timed with his own arrival in Paris, and thenceforward he abandoned even the constrained semblance of cordiality which he had previously most successfully affected. While residing at the Court of Louis Napoleon, and enjoying his hospitality, he has had the execrably bad taste, not only to give unrestrained expression to his conviction of the precariousness of his entertainer's throne, but has so freely indulged in sneers at the parvenu as to arouse afresh, on the part of the Emperor, the angry feelings excited by the long-continued refusal of the Czar Nicholas to address him on his accession, as his " very good friend and brother"-the Czar having no objection to the "very good friend," but being sorely reluctant to admit the equality implied by the addition of the words, "and brother," though they merely complete the ordinary formula. Prince Napoleon, especially, was at so little pains to conceal his irritation at the bearing of the Grand Duke-in fact, his hostility to him personally, and his dislike of every thing Russian, that a rupture seemed almost inevitable if they continued to meet; so the Emperor improvised a special embassy to Berlin, and dispatched the Prince thither to keep him out of harm's way till after the departure of the Grand Duke for England. With the French people the latter has been even less successful than with the Court, and he is not likely to have much better fortune with the English. Sir James Outram, where, on the high grounds, and in a pure and clear atmosphere, he could maintain his troops in tolerable health throughout the summer, whereas to detain them in the swamps around Mohamrah, during the hot weather, would involve them in certain destruction. The necessity for a forward movement is therefore evident, and to this no physical difficulty presents itself; but there is a very serious moral one, arising from the absence of all right to conduct an expeditionary army into the interior of the country, and seize on suitable places for encampment, after peace has been concluded. But the same mail which brings tidings of the latest successes of the expedition, brings also the astounding information that General Stalker, the original commander of the expedition, and under whom its first triumphs were achieved, and Commodore Etheridge, one of the principal officers of its naval department, have each perished by his own hand. Professional pique possibly had something to do with the catastrophe in the case of General Stalker, whose appointment to the command by the Indian Government was superseded by that of Sir James Outram, by the home authorities; but there appears to have been no ground for any feeling of this sort on the part of Commodore Etheridge. The heat of the climate, and intense anxiety respecting the health of the expedition, have been alleged in both cases as predisposing to temporary insanity; but these considerations scarcely explain such a result in relation to men who were not only accustomed to an Indian sun, but who had campaigned amid the swamps of Burmah. To the lover of the Bible the province of Khuzistan, spoken of above, is classic ground in the highest and most sacred sense of the term. There may still be discerned the ruins of that "Shusan the palace," and in which Ahasuerus, "which reigned from India even unto Ethiopia, over an hundred and seven and twenty provinces," made the Jewish Esther his bride and Queen, and where Haman, the Agagite, was hanged on the gallows he had prepared for the unbending Mordecai. There Daniel, too, found himself "at Shusan the palace," and there still flows "the river of Ulai," on whose banks train after train of the gorgeous and the terrible passed in review before the inspired seer, and swept onward in majestic procession to the accomplishment of the purposes of Heaven, through all the years of time, to the final consummation of all things. How utter is the insignificance into which such paltry questions as those which have just caused the banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris, for the first time, to reverberate the thunder of British artillery, shrink and shrivel when contrasted with the scenes and events of the awful and infinite sublimity which, two thousand, five hundred years ago, were there unfolded to the prophet's view, which have been ever since in course of evolution, and which are destined still to prosecute their grand and stately onward march, till time itself shall be absorbed into eternity! Despite the wishes expressed in many quarters that, as we have landed an expedition in Persia, we should turn it to such account before withdrawing it, as to impress a "great moral lesson" on the mind of the Government and people of that country, for all time to come, it does seem more than sad-indeed it is little short of horrible to find important actions, in which hundreds of lives are expended, taking place a month after the signing of the treaty of peace. The capture of Mohammerah, or Mohamrah, took place on the 26th of March, and was immediately followed by other important operations, and it was not till the 5th of April that the army received intelligence of the peace which had been concluded in the beginning of the preceding month. Many months must still elapse before the ratifications can be exchanged, till which time the British expedition will not evacuate the country, and the greatest anxiety for the health of the force in the interval prevails. A very timely and deeply interesting article, on Persia and the war--understood to be from the pen of Mr. Layard-appears in the current number of the Quarterly Review, and throws considerable light on the capabilities, the geographical relations, and the sanitary conditions of Mohamrah, and The Athenæum is Lady Franklin's organ of communiof the entire province of Khuzistan, of which it forms cation with all who take an interest-and who does the key, and from which the British commander had not?-in the fate of the gallant and hapless man who almost wholly expelled the Persian troops in the opera- composed what is now so well known both in Europe and tions which succeeded the capture of Mohamrah. The America, as the last Franklin Polar Expedition; and the question has just been still further elucidated, in a lec- exposition of her Ladyship's intentions, given by that ture delivered by Colonel Sir Henry Rawlinson, before journal, may therefore be taken as authentic. The plan the Royal Geographical Society, and from both sources of the new expedition, under Captain M'Clintock, it of information, it is plain that the possession of Moham-states, is now finally arranged. The recent Government rah places the province of Khuzistan at the disposal of searching expeditions having swept nearly the whole area east and west of the outlet of the Fish river, an area embracing three hundred to four hundred miles of coast only remains to be explored, and within it the commander of the new expedition confidently expects to discover the solution of the great arctic mystery. Should the ice prevent him from taking his ship through either Bellot's Strait, or Peel's Sound-and the latter he believes to be a strait also he will leave her in Prince Regent's Inlet, and will thence proceed to the unexplored area and prosecute the search there by the aid of sledges, which were found of great utility in the late expedition. We shall have no Parliamentary oratory this year. The dissolution and general election have necessarily re duced the session to about one-half of its usual length, and left little enough time for the real work of legislation, and none whatever for long speeches. The only legislative measure which need be named here, as likely to prove of interest to your readers, is one which Government has announced, for the alteration of the oaths taken by members of Parliament, with a view to the admission of the Jews. The city of London is entitled to four representatives in the house of commons, but for some years past it has had in fact only three-Baron Rothschild having been constantly elected, but having as constantly refused, as a Jew, to take the oath, "On the true faith of a Christian," and having therefore never taken his seat. New York Literary Correspondence. "COMPARISONS are odious," yet they will be made. The recent elections in England, and the approaching one in France, have brought out a parcel of dry, formidable, disagreeable statisticians all people who deal in facts are disagreeable-and these have drawn some comparisons between England and France, by no means favorable to the progress of the latter. It is supposed, in the first place, that a healthful national prosperity is denoted in part by a healthful and reasonable increase in the nation's numbers. When we learn, therefore, knowing what England is, that although the population of France is about double that of Great Britain, the latter nation has within the last four years increased in population four and a half times as much as the former, we must think that "there's something rotten" in France. By a late census it appears that from 1851 to 1856 the French people only increased by 256,000 souls. What may be the cause of this, is of course an interesting question. There are doubtless various causes operating; but it is safe to say that all these causes may be referred to one primitive cause-the great want of moral principle in the French as a nation. They seek pleasure-not good. They make their own comfort and happiness the great aim of life-and all the higher, nobler, all-embracing, far-working sentiments suffer in consequence. The Frenchman of the middle, or laboring classes, has before him two lives from which to choose: one that of selfish, prudent ease-satisfying as he can his creature cravings, and starving the nobler instincts; the other, a life of pretty continuous labor, and-to an amusement-loving person--of considerable sacrifices. Is it wonderful that, following the dictates of pure brute reason, he chooses the present good, and leaves the future with as little thought as may be? It is not the place here to analyze the secondary causes which are surely deteriorating the French nation. The fact is there. The prime cause is also patent, and the nation may be regarded as a warning to others, who are, as far as in them lies, aiming after them in their mad love for present enjoyments. What will be the future of such a present, who shall say? Somebody, to be sure, has attempted the task, within the last month, of determining the future-of the next thirty years-not only of France, but of all the civilized world. It seems to savor somewhat of impertinence, to attempt to write down for the great reading public an "Imaginary History of the next Thirty Years." Yet this has been done. Your correspondent took up the little pamphlet, with some such feelings of languid curiosity as may be supposed to move one about to consult the mystic tea-leaves of a fortune-telling crone. It is, after all, a queer little pamphlet. He has some curious ideasthis pamphleteer: "The devil seemed to be in the ascendant, and the public journals were mainly filled with the chronicles of his movements," says this gentleman, speaking sweetly in the past tense of our too present present. Yet it was a skeptical age, and it would have been thought very impolite, if not insane, to suggest that men nowadays, as of old, were possessed with devils. The doctrines of human progress, the diffusion of knowledge, universal amelioration, psychology, electricity, galvanism, and the steamengine, were predominant, and the prevailing belief was in the approach of a millennium, in which every body would have at least £1,000 a year. This faith in the excellence of the age, over all former ages, however, got some rude shakes. Some of the lights of the generation went out suddenly, and with an unsavory smell, while the commonalty began to doubt whether the time had come for that 'liberty, equality, and fraternity,' which they had believed to comprise all the beatitudes. For, after all, it is rather desirable to choose your company before you make this proclamation of liberty, equality, and fraternity; liberty given to the slaves of lust does but make libertines; equality conceded to the slaves of envy is but the catchword of robbers; and fraternity will never hold back the hand of a Cain from slaying his brother Abel." Starting from this, he relates how the malefactors of Britain were set to severer punishments; how the slaves rose in the slave states of America, murdered their masters, and enforced their liberties from a reluctant Congress; how Canada, having been asked to join the Union, magnanimously sticks to England, and in consequence is favored with a prince, and resident ruler, who holds his court in stately splendor on the banks of the St. Lawrence-which so intoxicates the parade-loving Americans, that they of the eastern states make haste in turn to ask admission to the Canadian principality, hopeful thus to gain some share of rank and titles; how Australia elects a second royal prince king of that continental island, and sets apart portions of her lands to pay the British national debt-that great incubus of Britons; how Britain swallows up Asia, to the manifest disappointment of Russia; how there is another Russian war, in which, of course, Russia is again beaten; how Kossuth becomes first president of liberated Hungary; how the Pope gives up Rome! and retires to Sardinia; how China sends missionaries to convert opium-selling Britain; and how these missionaries do n't succeed, etc., to the end of the chapter. Strange things will probably come to pass in the next thirty years. But surely none so strange as the fulfillment of this truly British book of prophecies. The present month has brought out a book which is a real luxury to one disposed to view with some complacency "spots in the sun." "Modern English Literature-its Blemishes and Defects, by Henry H. Breen," is the title of a volume giving a close overhauling to pretty much every English author of note, of this or the past generation. Mr. Breen asserts and proves that good grammar and clear good sense are not so easy of attainment as many suppose, and that in fact these qualities by no means come to a man of genius, by nature, as reading and writing came to Dogberry. He says: "There is nothing that demonstrates the prevalence of ungrammatical diction so much as the occurrence of it in our critics, grammarians, and compilers of dictionaries; as, when we meet with a writer professedly descanting upon rules of grammar, and violating those rules in the very comments he makes on them. Of all our authors, the most reprehensible in this respect is Dr. Blair. His work on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres has gone through near twenty editions, and yet, strange to say, there is no rule of grammar that this learned professor has not sinned against-no fault of style that is not to be found in his remarks. But what is most singular is, that his own fault frequently occurs in the very words he uses in correcting a similar fault in some other writer; as if he designed his lectures to be a practical illustration of the errors and inaccuracies which he passes in review." The rules of composition which Mr. Breen considers most worthy of notice, in, modern prose, may be classed under the following heads: 1. Synonymous or redundant terms. 2. Indiscriminate use of singulars and plurals. 3. Want of method and perspicuity. 4. Ungrammatical modes of speech. Mr. Breen's list includes Junius, Gibbon, Hume, Dr. Johnson, Sheridan, Roscoe, Hallam, Whately, Blair, Macauley, and very many others. I think many of these would say, with our Mrs. Partington, "I declare I feel thoroughly analyzed." We meet with most illustrious authors exhibiting the utmost disregard of keeping verbs on decent terms of agreement with their nominatives; other authors of note we find floundering about in lack of method and perspicuity; while some are remarkable for their peccadilloes in pronunciation, and care no more for commas than a locomotive would care for a fly on the track. In fact, Mr. Breen's energy for regular sequence, careful construction, and strict adherence to grammar, puts one in mind of that French grammarian who accused Heaven of injustice, because participles were not appreciated in France as they deserve to be. The book is a good one, and will be a valuable aid to young writers, who may learn much from the faults here so briefly held up to view. Let me show your readers a few of the blunders in high places. Under the head of redundant or synonymous terms, I find the following: "The writings of Buchanan are written with strength," etc.-Hallam. "Some writers have confined their attention to trifling minutiœ.”—Whately. "The chief mistakes made by the Irish in pronouncing English lie, for the most part, in,” etc.—Sheridan. "Why should Dr. Parr confine the eulogomania to the literary character of this island alone?"-Sidney Smith. "His efforts at this juncture were confined only to remonstrance."-Roscoe. The confusion of singulars with plurals, is a very common mistake. There are a great many illustrious examples given. Here are a few: "Both minister and magistrate is compelled to choose.”—Junius. "The boldness, freedom, and variety of our blank verse is infinitely," etc.- Blair. "The poetry and eloquence of the Augustan age was assiduously studied."-Macauley. Satire, a poem, in which wickedness or folly are censured."- Walker. "The richness of her arms and apparel were conspicuous."-Gibbon. "How far each of the three great epic poets have distinguished themselves."-Blair. "Homer as well as Virgil were transcribed and studied."-Gibbon. In a depressed state, if less than a million of tuns are produced."-Macauley. "Olympus, with its multitude of stately natures, dwindle."- Gilfillan. "Little more than the names are to be learned."Hallam. Then come "ungrammatical modes of speech," the commonest failing of men who have not the power or patience to think clearly: "How fortunate was Naylor, who, desirous of entering Bristol on an ass, Hume informs us all Bristol could not afford him one."—D'Israeli. "Sir Thomas Moore so writes it, although not many others so late as him."-Trench. "The more accurately we search, the stronger traces we find of his wisdom who made it."-Burke. "He thus succeeded in at last combating the revolution with its own weapons, and at the same time detaching from them the moral weakness under which it labored. He met it with its own forces; but he rested their efforts on a nobler principle."-Alison. "Above all, it should prefer to leave a point untaught, than to teach it in a way," etc.-Latham. "He never doubts but that he knows their intention."Trench. "Scarcely had he uttered the fatal word than the fairy disappeared."-Soane. "Had this been the fate of Tasso, he would have been able to have celebrated the condescension," etc.-Johnson. And, finally, comes a miscellaneous assortment of "blunders," by illustrious blunderers: "The back front of the academy is handsome."--Walpole. "A working man is more worthy of honor than a titled plunderer who lives in idleness."— Cobbett. "There is a certain tune in every language to which the ear of a native is set, and which often decides on a pronunciation, though entirely ignorant of the reason."Walker. |