familiar ; yet I am disposed to think that in America, the lower 

 middle class, and to some extent the middle class, speak rather 

 less correctly than they do in England, and I account for it by 

 two different causes. The first is the prevailing sentiment of 

 equality, which gives a man the half-unconscious feeling that he 

 has no right to speak better English than his neighbours. This 

 naturally does not apply so much to large places Avhere men can 

 form themselves into sets, as to small places, where I have 

 observed that the one or two persons of better education, clergy- 

 men, for instance, who are probably graduates of a University, 

 instead of striving to maintain a higher standard of language, 

 succumb, in ordinary conversation, to the influence of that which 

 they hear around them. 



The second cause of the corruption of the language I take to 

 be the peculiar circumstances of the local press in all the smaller 

 places throughout the country. The English country paper is a 

 property which descends from father to son often for many 

 generations, and he who is intended to succeed to it is educated 

 more or less with reference to the post which he has to undertake. 

 His journal appears as a rule once, or at most twice a week, and 

 he has ample time to prepare careful and well-considered summaries 

 of the events of the week. He is from his training qualified to 

 write good English, so that throughout the district which his paper 

 serves, to many of the people of which it is probably, the only 

 literature they read, the standard of the language is not suffered to 

 be degraded. In America, where a town of four or five thousand 

 people has a couple of daily papers, all this is entirely changed. 

 A man comes to a new place, and he says to himself—" What 

 does this place want?" If he thinks it wants an eating-house, he 

 will start an eating-house; if an hotel, he will start an hotel ; if he 

 thinks there is room for a preacher, he will perhaps even start in 

 that line. There is— to the honour of the Americans— one thing 

 he cannot do— he cannot start a school. But it is as likely as not 

 that he may elect to try a paper for a while, and, if that does not 

 answer, try something else. Thui" he comes to his task with no 

 special qualification. While the English country editor is as one 



