II. PINGUICULA. 55 



write; not only every feeling I have, but, of late, even 

 every word I use, being alike inconceivable to the inso- 

 lence, and unintelligible amidst the slang, of the modern 

 London writers. Only in the last magazine I took up, I 

 found an article by Mr. Gold win Smith on the Jews (of 

 which the gist as far as it had any was that we had 

 better give up reading the Bible), and in the text of 

 which I found the word ' tribal ' repeated about ten times 

 in every page. Now, if 'tribe' makes 'tribal,' tube 

 must make tubal, cube, cubal, and gibe, gibal ; and I 

 suppose we shall next hear of tubal music, cubal min- 

 erals, and gibal conversation ! And observe how all this 

 bad English leads instantly to blunder in thought, pro- 

 longed indefinitely. The Jewish Tribes are not separate 

 races, but the descendants of brothers. The Koman 

 Tribes, political divisions ; essentially Trine : and the 

 whole force of the word Tribune vanishes, as soon as the 

 ear is wrung into acceptance of his lazy innovation by 

 the modern writer. Similarly, in the last elements of 

 mineralogy I took up, the first order of crystals was 

 called ' tesseral ' ; the writer being much too fine to call 

 them 4 four-al,' and too much bent on distinguishing 

 himself from all previous writers to call them cubic. 



10. What simple schoolchildren, and sensible school- 

 masters, are to do in this atmosphere of Egyptian marsh, 

 which rains fools upon them like frogs, I can no more 

 with any hope or patience conceive ; but this finally I 

 repeat, concerning my own books, that they are written 



