Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. IX.—February, 1851.—Vol. II.. Various

previously too morbidly acute, to defects in the construction of sentences, and generally in the management of language. The result is this: and perhaps it will shock the reader, certainly it will startle him, when I declare solemnly my conviction, that no two consecutive pages can be cited from any one of the very best English authors, which is not disfigured by some gross equivocation or imperfection of structure, such as leaves the meaning open, perhaps, to be inferred from the context, but also so little expressed with verbal rigor, or with conformity to the truth of logic, or to the real purpose, that, supposing the passage to involve a legal interest, and in consequence, to come under a judicial review, it would be set aside for want of internal coherency. Not in arrogance, but under a deep sense of the incalculable injuries done to truth, small and great, by false management of language, I declare my belief that hardly one entire paragraph exists in our language which is impregnable to criticism, even as regards the one capital interest of logical limitation to the main purpose concerned.

4

Priné– πρινή, the Greek word for a saw. The saw was applied to the chest, and the man was sawed into two halves, leaving a sculptor's bust (man's head and shoulders) for the upper half.

5

From the naked character of the whole area on each side of the Oxford-road, at that time, there was very little opening for ambuscades. What little there was, which greatly fascinated my brother as one of the features connecting his own strategies with those of Cæsar, lay exclusively among the brick-kilns. Of these, there were numbers on the clay-fields adjacent to the road: and sometimes having been irregularly quarried (so to speak), they opened into lanes and closets, which offered facilities for momentary concealment. But the advantages almost ceased to be such from their obviousness, and the consequent jealousy with which they were watched and approached. The particular mode of my three captures was the constant mode of my danger; two or three parallel files advanced up the rising ground from the river; one or two of these by shouts, by more conspicuous activity, and by numerical superiority, succeeded in winning too exclusive an attention, while a slender thread of stragglers, noiseless, and apparently not acting in concert, suddenly converged when approaching the summit of the ascent, and instantly swept so rapidly round the left of my position, as in one moment to take away all chance of restoring the connection between myself and my brother; while, at the same time, by exposing too decisively for doubt the preconcerted plan on which they had really been moving, when most of all simulating the disarray of stragglers, they mortified us by the conviction that students of Cæsar's Commentaries might chance, notwithstanding, to show themselves most exemplary blockheads.

6

Ency. Brit.

7

Lard. Cyclo.

8

The most plausible reason assigned is that of the expansion of the tube toward the fire by the influence of the heat. The fallacy of this theory is at once shown by the fact that, although heat does expand bodies, it does not increase their weight; therefore, notwithstanding that one side of the tube may be expanded, its equilibrium will remain unimpaired.

9

Diodorus Siculus, Tzetzez, Galen, Lucian, Anthemius, and others.

10

This story is attested, with slight variations, by several writers, Petronius, Dion Cassius, Pliny, and Isidorus. Pliny says that the populace, imagining that their interests would be injured by the discovery, destroyed the workhouse, tools, and dwelling of the artificer.

11

Blancourt.

12

Ibn Abd Alhakim.

13

For details see Loysel "Sur l'Art de la Verrerie;" and Lard. Cyclo.

14

In this respect plate-glass is treated differently from crown and broad glass, which is always placed on its edge in the annealing furnace.

15

Lard. Cyclo.

16

To such an extent has this jealousy been carried, that many adroit expedients have been employed to mislead and baffle curiosity. Hence the infinite variety of receipts for the production of different sorts of glass that have been launched upon the public, a vast number of which have been got up expressly for the purpose of deceiving and misdirecting the inquirer. To this circumstance may be referred the remarkable contradictions and inconsistencies that may be detected in all treatises on the subject.