Neither is it the least regrettable circumstance that, considered as a piece of mingled vileness and effrontery, the word has been, and for the matter of that is still likely to be, a most telling and signal success. Those who have followed the writer at all closely will have already noticed the irresistible impulse of succeeding generations to secure to themselves the strongest possible anathema with which to carry on all manner of petty hostilities. But until the expletive that is now passing under our consideration was fairly launched upon society, no great measure of success can be said to have crowned their endeavours. The swearing of the pre-Reformation era may be adjudged the nearest approach to maledictory perfection, but even that system, admirable as it may have been from the point of view of an accomplished Boanerges of the time, was at best but an unstable and fluctuating one, and depended for its efficiency upon the swearer's own powers of invocation. As a rule no two oaths were alike, and men gave you the idea of thinking before they swore. So various a code could hardly be expected to meet with general success, it being as impossible for an individual to invent a really new oath--a new "bloody," for example--as it is said to be impossible to invent a new proverb or a new rhyme for the nursery. Imitations can of course be easily contrived, but the genuine product only arises through the seemingly spontaneous consent of approving multitudes. It was precisely in this way that the present abomination was generated. Not proceeding from any one man's store of virulence, but resulting from a long process of evolution and development, it at last springs into sudden life, in obedience, it would almost seem, to a nation's clamours. But no sooner was it called into this sphere of activity, than it became, we repeat, a gigantic success. It is the crown and apex of all bad language, the coping-stone of all systems of verbal aggression and abuse. By consent, as it were, of the general conscience it is allowed to have surpassed in vileness and intensity anything of the kind that has been intense or vile. That this stream of pollution should continue to flow, uninterruptedly and with increasing volume, through its inky channel, is one of the gloomiest and grimmest of the minor features of our social life. APPENDIX.