A very favorite practice is that of changing a word where there is no corresponding change of meaning. Take the following example from a voluminous historian:—“Huge pinnacles of bare rock shoot up into the azure firmament, and forests overspread their sides, in which the scarlet rhododendrons sixty feet in _height_ are surmounted by trees two hundred feet in _elevation_.” In a passage of this kind it may be of little consequence whether a word is retained or changed; but for any purpose where precision is valuable it is nearly as bad to use two words in one sense as one word in two senses. Let us take some other examples. We read in the usual channels of information that “Mr. Gladstone has issued invitations for a full-dress Parliamentary _dinner_, and Lord Granville has issued invitations for a full-dress Parliamentary _banquet_.” Again we read: “The Government proposes to divide the occupiers of land into four categories;” and almost immediately after we have “the second class comprehends...”: so that we see the grand word _category_ merely stands for _class_. Again: “This morning the _Czar_ drove alone through the Thiergarten, and on his return received Field-Marshals Wrangel and Moltke, as well as many other general officers, and then gave audience to numerous visitors. Towards noon the _Emperor Alexander_, accompanied by the Russian Grand Dukes, paid a visit....” “Mr. Ayrton, according to _Nature_, has accepted Dr. Hooker’s explanation of the letter to Mr. Gladstone’s secretary, at which the First Commissioner of Works took umbrage, so that the dispute is at an end.” I may remark that Mr. Ayrton is identical with the First Commissioner of Works. A writer recently in a sketch of travels spoke of a “Turkish gentleman with his _innumerable_ wives,” and soon after said that she “never saw him address any of his _multifarious_ wives.” One of the illustrated periodicals gave a picture of an event in recent French history, entitled, “The National Guards Firing on the People.” Here the change from _national_ to _people_ slightly conceals the strange contradiction of guardians firing on those whom they ought to guard. Let us now take one example in which a word is repeated, but in a rather different sense: “The Grand Duke of Baden sat _next_ to the Emperor William, the Imperial Crown Prince of Germany _next_ to the Grand Duke. _Next_ came the other princely personages.” The word _next_ is used in the last instance in not quite the same sense as in the former two instances; for all the princely personages could not sit in contact with the Crown Prince.