is a line in Wordsworth ("Prelude," p. 70) which, by a change of the first _as_ into _so_, would gain not only in sound (which is not our affair at present), but, likewise in grammar. The seventh line of the twenty-first stanza in that most tender of elegies and most beautiful of poems, Shelley's "Adonais," begins, "_As_ long as skies are blue," where also there would be a double gain by writing "_So_ long as skies are blue." On page 242 of the first volume of De Quincey's "Literary Remains" occurs this sentence; "Even by _as_ philosophic a politician _as_ Edmund Burke," in which the critical blunder of calling Burke a philosophic politician furnishes no excuse for the grammatical blunder. The rule (derived, like all good rules, from principle) which determines the use of this small particle is, I conceive, that the double _as_ should only be employed when there is direct comparison. In the first part of the following sentence there is no direct comparative relation--in the second, the negative destroys it; "_So_ far as geographical measurement goes, Philadelphia is not _so_ far from New York as from Baltimore." Five writers out of six would commit the error of using _as_ in both members of the sentence. The most prevalent misuse of _as_ is in connection with _soon_; and this general misuse, having moreover the countenance of good writers, is so inwoven into our speech that it will be hard to unravel it. But principle is higher than the authority derived from custom. Judges are bound to give sentence according to the statute; and if the highest writers, whose influence is deservedly judicial, violate the laws of language, their decisions ought to be, and will be, reversed, or language will be undermined, and, slipping into shallow, illogical habits, into anarchical conditions, will forfeit much of its manliness, of its subtlety, of its truthfulness. Language is a living organism, and to substitute authority, or even long usage, for its innate genius and wisdom, and the requirements and practices that result from these, were to strike at its life, and to expose it to become subject to upstart usurpation, to deadening despotism. Worcester quotes from the Psalms the phrase, "They go astray _as_ soon as they be born." We ask, Were not the translators of the Bible as liable to err in grammar as De Quincey, or Wordsworth, or Shelley? A writer in the English "National Review" for January, 1862, in an admirable paper on the "Italian Clergy and the Pope," begins a sentence with the same phrase: "_As_ soon as the law was passed." And we ourselves, sure though we be that the use of _as_ in this and every similar position is an error, need to brace both pen and tongue against running into it, so strong to overcome principle and conviction is the habit of the senses, accustomed daily to see and to hear the wrong.