The tendency at the present day, however, seems to be strongly in favor of the process mentioned first--that of changing the sound of the names to suit American ears, and altering the spelling so as to conform to the new pronunciation. There is every indication that this will be done with regard to a very large majority of the foreign surnames that have been introduced among us within the last fifty years, or which may be brought into our country in the future. And as the changes so made are quite arbitrary, the result will be that the future student of American nomenclature will often be sorely puzzled by some of the surnames to which his attention shall be drawn. W.W.C. THE NEW FRENCH ACADEMICIAN. No institution of its kind holds so eminent a place in the esteem of a great country as the _Académie Française_. The elections are always a matter of interest, largely shared by the cultivated _Revue-des-Deux-Mondes_-reading world of both hemispheres; and the last election was one which excited fully as much attention as most of its predecessors. M. John Lemoinne, who at length summoned up courage to present himself as a candidate, was born in London in Waterloo year, 1815, and has for a long period, probably thirty years, been, through the _Journal des Débats_, in some sort a European power. His selection to fill the seat of M. Jules Janin is in every way appropriate. Indeed, it seems strange that he should have been contented to wait until he was sixty-one to come forward for that distinction. The foundation of the Academy is directly traceable to the meetings of men of science at the house of M. Courart--who, early in the seventeenth century, was for forty years its first secretary--but it unquestionably owes to Richelieu a habitation and a name. It was formed with the special object of preserving accuracy in the French language, to which Frenchmen have been wont to pay an almost exclusive attention, but by the election of M. Lemoinne the Academy will have at least one member who is no less acquainted with another tongue. Every one will remember old Miss Crawley's rage when she found that Becky was trading on her connection with the democratic-aristocratic spinster to make her way into the Faubourg St. Germain. Too impatient to write in French, the old lady posted off a furious disavowal of the little adventuress in vigorous vernacular, but, adds the author, as Madame la Duchesse had only passed twenty years in England, she didn't understand one word. It may be hoped that the new Academician will, in conjunction with the new minister of public instruction, Mr. Waddington, who is a Rugby and Cambridge man, have some effect in arousing his countrymen to the study which they have heretofore so strangely neglected of a tongue which threatens to obliterate in time the inconveniences occasioned by the Tower of Babel. English is every day more and more spoken, and French less and less.