2. _A Glossarial Index to the Printed English Literature of the Thirteenth Century_. By HERBERT COLERIDGE. London: Trübner & Company. 1859. pp. iv., 104. 3. _Outlines of the History of the English Language_, for the Use of the Junior Classes in Colleges and the Higher Classes in Schools. By GEORGE L. CRAIK, Professor of History and of English Literature in Queen's College, Belfast. Third Edition, revised and improved. London: Chapman & Hall. 1859. pp. xii., 148. 4. _The Vulgar Tongue_. A Glossary of Slang, Cant, and Flash Phrases, used in London from 1839 to 1859; Flash Songs, Essays on Flash, and a Bibliography of Canting and Slang Literature. By DUCANGE ANGLICUS. Second Edition, improved and much enlarged. London: Bernard Quaritch. 1859. pp. 80. 5. _A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words_, etc., etc. By a London Antiquary. London: John Camden Holten. 1859. pp. lxxxviii., 160. 6. _On the English Language, Past and Present_. By RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D. New Edition, revised and enlarged. New York: Blakeman & Mason. 1859. pp. 238. 7. _A Select Glossary of English Words used formerly in Senses different from their present_. By RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D. New York: Redfield. 1859. pp. xi., 218. 8. _Rambles among Words; their Poetry, History, Wisdom_. By WILLIAM SWINTON. New York. Scribner. 1859. pp. 302. The first allusion we know of to an Americanism is that of Gill, in 1621,--"_Sed et ab Americanis nonnulla mutuamur, ut_ MAIZ _et_ KANOA." Since then, English literature, not without many previous wry faces, has adopted or taken back many words from this side of the water. The more the matter is looked into, the more it appears that we have no peculiar dialect of our own, and that men here, as elsewhere, have modified language or invented phrases to suit their needs. When Dante wrote his "De Vulgari Eloquio," he reckoned nearly a thousand distinct dialects in the Italian peninsula, and, after more than five hundred years, it is said that by far the greater part survive. In England, eighty years ago, the county of every member of Parliament was to be known by his speech; but in "both Englands," as they used to be called, the tendency is toward uniformity.