We are thankful to Mr. Bartlett for the onslaught he makes in his Introduction upon the _highfaluting_ style so common among us. But we are rather amused to find him falling so easily into that _Anglo-Saxon_ trap which is the common pitfall of those half-learned men among whom we should be slow to rank him.[A] He says, "The _unfortunate tendency_ to _favor_ the Latin at the _expense_ of the Saxon _element_ of our _language_, which _social_ and _educational causes_ have long _tended_ to foster in the mother _country_, has with us _received_ an _additional_ _impulse_ from the great _admixture_ of _foreigners_ in our _population_." (p. xxxii.) We have underscored the words of Latin origin, and find that they include _all_ the nouns, all the adjectives but two, and three out of five verbs,--one of these last (the auxiliary _have_) being the same in both Latin and Saxon. Speaking of the Bostonians, Mr. Bartlett says, "The great _extent_ to which the _scholars_ of New England have carried the _study_ of the _German language_ and _literature_ for some years back, _added_ to the _very general neglect_ of the old _master-pieces_ of English _composition_, have [has] had the _effect_ of giving to the writings of many of them an _artificial, unidiomatic character_, which has an _inexpressibly unpleasant effect_ to those who are not _habituated_ to it." (p. xxv. We again underscore the un-Saxon words.) Now if there be any short cut to the Anglo-Saxon, it is through the German; and how far the Bostonians deserve the reproach of a neglect of old English masterpieces we do not pretend to say, but the first modern reprint of the best works of Latimer, More, Sidney, Fuller, Selden, Browne, and Feltham was made in Boston, under the care of the late Dr. Alexander Young. We have no wish to defend Boston; we mean only to call Mr. Bartlett's attention to the folly of asking people to write in a dialect which no longer exists. No man can write off-hand a page of Saxon English; no man with pains can write one and hope to be commonly understood. At least let Mr. Bartlett practise what he preaches. When a deputation of wig-makers waited on George III. to protest against the hair-powder-tax, the mob, seeing that one of them wore his own hair, ducked him forthwith in Tower-Ditch,--a very Anglo-Saxon comment on his inconsistency. We should not have noticed these passages in Mr. Bartlett's Introduction, had he not, after eleven years' time to weigh them in, let them remain as they stood in his former edition, of 1848.