We do not claim to display any superior learning in pointing out these mistakes. We shall never set ourselves above our contemporaries for corrections which--we will not say every school-boy, but--every school-girl of ordinary literary aptitude is entirely competent to make. There are many things which it is no credit to know, but a serious discredit not to know; and when a man presumes to write a book, we have at least a right to expect that he shall not stumble in the primer. The Gentle Man claims to have been a student of English literature. He has certainly been a very stupid or a very careless one. Indications are not wanting that his proper seat is on both horns of the dilemma. When he leaves other writers and has recourse to his own pen, matters are but indifferently mended. The slovenliness of his style is extraordinary. "Ought a gentleman," he quotes from Thackeray, "to be a loyal son, a true husband, an honest father? Ought his life to be decent, his bills to be paid, his tastes to be high and elegant, his aims in life to be noble?" "Yes," responds the astute essayist, "he should be all these, and somewhat more; and these all men can be, and women, too." What is the English of this gibberish? "In Miss Thackeray's excellent novel, the 'Story of Elizabeth,' there is a somewhat new point in such books." He tells us that General Blücher "had his disappointments, no doubt, but turned them, like the oyster does the speck of sand which annoys it, to a pearl,"--that in every state people may be cheerful; "the lambs skip, birds sing and fly _joyously_, puppies play, kittens are _full_ of _joyance_, the whole air _full_ of careering and _rejoicing_ insects, _that every_where the good outbalances the bad, and _that every_ evil _that there is_ has its compensating balm." And in face of such slop-work he dares to speak of having "formed his style"! And, stranger still, a book which indulges in these pranks has gone to a third edition in the land of Addison and Macaulay! Moreover, our copy belongs to this veritable third edition, whose preface informs us that "the Essays have undergone a careful revision." What must have been the glories of the first edition?