First, of abuses. I protest against those sensational adjectives, which are so commonly misapplied--against the union of grand and noble words with subjects of a minute and trivial nature. It is as though a huge locomotive engine were brought out to draw a child's perambulator, or as though an Armstrong gun were loaded and levelled to exterminate a tom-tit. I heard a tourist say the other day that, when he was at Black Gang Chine, in the Isle of Wight, he had seen the _most magnificent_--what do you think? A sunset, a man-of-war, a thunderstorm? Nothing of the kind. He had seen the most _magnificent prawns_ he ever ate in his life. And when I asked another young gentleman, who was speaking of "_the most tremendous screw_ ever made in the world," to which of our great ironclads he referred, he smiled upon me with a benign and courteous pity, as he said that he "was alluding to a screw into the middle pocket, which he had recently seen during a game at billiards between Cook and the younger Roberts." When you hear one lady informing another that she had just seen simply the most _exquisite_, the most _lovely_, the most _perfect_ thing in existence, is she referring to something wonderful in nature, or to something beautiful in art, or can it be only a bonnet? Has she just come home from the glaciers of Switzerland, the lakes of Italy, the mountains of Connemara, or the castles of the Rhine, or can it be that she has been no farther than Marshall and Snelgrove's shop? Then there's that awful "_awful_!" Why, if a thousandth part of things which are commonly affirmed to be aweful were aweful, we should go about with our faces blanched, like his who drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night, our teeth chattering, and our hair on end. Everything is _aweful_--awefully good or awefully bad. Only last week I handed a plate to a young lady at luncheon, and, looking sweetly upon me, as though I had brought a reprieve from the gallows, she sighed, "Oh thanks! how _awfully_ kind!" And years ago, I went with John Leech to admire Robson in _The Porter's Knot_, and when that pathetic little drama was over, and the actor had stirred our souls with pity, an undergraduate in the stalls before us turned to his companion, as the curtain fell, and said, tremulously, with an emotion which did him honour, although his diction was queer, "Awefully jolly! awefully jolly!" Yes, it amuses, but it pains us more, this reckless abuse and confusion of words, because it tends to lower the dignity and to pervert the meaning of our language; it dishonours the best member that we have. If we use the most startling and impressive words which we can find, when we do not really require them, when the crisis comes in which they are appropriate, they seem feeble and commonplace. We are as persons who, wearing their best clothes daily, are but dingy guests at a feast.