The word breeches has, I am well aware, been deemed ineffable, and therefore not to be written—because not to be read. But I am encouraged to use it by the high and mighty authority of the Anti-Jacobin Review. Mr. Stephens having in his Memoirs of Horne Tooke used the word small-clothes is thus reprehended for it by the indignant Censor. “His _breeches_ he calls _small-clothes_;—the first time we have seen this bastard term, the offspring of gross ideas and disgusting affectation in print, in any thing like a book. It is scandalous to see men of education thus employing the most vulgar language, and corrupting their native tongue by the introduction of illegitimate words. But this is the age of affectation. Even our fishwomen and milkmaids affect to blush at the only word which can express this part of a man's dress, and lisp _small-clothes_ with as many airs as a would-be woman of fashion is accustomed to display. That this folly is indebted for its birth to grossness of imagination in those who evince it, will not admit of a doubt. From the same source arises the ridiculous and too frequent use of a French word for a part of female dress; as if the mere change of language could operate a change either in the thing expressed, or in the idea annexed to the expression! Surely, surely, English women, who are justly celebrated for good sense and decorous manners, should rise superior to such pityful, such paltry, such low-minded affectation.” Here I must observe that one of these redoubtable critics is thought to have a partiality for breeches of the Dutch make. It is said also that he likes to cut them out for himself, and to have pockets of capacious size, wide and deep; and a large fob, and a large allowance of lining. The Critic who so very much dislikes the word small-clothes, and argues so vehemently in behalf of breeches, uses no doubt that edition of the scriptures that is known by the name of the Breeches Bible.[1] [Footnote 1: The Bible here alluded to was the Genevan one, by Rowland Hall, A.D. 1560. It was for many years the most popular one in England, and the notes were great favorites with the religious public, insomuch so that they were attached to a copy of King James' Translation as late as 1715. From the peculiar rendering of Genesis, iii. 7, the Editions of this translation have been commonly known by the name of “Breeches Bibles.”—See Cotton's Various Editions of the Bible, p. 14, and Ames and Herbert, Ed. Dibdin, vol. iv. p. 410.]