"The Exhibition of 1851, seems to promise a whole literature of its own. Journals are already established for the record of its proceedings. Useful information will be at a premium--unless there should happen to be a "glut;" while in the shape of translations and dialogue-books, every facility will be offered to foreigners. What a Babel it will be! How the English ear will be rasped by Slavonic and Teutonic gutturals, or distended by the breadth of Southern vowels. It will be a marvel if this incursion of barbarians do not very much affect the purity of our own tongue, and damage the tender susceptibility of the London ear, already so delicate that when an actor says--as it _sometimes_ happens--"_Donnar Elvirar_ is coming," the whole audience rises in a mass to protest against the outrages on taste. We are told the Athenians were also merciless critics in such matters. Nay, there is a famous anecdote perpetually cited as an illustration of Athenian delicacy in matters of pronunciation, that Theophrastus was known to be a foreigner even by a herbseller. People who wonder at every thing recorded of the Greeks, will regard us probably as reckless iconoclasts if we break that by a stone flung from common sense; but really, with the daily experience of Scotchmen and Irishmen before us, we must say the most wonderful part of the anecdote is, that it should have been recorded. Theophrastus came from Lesbos--if we remember rightly--and his pronunciation, therefore, naturally preserved some of the Lesbian flavor, as Carlyle's does that of Annandale. Would any critic compliment the cockney on delicacy of ear because it detects the accent of Carlyle, or Sheridan Knowles, to be other than its own true London accent? Yet, this is precisely what critics do with respect to the Athenians." * * * * *