Such a standard exists in the authorized classics of Great Britain. If we depart from this, we not only fall to pieces at home, but eventually sever our literature from that of the mother country; a mishap to be deprecated by every man who wishes his posterity to drink at "the well-spring of English, pure and undefiled," or who desires our American authors to be honored in Great Britain. We would not be such purists in language, as to stigmatize every word not found in Johnson. There is a fastidiousness on one side, as evil as the recklessness on the other. Fox rejected all words not found in Dryden, and Bulwer speaks of one so addicted to the Saxon element of our tongue, that his English stalks abroad "as naked as a Pict." New objects are discovered in nature, new distinctions are taken in science, new relations are discerned in ancient truths, and all these justify new words. But we are not in danger of pruning too close in this land of universal license. The purity and melody of our language are threatened from the side of indiscriminate adoption of needless words and phrases. The basest provincialisms begin to install themselves in works of reputed elegance; and grammatical solecisms are daily "being engrafted" on our stock. The last phrase is here inserted as a specimen, with our challenge to all the sciolists and misses who use it, to furnish an instance of a similar construction, in any writer of merit, from Robert of Gloucester to Sir James Mackintosh. Provincialisms are cited abroad as Americanisms. Though "_I guess_" is often used by Locke in the Yankee acceptation, yet even in America it is confined to a particular region, where un-English phraseology is rife. So the sad abuse of that poetical word _evening_ to mean _afternoon_--an abuse which makes mere prose of such a verse as "Like a bright exhalation in the evening,"