'_If I were_,' in this sentence, is not English--but there are few persons who will believe that "_if_" does not in _all_ instances require the subjunctive. In the words "_a small iron rod which served as a parapet to protect me from falling off the precipice over which I hung, and against which I was forced," &c._ let us say nothing of the {195} injudicious use of the word _parapet_ as applied to _a small iron rod_. Passing over this, it is evident, that the second relative pronoun "_which_," has for its antecedent, in strict syntactical arrangement, the same noun as the first relative pronoun "_which_"--that is to say, it has the word "_precipice_" for its antecedent. The sentence would thus imply that Mr. Slidell was forced against the precipice. But the actual meaning (at which we arrive by guessing) is, that Mr. Slidell was forced against the iron rod. In the words "_I was forced with a pressure proportioned to the circumstances of my being compressed into a space," &c._ let us again be indulgent, and say as little as possible of the tautology in "_pressure_" and "_compressed_." But we ask where are the _circumstances_ spoken of? There is only _one_ circumstance--the circumstance of being compressed. In the conclusion of the passage where the Lieutenant speaks of "a seat having doubtless been contrived to accommodate five men, and there being no greater anatomical mistake than to suppose there would be more room because four of them were women," it is quite unnecessary to point out the "bull egregious"--a bull which could have been readily avoided by the simple substitute of "_persons_" for "_men_." We must be pardoned for copying yet another sentence. We will do so with the single remark that it is one of the most ludicrously ill-arranged, and altogether ungainly pieces of composition which it has ever been our ill fortune to encounter. "I was not long in discovering that the different personages scattered about the room in such an unsocial and misanthropic manner, instead of being collected about the same board, as in France or my own country, and, in the spirit of good fellowship and of boon companions, relieving each other of their mutual ennuis, though they did not speak a word to each other, by which they might hereafter be compromised and socially ruined, by discovering that they had made the acquaintance of an individual several grades below them in the scale of rank, or haply as disagreeably undeceived by the abstraction of a pocket-book, still kept up a certain interchange of sentiment, by occasional glances and mutual observation." Such passages as the foregoing may be discovered _passim_ in "The American in England." Yet we have heard Mr. Slidell's English called equal to the English of Mr. Irving--than which nothing can be more improbable. The Lieutenant's book is an excellent book--but then it is excellent _in spite of its style_. So great are the triumphs of genius! CONTI.