"_Is being built_." This form of expression has met with many and zealous advocates. It is an error almost exclusively confined to print. In conversation we would say, "the house is _getting_ built," and no one would be in doubt as to our meaning. _Being built_ is the past or perfect participle, which according to Lindley Murray, signifies action perfected or finished. How then can prefixing the word _is_ or _are_, words in the present tense, before it, convert this meaning into another signifying the continuation of the building at this moment? We say, "the house _being built_ the family moved in," and imply absolute completion by the phrase _being built_, as people are not in the habit of moving into unfinished houses. To say that the house is being built, is no more than saying that the house is built, and by this we understand that the building is completely finished, not that the work is still going on. I do not know that any of Shakspeare's hundred and one commentators has noticed the pun in Hamlet's address to his father's ghost, "Thou comest to me in such a _questionable_ shape, that I will _speak_ to thee." Perhaps the great bard meant to exhibit the coolness of his hero by placing a jest in his mouth. Hamlet immediately after proceeds to _question_ the spirit. _Editorial_. LYNCH'S LAW. Frequent inquiry has been made within the last year as to the origin of Lynch's law. This subject now possesses historical interest. It will be perceived from the annexed paper, that the law, so called, originated in 1780, in Pittsylvania, Virginia. Colonel William Lynch, of that county, was its author; and we are informed by a resident, who was a member of a body formed for the purpose of carrying it into effect, that the efforts of the association were wholly successful. A trained band of villains, whose operations extended from North to South, whose well concerted schemes had bidden defiance to the ordinary laws of the land, and whose success encouraged them to persevere in depredations upon an unoffending community, was dispersed and laid prostrate under the infliction of Lynch's law. Of how many terrible, and deeply to be lamented consequences--of how great an amount of permanent evil--has the partial and temporary good been productive!