In our notice of the _American in England_, we found much fault with the _style_--that is to say, with the mere English of Lieutenant Slidell. We are not sure whether the volumes now before us were written previously or subsequently to that very excellent work--but certain it is that they are much less abundant than it, in simple errors of grammar and ambiguities of construction. We must be pardoned, however, for thinking that even now the English of our traveller is more obviously defective than is becoming in any well educated American--more especially in any well educated American who is an aspirant for the honors of authorship. To quote individual sentences in support of an assertion of this nature, might bear with it an air of injustice--since there are few of the best writers of any language in whose works single faulty passages may not readily be discovered. We will therefore take the liberty of commenting in detail upon the English of an entire page of _Spain Revisited_.--See page 188, vol. i. Carts and wagons, caravans of mules, and files of humbler asses came pouring, by various roads, into the great vomitory by which we were entering, laden with the various commodities, the luxuries as well as the necessaries of life, brought from foreign countries or from remote provinces, to sustain the unnatural existence of a capital which is so remote from all its resources, and which produces scarce any thing that it consumes. This sentence, although it would not be too long, if properly managed, is too long as it stands. The ear repeatedly seeks, and expects the conclusion, and is repeatedly disappointed. It expects the close at the word "_entering_"--at the word "_life_"--at the word "_provinces_"--and at the word "_resources_." Each additional portion of the sentence after each of the words just designated by inverted commas, has the air of an after-thought engrafted upon the original idea. The use of the word "_vomitory_" in the present instance is injudicious. Strictly speaking, a road which serves as a vomitory, or means of egress, for a population, serves also as a means of ingress. A good writer, however, will consider not only whether, in all strictness, his words will admit of the meaning he attaches to them, but whether in their implied, their original, or other collateral meanings, they may not be at variance with some portion of his sentence. When we hear of "a _vomitory_ by which we were _entering_," not all the rigor of the most exact construction will reconcile us to the phrase--since we are accustomed to connect with the word _vomitory_, notions precisely the reverse of those allied to the subsequent word "_entering_." Between the participle "_laden_" and the nouns to which it refers (carts, {392} wagons, caravans and asses) two other nouns and one pronoun are suffered to intervene--a grammatical arrangement which when admitted in any degree, never fails to