friendship to the disposition which dictates literary hyper-criticism. The errors of composition that are to be found in the work, grammatical and other, are also severely handled, we will not say ably. The following is a specimen. “And now, too, we began”—says Spain Revisited—“to see horsemen jantily dressed in slouched hat, embroidered jacket, and worked spatterdashes, reining fiery Andalusian coursers, each having the Moorish carbine hung at hand beside him.” “Were horsemen”—says the Messenger, “a _generic_ term, that is, did the word allude to horsemen generally, the use of the ‘_slouched hat_’ and ‘_embroidered jacket_’ in the singular, would be justifiable—but it is not so in speaking of individual horsemen, where the plural is required. The participle ‘_reining_’ probably refers to ‘_spatterdashes_,’ although of course intended to agree with ‘_horsemen_.’ The word ‘_each_’ also meant to refer to the ‘_horsemen_,’ belongs, strictly speaking, to the ‘_coursers_.’ The whole, if construed by the rigid rules of grammar, would imply that the horsemen were dressed in spatterdashes—which spatterdashes reined the coursers—and which coursers had each a carbine.” With all deference to the Messenger, we would ask, if it never entered into the critick's mind that “slouched hat,” “and embroidered jacket” are here used as generick terms? Lieutenant Slidell evidently intended that they should be so received: but that he entertained the same intention respecting “horsemen,” the whole context disproves. Had the reviewer placed a comma after the word “horsemen,” in the first line of the paragraph which he dissects, (the relative and verb—_who were_—being elided, there is authority for so doing,) considered as parenthetical and illustrative all that follows between that comma and the one which comes after “spatterdashes,” supplied the personal relative and the proper verb, which are plainly understood before the participle “reining,” we presume that this sentence, ill-constructed as it undoubtedly is, would have escaped the knife, from a conviction that there are many as bad in the Messenger itself. The only critical notice which we have had leisure to read since the reception of the number, is the one which we have named. We may resume the subject in connexion with the June number.