What has been the result? Why, that the dialect on the northern side of Kirkstone bears the impress of a more ultra-Danish influence than that upon the Windermere side. In particular this remarkable difference occurs: not the nouns and verbs merely are Danish amongst the trans-Kirkstonians (I speak as a Grasmerian), but even the particles--the very joints and articulations of language. The Danish _at_, for instance, is used for _to_; I do not mean for _to_ the preposition: they do not say, 'Carry this letter at Mr. 'W.'; but as the sign of the infinitive mood. 'Tell him _at_ put his spurs on, and _at_ ride off for a surgeon?' Now this illustration carries along with it a proof that a stronger and a weaker infusion of the Danish element, possibly an older and a younger infusion, may prevail even in close adjacencies, provided they are powerfully divided by walls of rock that happen to be eight miles thick. [Footnote 52: I mean that they included the progressive or outward-bound course, and equally the regressive or homeward-bound course, within the compass of this one word [Greek: diaulos]. We in England have a phrase which conventionally has been made to supply the want of such an idea, but unfortunately with a limitation to the service of the Post-office. It is the phrase _course of post_. When a Newcastle man is asked, 'What is the course of post between you and Liverpool?' he understands, and by a legal decision it has been settled that he is under an obligation to understand--What is the _diaulos_, what is the flux and reflux--the to and the fro--the systole and diastole of the respiration--between you and Liverpool. What is the number of hours and minutes required for the transit of a letter from Newcastle to Liverpool, but coupled with the return transit of the answer? This forward and backward movement constitutes the _diaulos_: less than this will not satisfy the law as the complex process understood by the _course of post_. Less than this is only the half section of a _diaulos_.] But the inexorable Press, that waits for few men under the rank of a king, and not always for _him_ (as I happen to know, by having once seen a proof-sheet corrected by the royal hand of George IV., which proof exhibited some disloyal signs of impatience), forces me to adjourn all the rest to next month.--Yours ever, THOMAS DE QUINCEY. STORMS IN ENGLISH HISTORY: A GLANCE AT THE REIGN OF HENRY VIII.[53]