[15] Such cases give a clear insight into the process of the degeneration of languages in periods of history when literary culture was suspended; and we are now in danger of experiencing a similar evil through the superficial extension of the same culture. So many persons without anything deserving the name of education have become writers by profession, that written language may almost be said to be principally wielded by persons ignorant of the proper use of the instrument, and who are spoiling it more and more for those who understand it. Vulgarisms, which creep in nobody knows how, are daily depriving the English language of valuable modes of expressing thought. To take a present instance: the verb _transpire_ formerly conveyed very expressively its correct meaning, viz. to _become known_ through unnoticed channels--to exhale, as it were, into publicity through invisible pores, like a vapour or gas disengaging itself. But of late a practice has commenced of employing this word, for the sake of finery, as a mere synonym of _to happen_: "the events which have _transpired_ in the Crimea," meaning the incidents of the war. This vile specimen of bad English is already seen in the despatches of noblemen and viceroys: and the time is apparently not far distant when nobody will understand the word if used in its proper sense. It is a great error to think that these corruptions of language do no harm. Those who are struggling with the difficulty (and who know by experience how great it already is) of expressing oneself clearly with precision, find their resources continually narrowed by illiterate writers, who seize and twist from its purpose some form of speech which once served to convey briefly and compactly an unambiguous meaning. It would hardly be believed how often a writer is compelled to a circumlocution by the single vulgarism, introduced during the last few years, of using the word _alone_ as an adverb, _only_ not being fine enough for the rhetoric of ambitious ignorance. A man will say "to which I am not alone bound by honour but also by law," unaware that what he has unintentionally said is, that he is _not alone_ bound, some other person being bound with him. Formerly if any one said, "I am not alone responsible for this," he was understood to mean, (what alone his words mean in correct English,) that he is not the sole person responsible; but if he now used such an expression, the reader would be confused between that and two other meanings; that he is not _only responsible_ but something more; or that he is responsible _not only for this_ but for something besides. The time is coming when Tennyson's Œnone could not say "I will not die alone," lest she should be supposed to mean that she would not only die but do something else.