Fair; " while "Philippe Auguste" must be rendered by "Philip Augustus." To warrant the expression "Philip the August," the original should be "Philippe l'Auguste."

Chenevix is not the only English writer in whom this blunder occurs.

I think I have seen it stated somewhere that the author of the "Letters of Junius was ac

quainted with the French language. If he was, the acquaintance must have been exceedingly slight, as the following passage in one of the "Letters" would seem to indicate :

"Lewis the Fourteenth had reason when he said, 'the Pyrenees are removed.'

The use of the expression "had reason," by so idiomatic a writer as Junius, can only be accounted for on the supposition that he had met with some remark in French to this effect: "Louis Quatorze avait raison quand il a dit qu'il n'y a plus de Pyrénées ;" and that, wishing to translate it into English, he rendered the words, "avait raison," in their literal sense, without being aware that the correct English of them is, "was right."

"Louis Quatorze was right when he said, 'the Pyrenees are removed.'”

Another example is furnished us by no less a personage than the late Duke of Newcastle. Writing to the "Standard" newspaper in March,

1845, his Grace concludes his letter with the words :

"J'ai tout perdu que mon honneur."

This is adopted from that remarkable saying of Francis the First, after the battle of Pavia : "Tout est perdu hormis l'honneur." The Duke was not particular as to the exact words, and he merely wished to express the same sentiment in good French. But see what he has made of it: "I have lost all that my honour." The word que sometimes expresses the English but, as in the phrase, “Je n'ai perdu que mon honneur," and that is what misled the Duke; but it never does so, unless when preceded by some negative particle, and that is what his Grace was probably not aware of.

An instance of this sort of blunder occurs in Mrs. Sigourney's "Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands." She is speaking of the discontent that prevailed in Paris in 1840, and remarks:

"Here and there cries were heard among the crowd, of' Â bas les traiteurs!'"

There certainly is no lack of traiteurs in the good city of Paris: they are almost as numerous there as traîtres; but it is to be presumed that, on the occasion in question, the public exasperation was directed against the latter, and not against the unoffending "traiteurs."

Here is a sample from Sir Bulwer Lytton :

"A foreign writer has justly observed that we may judge of the moral influence of this country by the simple phrase, that a man is worth so much, or, as he translates the expression, digne tant.'"-England and the English.

I apprehend that the translator here is no other than Sir Bulwer Lytton himself, inasmuch as no French writer, who understood the English words, would have used such an expression as digne tant," which means "worthy so much," and not "worth so much." The French of the latter is "vaut tant."

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There is no word in the French language that requires such cautious handling from a foreigner as the word "esprit." It is as versatile and multifarious as the people whose mental characteristic it so aptly represents; and in proportion to its versatility is the ill-usage to which it is daily subjected by English writers of every degree. One of the numerous meanings of this word occurs in the phrase "esprit de corps," frequently written "esprit du corps;" which, if it means anything, means "the spirit of the body." Lord Byron, in a letter to Moore, after using the French expression, asks with characteristic indifference: "Is it du or de, for that is more than I know ?"

A ludicrous application of the word "esprit " occurs in the following sentence in the "Dublin

University Magazine" for September, 1844, in a review of Carleton's "Traits and Stories :".

"Her features are by no means regular; she dances with much more esprit than elegance."

The writer no doubt meant to describe the lady as dancing with liveliness, vivacity, animation, and he might have clearly expressed his idea by either of those terms. Instead of which he resorts to a foreign expression, and tells us that the lady had her wit in her heels; for, to dance with esprit has no other meaning.

Macaulay, in his "Essay on the Athenian Orators," condescends to repeat a pretended jeu-demots on the title of Montesquieu's great work :—

"It was happily said that Montesquieu ought to have changed the name of his book from 'L'Esprit des Lois' to 'L'Esprit sur les Lois.'

I believe it could be shown by numerous instances that the temptation of punning has been a stumbling-block to many men of the greatest genius. For them, no less than for the inferior aspirant to literary distinction, a quibble has its attractions; and some have been so far led astray by the false glitter, as to forfeit their reputation for sagacity and wisdom. The excess to which Shakspeare has indulged in this species of trifling is perhaps the greatest blemish in his works. It gives an air of conceit to some of Bacon's finest thoughts; and here we have that admirable

writer, Macaulay, quoting one of its vilest samples, and, what is worse, characterizing it as a "happy saying." In point of fact, what is the meaning of "L'Esprit sur les Lois ?" Did it ever occur to the person who proposed it as an appropriate title for Montesquieu's work, or to Macaulay, who echoes the suggestion, that this happy saying is sheer nonsense?

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One of the meanings of "esprit" is "ingeniousness;" and it is probably in that sense that Macaulay would have us understand it in "L'Esprit sur les Lois." But he forgets that it ceases to have that signification the moment the article le is prefixed to it. In the title of Montesquieu's work, the words " "l'esprit are employed in the sense of "the scope," the guiding principle," "the fundamental idea;" and the substitution of "sur les " for "des " would not affect the meaning of "esprit." The change would only be from one preposition to another, with this material difference, that, while "l'esprit des lois " is perfectly intelligible, "l'esprit sur les lois" has no meaning at all. True, by placing the preposition de before the article, we come across the meaning which is akin to ingeniousness or wit. "De l'esprit sur les lois," however absurd as the title of a book, would be intelligible as part of a sentence. Thus we might say, "Montesquieu a fait de l'esprit sur les lois en traitant des lois;" but no one,