the right side, yet a very real one; and it more or less characterizes every part of this book. We are especially struck with the practical difficulty which would arise on this score in teaching the chapters on 'Punctuation,' and on 'Composition.' Moreover, the great and regulative principles which are founded on laws of thought, and which require to be learned as directions how we ought to speak, do not appear to be distinguished with sufficient clearness from the merely permissive rules, which tell us what the idioms of the English language will allow. In the following example, which we are bound to say is an exceptional one, there is a statement of a fact, which, without further explanation, is likely to mislead a student, and to conceal from him the real significance of the usage which it describes :

(410.) Sometimes two or more nouns stand in the objective relation to the same verb; either because they are in apposition, or because some verbs (as verbs of 'asking,' 'giving,' 'teaching,' &c.) govern two accusatives, as—

"The saints proclaim thee King.'

'Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God.'

'Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay

To mould me man.

'Give truth the same arms which you give falsehood, and the former will prevail.'

"They denied him the privilege.'

(415.) When two nouns are governed by an active transitive verb, one objective or accusative may be made the nominative, and the other accusative remain with the verb in the passive voice, as— 'I was asked that question yesterday.'

'Some of his characters have been found fault with as insipid.'

There are here two rules relating to the same idiom; but though they are clearly and accurately stated, they fail to elucidate the true nature of that idiom. It is quite true that two or more nouns stand in the same relation to a given verb when they are in apposition;' as in the sentence first quoted: The saints proclaim thee king;' because here 'thee' and 'king' refer to the same person. But in the sentence, They denied him the privilege,' 'him' and 'privilege' are

not in apposition, and do not stand in the same relation to the verb. For 'him' is dative, and 'privilege' is accusative. The right statement is, that verbs of asking, giving, teaching, &c., require to be followed by two objectives, one of which differs altogether in meaning from the other; but it is a misfortune that our grammar confounds two relations so distinct as the dative and accusative, under the one vague general term 'objective.' In regard to the second. rule, it may be observed, that when a sentence, containing an active verb, governing both dative and accusative cases, is so converted that the verb becomes passive, there are two forms, of which one is legitimate, easily accounted for on principle; the other is anomalous; though, being legitimized by usage, it has acquired a right to notice in a permissive rule.

'He asked me a question yesterday.' Here is the verb 'ask,' followed by a dative, 'me,' and an accusative, 'question.' Now, the same sense may be otherwise expressed in two ways.

(1.) The question was asked me by him yesterday.' This form, though not elegant, is perfectly legitimate. The word ' question,' which was accusative, becomes the subject to the passive verb; the word 'me' remaining as before in the dative relation. But if the sentence be thus transformed :

(2.) I was asked that question by him yesterday,' it may be observed that the dative me is turned into the nominative; while the word 'question' remains in the anomalous position of an accusative after a passive verb. This second form cannot be justified on principle. We venture to doubt whether any other language has a usage analogous to it; although the example, No. 1, is unquestionably typical of a form of sentence which is often found elsewhere.

It is right to add, that the cases in which a question, even so insignificant as this, is left without satisfactory solution, are very rare in this book. For painstaking and thoroughness in detail, as well as for mastery of the general principles of comparative grammar, the 'Handbook to the English Tongue' deserves special commendation. If, in a future edition, the pages are less crowded and more readable; and if a tabulated or columnar arrangement of long lists of illustrative words is

substituted for the present inconvenient and unsightly arrangement of dense groups of words, distinguished by quotation marks; we believe the work will become the most attractive and interesting, as it is already the most scientific and complete, manual of English which our language possesses.

CONVERSATION AND TALK.

The epic poem has left the world--passed, according to the Tennysonian phrase, in music out of sight. The day of tragedy has departed. The era of the old, genuine oratory, for mere oratory's sake, is absolutely extinct. We have great parliamentary debaters,—men who can put close argument, and thought, and sarcasm into vigorous, fluent, and effective language: but the professional orator with his exordium and his peroration is not to be found on the floor of St. Stephen's. What is becoming of conversation? Is it too following the way of epic poetry, and tragedy, and oratory? There is certainly not less talk in the world now than there ever was; but in this country, at least, the growth of talk seems to be the decadence of conversation. It is not wholly imaginary, the falling off in this respect, like the lamentation of old people, for the summers of their early years, and the modest young men and women who lived in their youthful days. Either all the writers who described by-gone society, and all the people who can recall the habits of thirty or forty years ago, have conspired to deceive us, or there is a plain and undeniable decline in the tone of our conversation at present. As Pendennis feels disappointed after his first night of literary society, and its very commonplace gossip, so do most novices in company of any kind now feel, if they enter with any expectation of hearing the conversation which they have read of in novels and biographies. We do not at all regret that human beings never really carry on dialogues after the fashion of Plato or Erasmus, in which one individual keeps all the eloquence and wisdom to himself, and the other speaker plays the part of the man of straw, and is set up only to be upset. This kind of conversation was happily no whit

more real, as mere interchange of living men's ideas, than the modern Bulwerian dialogues; for there no end of Platos may be found, each with a touch of Alcibiades; one gifted individual uttering a long and splendid sentimental monologue, clouded with abstractions and starred with capital letters, to which a second equally endowed, replies in an oration quite as elaborate, vast, high sounding, and Germanesque. One cannot help thinking how the author hammered and polished at sentence by sentence of those speeches which his heroes are supposed to talk off with such spontaneous ease;—how he effaced, added, amended, made copy after copy, before the dialogue had obtained brilliancy, and splendid vagueness, fit for the lips of his Godolphins, Zanonis, Glanvilles, and Maltravers. Nor have we any fuller faith in the big, resonant words of grand old Christopher North's noctes cœnæque deorum, with the encouraging 'Describe, James, describe,' introducing some magnificent burst of picture-language, where Arthur's Seat or Easedale Tarn seemed shadowed in every sentence. We are not to despise our own little, vapid talking circle, merely because they do not pretend to any thing of this kind. Most of us would very soon have acknowledged our weariness, if we had long to keep up the nervous strain of following such a style in ordinary converse. If real life never listened to such talkers, no one has much reason to regret their non-existence out of books.

Nor does the deficiency of our own time consist in the fact that we have lost the great, real talkers of the past age, and that we have not supplied their places. They were a grand old race, the extinct professors of the art of talk-the Johnsons, and Burkes, and Coleridges, and Goethes, who were wont to pour forth their sentiments over the heads of listening and delighted groups for hours together. But human life has grown too active of late, to receive even those magnificent monologues in exchange for conversation; the forms and long dead levels of social intercourse would scarcely be worth enduring, merely for the sake of exercising our passive receptivity. The question is, however, whether we have not carried ourselves in this, as we do in most things, far away towards the other extreme. Now that we no longer tolerate conver

sational rulers, and have brought our talk down to a common level, is our universal equality and brotherhood of inanity an improvement upon the days when kings ruled our society, and patriarchs harangued us in our hours of relaxation? These latter may have kept the talk a little too much to themselves. Johnson may sometimes have been rude, and Coleridge often misty; the Ninons, Rambouillets, Sévignés, and Montaignes, may have been too airy, vivacious, and sparkling for your solemn and practical thinkers; to be pumped into for hours, may, as Carlyle says, have occasionally proved an unexhilarating process; but all this was surely better than the vacuous babble of the drawing-room, or the heavy commonplace of the gentlemen's dinner-party. If we meet a literary or learned man now, he no longer takes up his stand on the hearth-rug, and pours out a stream of words for half the evening. Now he whispers in a corner, sneaks quietly away; and, for aught the general company can tell, might have been, instead of a fountain, a mere pump. It is difficult to see precisely what we have gained by the change of manners.

It is profoundly, ponderously absurd, although profound and ponderous Gibbon said it, to declare that solitude is the nurse of genius. Solitude and seclusion are two very different things. A man seldom gets much by incessant lonely gropings in his own mental depths, beyond morbid self-conceit. He becomes self-absorbed,-falls in love with his own image reflected within, and undergoes a metaphorical Narcissus drowning. If general society, as at present formed, sometimes fritters intellect away, solitude as often rusts it out. Let a man, when he has something definite to do, or to think over, betake himself to solitude; but let him not fail to return, every now and then, to an active intercourse with outward, busy life. Which have produced and cultured the greatest intellects?-the mountains and plains, or the streets and alleys? Half the best intelligence of the modern world has been fostered, or perfected at least, under the smoke, and amid the noise, of London. But it is too true that, as general society now seems disposed to shape itself, no hermit's cave, no howling wilderness, can be more profitless or waste. The company which gathered around the ruelle of the Hotel Ram