erefore may claim attention here.

[296] It would be interesting to know where Mery got this hideous,
cacophonous, hopelessly anti-analogical and anti-etymological but alas!
actually existing name. I never heard of a ship called by it, but I once
knew a poor lady on whom it had been inflicted at her baptism. Why any
one with Jemima (not, of course, originally a feminine of "Jem," but
adopted as such), which, though a little comic, is not intolerable,
Jacqueline and Jaquetta (which are exceedingly pretty), and Jacobina
(which, though with unfortunate historical associations, is not itself
ugly) to choose from, should have invented this horrible solecism, I
never could make out. It is, I believe, confined to Scotland, and the
only comfort connected with it is the negative one that, in two
considerable residences there, I never heard of a "_Charles_ina." I
suppose "Caroline" and "Charlotte" sufficed; or perhaps, while Whigs
disliked the name (at least before that curious purifier of it, Fox),
Tories shrank from profanation thereof.

[297] Was it Mr. Augustus Dunshunner? It was just about the time of the
Glenmutchkin Railway, and most of "Maga's" men were Oxonians.

[298] See in vol. v. of the Oxford edition of Thackeray (for the thing,
though never acknowledged, is certainly his) an exemplary
"justification" of this very impudent offender.

[299] I have no quarrel with Manchester--quite the reverse--in
consequence of divers sojourns, longer and shorter, in the place, and of
much kindness shown to me by the not at all barbarous people. But
neither the climate nor the general "conditions" of the city can be
called paradisaical.

[300] They were as much shocked at it as we were at their "Houses of
Tolerance" and at the institution of the _grisette_.

[301] Not the worst perhaps of the myriad attempts to do something of
the same kind in English was made recently: "If a man conscientiously
objects to be shot _for_ his country, he may be conscientiously shot
_by_ it."

[302] Here is one from "Un Diamant" (_Contes et Nouvelles_), which,
though destitute of the charms of poetry, rivals and perhaps indeed
suggested our own

And even an Eastern Counties' train Comes in at last.

"Quelque loin qu'on aille, on finit par arriver; _on arrive bien a
Saint-Maur--trois lieues a faire--en coucou_."

[303] In the same article in which he dealt with Charles de Bernard.

[304] I know that many people do not agree with me here; but