haps, in
the dialect of a locality in the days when that locality had but
restricted intercourse with other parts of the country. This effort to
purify the common tongue is conscious, avowed, and sympathised with in
all parts of the country alike.

When any point of literary or grammatical form is under discussion in a
leading American newspaper to-day, the dominant note is that of a purism
more strict than will appear in a similar discussion in England. In many
American newspaper offices the rules of "style" forbid the use of
certain words and phrases which are accepted without question in the
best London journals. There have of course always been circles--as,
notoriously, in and around Boston, and, less notoriously but no less
truly, in Philadelphia and New York--wherein the speech, whether written
or spoken, has been as scrupulous in form and grammar as in the most
scholarly circles in Great Britain. These circles corresponded to what
we have called the public-school and university class of England, and,
no more than it, did they speak the common speech of their country. Only
now is the people as a whole consciously striving after an uplifting of
such common speech.

In England, on the other hand, the process that has been going on has
been quite involuntary and is as yet almost entirely unconscious.

We have spoken so far of only one factor in that process--namely, the
democratisation of the English people which is in progress and the
blurring of the lines between the classes. Co-operating with this are
other forces. Just as the most well-bred persons can afford on occasions
to be most careless of their manners--just as only an old-established
aristocracy can be truly reckless of the character of new associates
whom it may please to take up--so it may be that the well-educated man,
confident of his impeccability and altogether off his guard, more
readily absorbs into his daily speech cant phrases and even solecisms
than the half-educated who is ever watchful lest he slip. The American
has a way of writing, figuratively, with a dictionary at his elbow and a
grammar within reach. There are few educated Englishmen who do not
consider their own authority--the authority drawn from their school and
university training--superior to that of any dictionary or grammar,
especially of any American one.[220:1] So it has come about that, while
the tendency of the American people is constantly to become more exact
and more accu