ost excellent) is the account of 'Mrs. Battle's Opinions
on Whist,' which is also the most free from obsolete allusions and turns
of expression--

A well of native English undefiled.

To those acquainted with his admired prototypes, these _Essays_ of
the ingenious and highly gifted author have the same sort of charm and
relish that Erasmus's _Colloquies_ or a fine piece of modern Latin have
to the classical scholar. Certainly, I do not know any borrowed pencil
that has more power or felicity of execution than the one of which I
have here been speaking.

It is as easy to write a gaudy style without ideas as it is to spread a
pallet of showy colours or to smear in a flaunting transparency.
'What do you read?' 'Words, words, words.'--'What is the matter?'
'_Nothing_,' it might be answered. The florid style is the reverse of the
familiar. The last is employed as an unvarnished medium to convey ideas;
the first is resorted to as a spangled veil to conceal the want of them.
When there is nothing to be set down but words, it costs little to have
them fine. Look through the dictionary, and cull out a _florilegium_,
rival the _tulippomania_. _Rouge_ high enough, and never mind the
natural complexion. The vulgar, who are not in the secret, will admire
the look of preternatural health and vigour; and the fashionable, who
regard only appearances, will be delighted with the imposition. Keep to
your sounding generalities, your tinkling phrases, and all will be well.
Swell out an unmeaning truism to a perfect tympany of style. A thought,
a distinction is the rock on which all this brittle cargo of verbiage
splits at once. Such writers have merely _verbal_ imaginations, that
retain nothing but words. Or their puny thoughts have dragon-wings, all
green and gold. They soar far above the vulgar failing of the _Sermo
humi obrepens_--their most ordinary speech is never short of an
hyperbole, splendid, imposing, vague, incomprehensible, magniloquent, a
cento of sounding common-places. If some of us, whose 'ambition is more
lowly,' pry a little too narrowly into nooks and corners to pick up a
number of 'unconsidered trifles,' they never once direct their eyes
or lift their hands to seize on any but the most gorgeous, tarnished,
threadbare, patchwork set of phrases, the left-off finery of poetic
extravagance, transmitted down through successive generations of
barren pretenders. If they criticise actors and actresses, a huddled
phantasmagor