language he knows, he knows precisely; whatever word he pronounces,
he pronounces rightly; above all, he is learned in the PEERAGE of
words; knows the words of true descent and ancient blood, at a
glance, from words of modern canaille; remembers all their ancestry,
their intermarriages, distant relationships, and the extent to which
they were admitted, and offices they held, among the national
noblesse of words at any time, and in any country. But an
uneducated person may know, by memory, many languages, and talk them
all, and yet truly know not a word of any,--not a word even of his
own. An ordinarily clever and sensible seaman will be able to make
his way ashore at most ports; yet he has only to speak a sentence of
any language to be known for an illiterate person: so also the
accent, or turn of expression of a single sentence, will at once
mark a scholar. And this is so strongly felt, so conclusively
admitted, by educated persons, that a false accent or a mistaken
syllable is enough, in the parliament of any civilized nation, to
assign to a man a certain degree of inferior standing for ever.

And this is right; but it is a pity that the accuracy insisted on is
not greater, and required to a serious purpose. It is right that a
false Latin quantity should excite a smile in the House of Commons;
but it is wrong that a false English MEANING should NOT excite a
frown there. Let the accent of words be watched; and closely: let
their meaning be watched more closely still, and fewer will do the
work. A few words well chosen, and distinguished, will do work that
a thousand cannot, when every one is acting, equivocally, in the
function of another. Yes; and words, if they are not watched, will
do deadly work sometimes. There are masked words droning and
skulking about us in Europe just now,--(there never were so many,
owing to the spread of a shallow, blotching, blundering, infectious