time, has by no means reconciled me to its use.

In the _Edinburgh Review_ for January last (1850) I find the following
sentence:--"But as pains have been taken to fix the blame _upon any one
except_ the parties culpable;" and in the July number of the same
_Review_ (p. 90.) occurs the sentence, "_any impulse rather than_ that of
patriotism," &c.

Now, a "thing," or "person," or "impulse,"--though it may not be the
"thing," or "person," or "impulse" charged as the agent,--must yet be
some _certain_ and _specific_ thing, or party, or impulse, {295} if
existing as an agent at all in the matter; and cannot be "_any_ thing,"
or "_any_ party," or "_any_ impulse," in the _indefinite_ sense intended
in these phrases. Moreover, there seems no difficulty in expressing, in
a simple and direct manner, that the agent was a very different, or
opposite, or dissimilar "thing," or "person," or "impulse" from that
supposed.

I wish some persons of competent authority in the science of our
language (and many such there are who write in your pages) would take up
this subject, with a view to preserve the purity of it; and would also,
for the future, exercise a watchful vigilance over the use, for the
_first_ time, of any incorrect, or low words or phrases, in composition;
and so endeavour to confine them to the vulgar, or to those who ape the
vulgar in their style.

P.H.F.


_Fastitocalon._--_Fastitocalon. Cod. Exon._ fol. 96. b. p. 360. 18. read