voluptuary, and murmuring, with good reason, if a rose leaf lies
doubled below me, naturally I murmur at a letter that puts one to
the expense of an aspiration, forcing into the lungs an extra charge
of raw air on frosty mornings. But truth is truth, in spite of
frosty air. And yet, upon further reading, doubts gathered upon
my mind. The H. that I mean is an Englishman; now it happens that
here and there a word, or some peculiarity in using a word, indicates,
in this author, a Scotchman; for instance, the expletive 'just,'
which so much infests Scotch phraseology, written or spoken, at
page 1; elsewhere the word '_short-comings_,' which, being
horridly tabernacular, and such that no gentleman could allow himself
to touch it without gloves, it is to be wished that our Scottish
brethren would resign, together with '_backslidings_,' to the
use of field preachers. But worse, by a great deal, and not even
intelligible in England, is the word _thereafter_, used as an
adverb of time, _i.e._, as the correlative of _hereafter_.
_Thereafter_, in pure vernacular English, bears a totally
different sense. In 'Paradise Lost,' for instance, having heard
the character of a particular angel, you are told that he spoke
_thereafter_, _i.e._, spoke agreeably to that character.
'How a score of sheep, Master Shallow?' The answer is, '_Thereafter_
as they be.' Again, 'Thereafter as a man sows shall he reap.' The
objections are overwhelming to the Scottish use of the word; first,
because already in Scotland it is a barbarism transplanted from
the filthy vocabulary of attorneys, locally called _writers_;
secondly, because in England it is not even intelligible, and,
what is worse still, sure to be _mis_-intelligible. And yet,
after all, these exotic forms may be a mere blind. The writer is,
perhaps, purposely leading us astray with his '_thereafters_,'
and his horrid '_short-comings_.' Or, because London newspapers,