At New York, behold, another adventurous representative and advocate of the European tongues has joined the party:  Signor Jeridomani:  a philologer, of course; a politician in addition; Macchiavelli redivivus, it seems to fair Delphica.  The speech he delivers at the Syndicate Delmonico Dinner, is justly applauded by the New York Press as a masterpiece of astuteness.  He appears to be the only one of the party who has an eye for the dark.  She fancies she may know a more widely awake in the abstract.  But now, thanks to jubilant Journals and Homeric laughter over the Continent, the secret is out, in so far as the concurrents are all unmasked and exposed for the edification of the American public.  Dr. Bouthoin’s eyebrows are up, Mr. Semhians disfigures his name by greatly gaping.  Shall they return to their Great Britain indignant?  Patriotism, with the sauce of a luxurious expedition at no cost to the private purse, restrains them.  Moreover, there is no sign of any one of the others intending to quit the expedition; and Mr. Semhians has done a marvel or two in the cricket-field:  Old England looks up where she can.  What is painfully extraordinary to our couple, they find in the frigid attitude of the Americans toward their ‘common tongue’; together with the rumour of a design to despatch an American rival emissary to Japan.

Nesta listened, inquired, commented, laughed; the ladies could not have a doubt that she was interested and understood.  She would have sketches of scenes between Delphica and M. Falarique, with whom the young Germania was cleverly ingenuous indeed—­a seminary Celimene; and between Delphica and M. Mytharete, with whom she was archaeological, ravishingly amoebaean of Homer.  Dr. Gannius holds a trump card in his artless daughter, conjecturally, for the establishment of the language of the gutturals in the far East.  He has now a suspicion, that the inventive M. Falarique, melted down to sobriety by misfortune, may some day startle their camp by the cast of more than a crow into it, and he is bent on establishing alliances; frightens the supple Signor Jeridomani to lingual fixity; eulogizes Football, with Dr. Bouthoin; and retracts, or modifies, his dictum upon the English, that, ’masculine brawn they have in their bodies, but muscle they have not in their feminine minds’; to exalt them, for a signally clean, if a dense, people:  ’Amousia, not Alousia, is their enemy:’—­How, when we have the noblest crop of poets?  ’You have never heartily embraced those aliens among you until you learnt from us, that you might brag of them.’—­Have they not endowed us with the richest of languages?  ’The words of which are used by you, as old slippers, for puns.’  Mr. Semhians has been superciliously and ineffectively punning in foreign presences:  he and his chief are inwardly shocked by a new perception; What if, now that we have the populace for paymaster, subservience to the literary tastes of the populace should reduce the nation to its lowest mental level, and render us not only unable to compete with the foreigner, but unintelligible to him, although so proudly paid at home!  Is it not thus that nations are seen of the Highest to be devouring themselves?