is illegitimate, and he infers that therefore the English is the same. But ædificans est, a translation, on the model which he offers, of the active is building, is quite as illegitimate as ens ædificatus est. By parity of non-sequitur, we are therefore to surrender the active is building. Assume that a phrase in a given language is indefensible unless it has its counterpart in some other language; from the very conception and definition of an idiom every idiom is illegitimate.

"I now pass to another point. To be and to exist are,' to Mr. White's apprehension, 'perfect synonyms, or more nearly perfect, perhaps, than any two verbs in the language. In some of their meanings there is a shade of difference, but in others there is none whatever; and the latter are those which serve our present purpose. When we say, "He, being forewarned of danger, fled," we say, “He, existing forewarned of danger, fled." When we say that a thing is done, we say that it exists done. . . . Is being done is simply exists existing done.' But, since is and exists are equipollent, and so being and existing, is being is the same as the unimpeachable is existing. Q. non E. D. Is existing ought, of course, to be no less objectionable to Mr. White than is being. Just as absurd, too, should he reckon the Italian sono stato, era stato, sia stato, fossi stato, saro stato, sarei stato, essere stato, and essendo stato. For in Italian both essere and stare are required to make up the verb substantive, as in Latin both esse and the offspring of fuere are required; and stare, primarily 'to stand,' is modified into a true auxiliary. The alleged 'full absurdity of this phrase,' to wit, is being built, 'the essence of its nonsense,' vanishes thus into thin air. So I was about to comment bluntly, not

plement and complement than he recognizes between be and exist. See the extract I have made above, from p. 353."

forgetting to regret that any gentleman's cultivation of logic should fructify in the shape of irrepressible tendencies to suicide. But this would be precipitate. Agreeably to one of Mr. White's judicial placita, which I make no apology for citing twice, 'no man who has preserved all his senses will doubt for a moment that "to exist a mastiff or a mule" is absolutely the same as "to be a mastiff or a mule.' Declining to admit their identity, I have not preserved all my senses; and, accordingly—though it may be in me the very superfetation of lunacy-I would caution the reader to keep a sharp eye on my arguments, hereabouts particularly. The Cretan who, in declaring all Cretans to be liars, left the question of his veracity doubtful to all eternity, fell into a pit of his own digging. Not unlike the unfortunate Cretan, Mr. White has tumbled headlong into his own snare. It was, for the rest, entirely unavailing that he insisted on the insanity of those who should gainsay his fundamental postulate. Sanity, of a crude sort, may accept it; and sanity may put it to a use other than its propounder's.

Mr. Marsh, after setting forth the all-sufficiency of is building, in the passive sense, goes on to say: 'The reformers who object to the phrase I am defending must, in consistency, employ the proposed substitute with all passive participles, and in other tenses as well as the present. They must say, therefore, "The subscription paper is being missed, but I know that a considerable sum is being wanted to make up the amount"; "the great Victoria Bridge has been being built more than two years"; "when I reach London, the ship Leviathan will be being built”; “if my orders had been followed, the coat would have been being made yesterday"; "if the house had then been being built, the mortar would have been being mixed." We may reply that, while

awkward instances of the old form are most abundant in our literature, there is no fear that the repulsive elaborations which have been worked out in ridicule of the new forms will prove to have been anticipations of future usage. There was a time when, as to their adverbs, people compared them, to a large extent, with -er and -est, or with more and most, just as their ear or pleasure dictated. They wrote plainlier and plainliest, or more plainly and most plainly; and some adverbs, as early, late, often, seldom, and soon, we still compare in a way now become anomalous. And as our forefathers treated their adverbs we still treat

many adjectives. Furthermore, obligingness, preparedness, and designedly seem quite natural; yet we do not feel that they authorize us to talk of 'the seeingness of the eye,' 'the understoodness of a sentence,' or of 'a statement acknowledgedly correct.' The now too notorious fact' is tolerable; but 'the never to be sufficiently execrated monster Bonaparte' is intolerable. The sun may be shorn of his splendor; but we do not allow cloudy weather to shear him of it. How, then, can any one claim that a man who prefers to say is being built should say has been being built? Are not awkward instances of the old form, typified by is building, as easily to be picked out of extant literature as such instances of the new form, likely ever to be used, are to be invented? And 'the reformers' have not forsworn their ears. Mr. Marsh, at p. 135 of his admirable Lectures, lays down that 'the adjective reliable, in the sense of worthy of confidence, is altogether unidiomatic'; and yet, at p. 112, he writes 'reliable evidence.' Again, at p. 396 of the same work, he rules that whose, in 'I passed a house whose windows were open,' is 'by no means yet fully established'; and at p. 145 of his very learned Man and Nature he writes ‘a quadrangular pyramid, the perpendicular

of whose sides,' etc. Really, if his own judgments sit so very loose on his practical conscience, we may, without being chargeable with exaction, ask of him to relax a little the rigor of his requirements at the hands of his neighbors.

"Beckford's Lisbon fortune-teller, before had into court, was 'dragging into light,' and, perchance, 'was taking to account.' Many moderns would say and write 'being dragged into light,' and ' was being taken to account.' But, if we are to trust the conservative critics, in comparison with expressions of the former pattern, those of the latter are 'uncouth,' 'clumsy,' 'awkward neologisms,'' philological coxcombries,' 'formal and pedantic,' 'incongruous and ridiculous forms of speech,' 'illogical, confusing, inaccurate monstrosities.' Moreover, they are neither 'consistent with reason' nor 'conformed to the normal development of the language'; they are 'at war with the genius of the English tongue'; they are 'unidiomatic'; they are 'not English.' In passing, if Mr. Marsh will so define the term unidiomatic as to evince that it has any applicability to the case in hand, or if he will arrest and photograph 'the genius of the English tongue,' so that we may know the original when we meet with it, he will confer a public favor. And now I submit for consideration whether the sole strength of those who decry is being built and its congeners does not consist in their talent for calling hard names. they have not an uneasy subconsciousness that their cause is weak, they would at least do well in eschewing the violence to which, for want of something better, the advocates of weak causes proverbially resort.

If

"I once had a friend who, for some microscopic penumbra of heresy, was charged, in the words of his accuser, with as near an approach to the sin against the Holy Ghost as is practicable to human infirmity.' Similarly, on

one view, the feeble potencies of philological turpitude seem to have exhibited their most consummate realization in engendering is being built. The supposed enormity perpetrated in its production, provided it had fallen within the sphere of ethics, would, at the least, have ranked with its denunciators as a brand-new exemplification of total depravity. But, after all, what incontestable defect in it has any one succeeded in demonstrating? Mr. White, in opposing to the expression objections based on an erroneous analysis, simply lays a phantom of his own evoking; and, so far as I am informed, other impugners of is being built have absolutely no argument whatever against it over and beyond their repugnance to novelty. Subjected to a little untroubled contemplation, it would, I am confident, have ceased long ago to be matter of controversy; but the dust of prejudice and passion, which so distempers the intellectual vision of theologians and politicians, is seen to make, with ruthless impartiality, no exception of the perspicacity of philologists.

"Prior to the evolution of is being built and was being built, we possessed no discriminate equivalents to ædificatur and ædificabatur; is built and was built, by which they were rendered, corresponding exactly to ædificatus est and ædificatus erat. Cum ædificaretur was to us the same as ædificabatur. On the wealth of the Greek in expressions of imperfect passive I need not dwell. With rare exceptions, the Romans were satisfied with the present-imperfect and the past-imperfect; and we, on the comparatively few occasions which present themselves for expressing other imperfects, shall be sure to have recourse to the old forms rather than to the new, or else to use periphrases.* The

*But those things which, being not now doing, or having not yet been done, have a natural aptitude to exist hereafter, may be prop