speed. A royal road to our literature is
open to them. And, as its makers assure
us that not only can a Portuguese student,
by its means, acquire a knowledge of the
English language, but that it will open a
way among the intricacies of the Portuguese
tongue to any stray Briton who may
so desire, we are happy to afford it the
publicity of these columns.

It is scarcely necessary to say that the
short cut in question is a book. Its
purpose may be inferred from its title page,
which informs the world that it is "The
New Guide of the Conversation in
Portuguese and English in two parts." In the
place where is usually to be found the name
of the town in which a book is published
occurs the word "Peking." But as it does
not seem reasonable to suppose that a
Portuguese and English conversation book
should be published in the capital of China,
we may assume "Peking" to be the name
of a French publisher, inasmuch as the
book, which bears a French imprint, is to
be had, as the title page goes on to inform
us, "To the house of all the booksellers of
Paris." It is published, the preface gives
us to understand, to supply an acknowledged
want, "A choice of familiar dialogues"
—for it is time that the author
should be allowed to speak for himself—
"clean of gallicisms, and despoiled phrases,
it was missing yet to studious Portuguese
and Brazilian youth; and also to persons
of others nations, that wish to know the
Portuguese language. We sought all we
may do, to correct that want, composing
and divising the present little work in two
parts, which was very kind of us indeed."
After the first shock of this introduction,
it is not surprising to learn that the first
part includes "a greatest vocabulary proper
names by alphabetical order," and that the
forty-three dialogues in the second part
are adapted to the "usual precisions of the
life." "For that reason" (for what reason?)
the author proceeds, "we did put, with a
scrupulous exactness, a great variety own
expressions to English and Portuguese
idioms;" there can be no doubt about that;
"without to attach us selves (as make some
others) almost at a literal translation;
translation what only will be for to accustom
the Portuguese pupils, or foreign,"
thoughtful consideration again for the
foreigner, "to speak very bad any of the
mentioned idioms." It is probable that
the mentioned idioms will come out rather
oddly even with our friend's assistance.
Further on in the preface we are told that
we shall find at the end of the book some
familiar letters, anecdotes, and "idiotisms"
—a promise which we eventually find to
be made not without reason. Our author
has found great difficulties in the way of
his philanthropical labours, by reason of
the lamentable incorrectness of the books
of reference to which he turned for counsel
and advice, and thus laments his woes in
choicest English: "The works"—why
italics?—"which we were confering for
this labour, fond use us for nothing; but
those what were publishing to Portugal, or
out, they were almost all composed for
some foreign, or for some national little
acquainted in the spirit of both languages,"
a complaint which, it will at once be seen,
is not applicable to the New Guide of the
Conversation. Furthermore, even printers
combined to add to our friend's troubles:
"It was resulting from that carelessness
to rest these works"—mysterious italics
again—"fill of imperfections, and anomalies
of style; in spite of the infinite typographical
faults which some times, invert
the sense of the periods. It increase not
to contain any of those works"—italics once
more—"the figured pronunciation of the
english words, nor the prosodical accent in
the Portuguese: indispensable object whom
wish to speak the english and portuguese
languages correctly."

Having arrived at a clear and intelligible
idea of our tutor's meaning—it must be our
own fault if we have not—let us proceed with
the course of study which is to teach us
English or Portuguese, as the case may be.

We begin with a vocabulary in three
columns, and to all appearances, at first
sight, in three languages. The first is clearly
Portuguese, the second can with some
difficulty be detected as English broken into
very little bits indeed. But some thought
and study are necessary before this point
can be satisfactorily determined. Many
familiar words decide us that we are reading
English, but then again words and
expressions occur strange and unusual to
English eyes. The glazed frost, the age
decrepit, the decayedness, a blind (in the
sense of a person deprived of sight), a
squint-eyed, the quater grandfather (what
can this be?), parties a town (presumably,
parts of a town), a chitterling sausages, shi
ass, turnsol (perhaps, from the context, a
sunflower), and the like, are not easily to be
recognised as English. This vocabulary
is, for the convenience of students, divided
in an orderly manner under several heads.
To quote a few will give a good general
notion of the subjects treated on, as well
as of the very remarkable qualifications