VINE WRITING.
15th March 1855. , Sin—You have done good service to literature by protesting against the - ambition of "fine writing" which has seized some writers in the present slay, an instance of which you have noticed in the absurd misuse of the word . "decimate."
I trust your remarks may fall in the way of my clerical brethren, espe- cially those of them who aspire to be historians; one of whom, in a work 'lately published (" History of the Church of England since the Revolution") epeaks of the "decimation of the Irish Episcopate." As the number of sees .suppreseed by the Act of Parliament to which the writer alludes was ten, it would follow, if his language were correct, either that the number of Bishops of the Irish Church had previously been one hundred, in which case we should now have ninety spiritual rulers presiding over us4-or, calculating from the number still left to us, namely ten, the
• aule}... removed would have been only two, and consequently we should have etyteen Bishops!
r In either Caw, I can only echo year words, "If this writer could establish the arithmetic of his statement, it would be excellent news."
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