FEINBERG/WHITMAN NOTES jud NOTEBOOKS NOTES-Literary 1847-69 Words & Nicknames Box 39 Folder 1 Includes verso prose piece1159 1847-1869 Materials and Notes on Words. A. MS. (5 clippings from newspapers and magazines; 3p. 12 x 24 1/2 , 25.8 x 20, 20.7 x 16.3 cm.) Written in ink on various newspapers and magazines: On pp. 507-514 of a periodical dated May 1847, containing an unsigned review of 'A Universal and Critical Dictionary of the English Language' , a book by Joseph E. Worcester (pp. 508-513), Whitman has written--at top of p. 507 : Worcester's Dictionary On pp. 33-50 of a periodical dated April 1849, containing 'English Spelling Reform' , unsigned (pp. 34-50), Whitman has written -- at top of p. 33: English Spelling Reform. On p. 26 of the American Phrenological Journal, XXIV (August 1856), 1160 published by Fowler and Wells, New York, is an unsigned piece, 'The Origin of Speech, Alphabets: Their History,' in which WW has underlined two passages: 'The Greeks adopted the characters of the Phœnicians', and 'the English alphabet will be found to consist, not of twenty-six letters only, but of more than two hundred!' A clipping from the Evening Post (New York?), 16 or 17 July 1861, of two long columns containing 'Military Terms, Definitions of Technical Phrases'. No markings. A clipping from an unidentified newspaper, 1869 (from an editorial on back) , of a little more than a column containing 'How Dictionaries are made. The German "Worterbuch", taken from The Pall Mall Gazette. No markings. Written in purple pencil on a buff sheet torn, unevenly, from a book, 17 words: a good word --"rattled" i.e. confused and put out by being suddenly called on to do something1161 Materials and Notes on Words: 2 Written in ink and (last two lines) pencil on a sheet of white paper with top one-quarter torn off, 10 words: Ex - po - sé Fi - ná - le Re - su -mé Resūme Locale lo-cal Outré Gar - röte (not gar-ro-te Written in ink on the verso on the verso of a discarded MS article (13 (writers of Britain are so fond of bringing against democratic institutions in general and those of America, in particular.--"The instability of the Laws," is not only the head and front of our offending--but the back=bone and tail--the stamina--the very nerves and life blood.--And with such instability--joined with such a newspaper literature, we are, according to the reviewer, in rapid progress upon the downward road to infamy and ruin.-- [?] Let us look 1162 at this matter a moment, and find if our laws are unstable -- as too many even among us [acknowledge] seem to suppose. -- Popular opinion is fickle, we grant. --But does every change in popular opinion cause a change in the Laws, properly so called?-- The mooted questions among American politicians are, items of national policy, not) cancelled by a vertical line, 66 words: Western Nicknames. The nicknames given in the West to the people of different communities, are not a little amusing and sometimes characteristic. --We subjoin a list gathered by the writer, while on a steamboat journey from Chicago to Buffalo: New=Yorkers are called Eels. Pennsylvanians --- Pennymites. Missourians --- Pukes Iowans ------ Gophers Ohioans ---- Buckeyes Michiganians --- Wolverines Wisconsin people -- Badgers [more]1163 Materials and Notes on Words: 3 [S?] Illinoisians ------- Tuckers Suckers - RSW Indianians ---------- Hoosiers Kentuckians ----- Corncrackers Virginians --------- Tuckahoes Canadians --------- Kanucks Oregonese -- Webfoots.Western nicknames. The nicknames given in the West to people of different communities, are not a little amusing and sometimes characteristic. We subjoin a list gathered by the writer, while on a steamboat journey from Chicago to Buffalo" New=Yorkers are called Eels. Pennsylvanians -- Pennymites. Missourians -- Pukes. Iowans -- Gophers Ohioans -- Buckeyes Michiganians -- Wolverines Wisconsin people -- Badgers Illinoisians -- Tuckers Indianians -- Hoosiers Kentuckians -- Corncrackers Virginians -- Tuckahoes Canadians -- Kanucks Oregonese -- Webfoots13 writer's of Britain are so fond of bringing again democratic institutions in general, and those of America," in particular. - "The instability of the Laws," is not only the head and front of our offending - but the back=bone and tail - the stamina - the very nerves and life blood. And with such instability - joined with such a newspaper literature, we are, according to the reviewer, in rapid progress upon the [downward] road to infamy, and ruin.- Let us look at this matter [a] moment, and find if our laws are unstable as too many even among us seem to suppose - [acknowledge.] Popular opinion is fickle, we grant. - But does every change in popular opinion cause a change in the Laws, properly so called The mooted questions among American [politicians] are, items of national policy, [?u]Ex-po-sé Fi-ná-le Re-su-mé Résume Locäle lo-cäl Outré Gar-róte, (not gar-ro-te)a good word - "rattled" i e confused and put out by being suddenly called on to do somethingCanton MATTING. For sale in lots to suit EZRA R. GOODRIDGE, 94 BROAD STREET. MITCHELL, VANCE & CO., HANDCRAFTED CHANDELIERS, and every description of GAS FIXTURES, Warehouse, No. 926 Broadway, [?] BALL. BLACK & CO. Having been away for some years that we ? ? for the storage of PLATE CHESTS and steel VALUABLE PACKAGES, [?] Safe, 25 by 45 Feet, [?] 565 & 567 BROADWAY. FINANCIAL. LIVERMORE, CLEWS & MASON. BANKERS, 42 and 43 Wall Street, N. Y. BUSINESS PAPER AND SECURITIES BOUGHT AND SOLD COLLECTIONS MADE EXPEDITIOUSLY ON ALL POINTS OF THE UNION TREASURY NOTES AND MERCANTILE PAPER always on ? for sale. REID & LATHROP, BANKERS, 40 Wall Street, New York. [?] [?] [?] ORLANDO M. BOGART, 3 and 5 January Court, 41 Wall Street. DRY GOODS PAPER AND TREASURY NOTES BOUGHT AND SOLD-ADVANCES MADE. JOHN MUNROE & CO., AMERICAN BANKERS, No. 5 Rue De La Paix, Paris, And No [?] Wall street, New York, GRANT LETTERS OF CREDIT FOR MERCANTILE PURPOSES, ALSO CIRCULAR LETTERS OF CREDIT on all the [?] towns and cities of FRANCE, BELGIUM, ITALY, GREAT BRITAIN, SPAIN, GERMANY, IRELAND, PORTUGAL, RUSSIA, HOLLAND, SWITZERLAND, SWEDEN. ALSO ON ATHENS, CONSTANTINOPLE, ALEXANDRIA, CAIRO, SEYMOUT?, JERUSALEM [?] [?] BILLS ON PARIS [?] MEIGS & GREENLEAF, Bankers and Brokers, No. 50 EXCHANGE PLACE, N. Y. STOCKS and BONDS sold on commission. DUNCAN, SHERMAN & CO., BANKERS, Corner Pine and Nassau Streets, NEW YORK. [?] at current [?]. [?] [?] to [?], [?] [?] & CO., Di[?]kens, San Francisco, California: also purchase San Francisco City and California [?] [?] [?]. P.W. GALLAUDET, NOTE BROKER. Business Paper Negotiated at Lowest Rates. LOANS OBTAINED ON FIRST CLASS [?]. No. 11 [?] [?] [?] Broadway IRELAND. "First flower of the earth And first gem of the sea." DRAFTS on the BANK in IRELAND PAYABLE ON DEMAND For [amounts] up to 1,000 (pounds) For sale b MONTGOMERY BROTHERS 121 Pearl Street, NY [something here] allowed to volunteers and their families BILLS 1 pound AND UPWARDS ON UNION BANK OF LONDON, LONDON AND ROTAL BANK OF IRELAND, DUBLIN for sale by Wells, Fargo & Co., 84 Broadway BILLS ON LONDON [illegible] Wall Street Eugene Thomson STOCK BROKER 41 Pine Street United States Stock, Primary Notes, Bank and Insurance Stock. Railroad Stocks and [illegible] BOUGHT AND SOLD Coupons due July 1st On North Carolina State Bonds Wilmington & Manchester Railroad 1st North-gage [illegible] SATTERLEE & CO., BANKERS AND STOCK BROKERS 49 Exchange Place. Insurance Scrip Wanted Atlantic - 1890 and 1891 Great Western - [illegible] Pacific - [dates] WM. G. GILMAN & SON, 24 Merchants Exchange UNITED STATES TRUST COMPANY No. 48 Wall Street Bank of New York Building Second Floor Capital $1,000,000 Interest Allowed on Deposits [fine print] TRUSTEES: Joseph Lawrence, President Peter Cooper, Caleb O. Halsted D.H. Arnold, Jacob Marsen Royal Phelps, Thomas Tileston John J. Cisco, Edwin D. Morgan Daniel Miller, Clinton Gilbert James Suydam, John Jacob Astor Jr. Thomas Slocomb, Daniel D. Lord Shepherd Knapp, Thomas W. Pearsall Green C. Bronson, William H. Macy John J. Phelps, George T. Ader R.F. Wheelwright, Isaac Townsend Charles E. Bill, [illegible] Nelson (Cooperst'wn) William Tucker, Erastus Corning (Albany) Wilson G. Hunt, R.H. Walworth, [location illegible] William Gerriman, Jas. S. Seymour (Auburn) John A. Steward, Secretary. STATEMENT OF THE CONDITION OF U.S. BRANCH [cut off here] [want ads and legal notices - most cut off][newspaper clipping] MILITARY TERMS. Definitions of Technical Phrases.1849. Mary Barton with myself, general misery must be the consequence. He will also say: This world in which I am placed is a progressive world. Every day, some new industrial improvement is brought to light. I must, accordingly, be skillful to act in accordance with the mechanical contrivances already in operation, and alive to adapt myself to forthcoming machinery; and economical, to keep myself, if incapable of further self-adaptation. Again, he will say: Experience tells me that this world is not uniformly filled with prudent and well-informed men. I must, therefore provide against the ignorance and imprudence of my employer. He may over-engage himself at one time, and subsequently be obliged to dismiss a portion of his laborers, or become insolvent, and be obliged to shut up his works. Folly similar to this, may prevail among others. My duty to myself commands me to acquire, by saying, a capital for myself - a duty which every well informed and well conducted labourer can perform. Lastly, he will say: I must be careful to perform all the duties imposed upon me by society, and still more careful to perform those which I voluntarily assume. The tenderest and most sacred duties which await me, if I shall ever be qualified to undertake them, are those of a parent. Feeling, as I have felt the severity of the early struggles in which I was involved by the ignorance and imprudence of my own parents, I will religiously guard my own offspring, against all unnecessary suffering. I know that Great Britain maintains twenty millions of inhabitants, not quite in so satisfactory a manner as could be wished, it is true; but twenty millions are maintained. Great Britain, however, is incapable of maintaining that number of savages - of lazy, ignorant, thriftless, intractable beings; it can only maintain that number of industrious, skillful, economical and orderly beings. If then, in such a country as this, containing its present number of inhabitants, I become the parent of a savage - of the one-twenty-millionth part of a savage community, I become the parent of a being that must necessarily be wretched himself, and a curse to society. But my child must be a savage, if I shall not have made preparations for his reception - if I have not thoughtfully planned for his nourishment, clothing, lodging and instruction during his tender years. My duties - duties imposed upon me by the conditions on which comfortable existence in this world depends, are obvious, as are the duties of all. We must practice industry and skill to produce economy to save, 3 and (?) forethought to provide a proper (?) for our own offspring. (?) economy, we may also tell this generous and sympathizing writer, has some principle (?) applicable to the edification and enlightenment of the rich. By the assistance of this ill-understood science, she may even ease herself of some of her own desponding feelings, and teach the rich how to benefit, as well as the poor how to be benefited. Mr. Carson, the master manufacturer of the story, started in life as a workman. His lady was from the same rank in life. He raised himself by industry, economy, skill, and activity. He earned, by the exercise of these qualities, all that they can give - wealth. He did not know how to make use of this wealth, so as thoroughly to satisfy himself, or to promote the well-being of others. In short, having the wealth, he did not know how to extract out of it the happiness which it is capable of yielding to those who can handle it skillfully. Escaping from the vices and prejudices and sufferings of the poor, he hurried with his family into the purposeless existence of the rich. Mr. Carson is so far a useful member of society, that he makes and saves wealth. He is guilty of no indecorum. He lives with unquestioned respectability, subscribing, as is evident, to the public charities, and allowing himself occasionally to be melted into the bestovial (?) of alms to the families of some of his distressed work-people. We can fancy him even putting aside out of his colossal fortune one hundred pounds per annum towards endowing a school. We can also fancy his son, had he not fallen a victim to the volcanic action of the dangerous elements allowed to accumulate around, when succeeding in after years to his father's property and to the trusteeship of the endowment, pompously dwelling upon his own generous intention to continue to extend the grant for the purpose. With this we must put in the Carsons of 1849. Of the Carsons of 1899 we form higher expectations. They will know that charitable stop-gaps are not the means to prevent human misery, originating, as it almost always does, in ignorance and ill-conduct. They will know that, to endow schools, destined to jog on in an antiquated and unmeaning routine, without instruction and training thoughtfully adapted to fit the rising generation to grapple successfully with the difficulties, and to gather in the charms of existence, would be to endow "a mockery, a delusion, and a snare. Mr. Carson, of 1899, will lead a life ofEnglish Spelling Reform 34 comfort, simplicity, and taste, (?) whatever wealth he may be in [comma?] ostentation of his will offer any [off?] contrast to such destitution as may (?) linger around him. His ample means, although not squandered on himself, will not be used to blind the eyes and corrupt the habits of the ignorant and improvident. And his enjoyments will be sought, where they never can be sought in vain, in such a use of his means as to diffuse, where needful, the knowledge of what ought to be done, and the disposition to do it. Political economy, unfortunately, has been hitherto little taught and less understood anywhere. Let the earnest author and excellent woman - for such she must be - who wrote this tale, understand that what we have thus briefly penned, is a genuine specimen of political economy, and of the method of its application to human interests and feelings. If we can but persuade her so to understand it,we are much mistaken is she ever again suffer herself to avow - "I know nothing of political economy." We rather expect that she will at once apply herself to its study, and that her influence will be exerted to introduce into Manchester-schools instruction in that science, following the example which has been already set in Edinburgh by Mr. George Combe, and in London and its vicinity in so many schools, that to particularize them is unnecessary. W.E. ART. III - 1. A Plea for Phonetic Spelling; or the Necessity of Orthographic Reform. By Alexander John Ellis, B.A. London; Fred Pitman,Phonetic Depot,1, Queen's Head-passage, Paternoster Row. Second Edition. 1848. 2. The Essentials of Phonetics. By Alexander John Ellis. 1848. London: Fred. Pitman. 3. The Phonetic News. A.J. Ellis, 344, Strand. The spread of his own language has ever been one of the patriot's most cherished wishes - its universal adoption one of his most pleasing dreams. To the man of arms, its enforced use by conquered races stands an enduring emblem of his nation's might, and brings fresh readers of his nation's laws. To the man of letters its peaceful diffusion is a lasting evidence of the excellencies of his country's speech, and gives new students of his country's thoughts. Wishes, how natural! - for what, after our father's land, so dear as our mother's tongue? Dreams, perhaps, but how excusable- nay, how stimulative to improvement! But if the desire for the universality of his language stirred the breast of the man of other ages and of other nations, what must a man of our own age and of our own nation feel? Of our own age - because the material advancement of the present times has rendered the fulfillment of such desire less impossible and more necessary, owing to the increase of personal intercourse between different nations (the boon of the rail and the steamboat), and to the enlarged interchange of thought through the press; of our own nation - because, as we shall endeavour to show, no other existing language has a chance of such universal adoption, when compared with the English. From the earliest times the invention of a common language has been considered a desideratum by philosophers. Amongst the moderns, Des Cartes desired but despaired of it; Leibnitz had thought out a plan for effecting it, which he believed would answer, but left it, like many other projects of his teeming brain, unfulfilled. Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, brother-in-law of the Protector, published, in 1668, at the request of the Royal Society, a very elaborate work, explaining his invention of a 'Real Character and Philosophical Language;' and within the last 200 years many treatises* have been written on the subject, by men of mark and learning. The last work of this nature with which we are acquainted, is said to be by an English lady, but is published anonymously, and dedicated to the late Pope. Dugald Stewart, too, is said to have studied the question: nor has it altogether escaped the notice of Sir John Herschel. We mention these projects, however, not to give an opinion upon their practicability, but to show that many thinking minds have been thus employed. Besides these inventors of a universal language, there have been, as may well be imagined, many who, while desiring it, chose one of the existing tongues for such a purpose - usually, of course, their own - not always however. Des Cartes pointed out English as well fitted for such a purpose. The Abbe Sicard says: "Of all languages the English is the most simple, the most rational, and the most natural in its construction. These peculiarities give it a * A concise notice of these works may be found in a treatise on a universal language, entitled "Pasilogia," by the Rev. E. Groves. Orr and Co. 8 vo. 1846. 1849. English Spelling Reform. 35 philosophical character; and as its terms are strong, expressive, and copious, no language seems better calculated to facilitate the intercourse of mankind as a universal medium of communication." Again, Dr. K.M. Rapp, a very acute and learned German writer, who has shown his extensive acquaintance with all the European languages of the classical and German stems, says*: "French has been for some centuries the common language of Europe for diplomatic and social purposes; but it has never gained a firm footing in extensive tracts of country out of Europe; for France has not had more enterprise in colonization than Italy itself. On the other hand, English may pass for the general language of all the world with the exception of Europe. This idiom has become incomparably flowing from a bold mixture and consequent resolution of the grammatical forms of its Gothic and Roman elements; and it certainly appears destined more than any other living tongue to play this part. The suitableness of this language for universal adoption, would be still more evident were it not----------" But we will not finish the quotation at present, we reserve it for a future use. And what shall we say as to the future universality of the English tongue? Is it worth adopting? Is its adoption possible? That Englishmen should answer the first question in the affirmative we must not, strange as it may appear, rely upon their prejudices, but must deprecate them. Too true it is that educated Englishmen, though they write and speak their language upon the whole better than other nations speak theirs, do so instinctively and in spite of their ignorance of the sources of its beauties and defects. Having generally obtained their grammatical knowledge from the Latin grammar, or through grammars - of whatever tongue - certainly constructed until lately upon a scheme fitted for the Latin only, they have gained very little insight into, or rather they have merely acquired an erroneous method of estimating the organization of a language, whose mechanism is totally opposed to that of the Latin. Thus a language without an article and which delights in the inversion of its words as the sense is indicated by their inflexion, is adopted as the touchstone of another which derives great beauty from the use of its articles, and in which the sense depends upon the regular sequence of its words, which are consequently rarely inverted and almost uninflected. When such Latinised * Versuch einer Physiologie der Sprache,' vol. iii. p. 157. minds, therefore, find in English what does not agree with their notions of properly constructed phrase, they look upon it as one of the many anomalies in the language, and heave a sigh over its inferiority to the classic tongues. To give one or two instances. The beautiful discrimination in the use of will and shall,is inexplicable, and a half-suspected barbarism to the educated mass. The use of the double possessive is equally so; and such sentences as "That mouth of William's is always open," or, "This head of mine is always aching," are mere barbarous substitutes for "William's mouth, &c.," and "My head, &c." What they would make of "The discovery of Leverrier (the planet) was a discovery of Leverrier's (the astronomer)," we know not. Again- the three forms of the two present tenses, as in the phrases, "Does he speak French?" "He speaks French," "He is speaking French," would be unnoticed by them as a peculiar beauty of their own language. They remain, too, altogether ignorant of the grounds upon which to argue as to the correctness or incorrectness of such expressions as "It is I," "It is me," "It's him," "It's he," "We become they,""We become them." We hope to be excused for making such elementary remarks; but the fact is, that although we owe to the Latin much of the beauty and richness of our tongue, yet with the good we have received some harm; and our language is now at that stage of development in which the influence of Latin is beginning to produce no other effect than unmixed mischief. Happily it is not necessary for us to examine the organization of our language, in order to decide upon its fitness for all the most useful and all the most noble purposes. Happily, we can bring in evidence a body of literature more perfect, as a whole, than that of any other nation. From the Drama and the Epic, to the Idyl, the Epigram, and the Song; from stately History to gossiping Memoir; from the State-paper to the lively Letter; from the impassioned Oration of the solemn Prayer, to be the sparkling Essay or witty Pasquinade, - in Poetry, in History, and in Philosophy, we have examples of the highest excellence, and of every kind; examples often unrivaled, seldom equaled, and more rarely still surpassed. In our noble tongue wrote Shakespeare, and but we need not print names which the world knows. Hear what a living brilliant English writer says of that tongue whose powers he so grandly wields: - "Then was formed that language, less musical indeed than the languages of the south, but in English Spelling Reform April 236 force in richness, in aptitude for all the highest purposes of the poet, the philosopher, and the orator, inferior to that of Greece alone." - Macaulay's History of England, vol. i. p. (?) And, if we grant Mr. Macaulay's exception - a language ,we suspect, superior to that of even Greece for the lower requirements of the uneducated millions; for that a language like the Greek, which abounds in inflexious and metaphysical niceties, could ever have been a sufficiently ready instrument for the rough handling of the unlearned, we cannot believe. Were we, indeed, to indicate such of the existing languages as surpass us in any single department of literature we should point to the French* alone - which, for precision, is unsurpassed; and for precision, combined with a light and graceful polish, is certainly unequaled. In the memoir, in epistolary correspondence, and in the epigram, according to the opinion of many, it takes the lead; in its aptitude for witty and lively small-talk, we fear we must cede to it the pas. But it has many and grave faults. It wants dignity and strength; it always wants the air of artlessness and sincerity; and in every equality which should fit it for poetic composition, it is more deficient, and has fewer tolerable examples of that class to show, than any other cultivated tongue. For the aggregate, then, of all the purposes which a language should fulfill, we prefer the English to the French; and, a fortiori, to all other languages which are at the same time literary and spoken. For those which are merely literary, or merely spoken, we reject at once. But is it possible that English should become the universal language? Upon this point let Mr. Ellis speak:- "There is, perhaps, no language which is now spoken as their native tongue by a greater number of persons, none which is more generally diffused in all parts of the world; for the sun never sets on the British empire, and the British language is spoken wherever the British rule predominates. Over the immense peninsula of Hindosian, on the continent of Australasia, the islands of New Zealand, the scattered rocks and islands of Gibralter, Malta, Aden, Singapore, * We cannot omit, however, paying a passing tribute to the Spanish language - a language of the most philosophic structure. This quality, indeed, has been seldom noticed in it, as one seemingly at variance with the majestic and gorgeous march of its musical and rounded periods. It is spoken over an enormous extent of country, but by so few as their native language, that, even were it not so little learnt by foreigners, and so little cultivated by the Spaniards themselves, we should discard it from consideration for our present purpose. Labuan, and Hong Kong; at the Cape of Good Hope, in the West Indies, over Canada; and, above all, in its new country, the United States of America, the British language asserts its claim to be heard; and the commerce of our country and of America will cause it to be heard far and wide. The English are not good linguists; their traders require to be spoken in their own tongue. It is a matter not of merely national pride in extending a knowledge of our own fine idiom, it is a matter of commercial interest, to facilitate, as far as it lies in our power, the means and appliances for learning it. Our grammar is easy, one of the simplest in existence. We have no inflections and no genders of nouns and adjectives, no conjugational varieties of verbs, and very few and simple alterations in our tenses. The order of our words, proceeding from subject to predicate and thence to object, is that recognized as the simplest logical arrangement. Our vocabulary is enormous, while its capabilities for receiving or inventing new words, with the resources of the German, Latin, and Greek at our command, are endless; nay, we can press an Indian or Arabic word into service, and yet dress it up so that the stranger should scarcely be discoverable. If a universal language should ever prevail we seem to feel that it must be the English, or some descendant of it. Other idioms are spoken by too few, or are too original and straight-laced to admit of the introduction of new terms. When French, Latin, and Greek words are Germanized, they produce a painful sensation on the ear; their foreignism is so apparent, the seem to have no more business where they are, than flies in amber. The French have shown themselves slow and unapt at incorporating new words: the Italians seem to look no further than the Latin; the Dutch will not allow the rights of citizenship to a single un-Germanic expression. The Sclavonic languages are almost unheard of beyond the immediate n neighborhood in which they are spoken; the Spanish and Portuguese, although prevalent over immense tracts in central and southern America, are so little known beyond the countries which speak nothing else, that they can put in no claim to be universally adopted. The great dialect of the East, the Arabic and its sister languages, are so uncouth to European organs of speech, are founded upon such a totally different grammatical system, are written in such a cumbrous illegible character, and, although very copious, are so ill supplied with the terms which are indispensable to a European, that it would be impossible to attempt founding a universal language upon them. The Hindustance language, indeed, being already a mixed tongue, might have some claims, if it did not come into such immediate collision with the English as to have no chance of standing against it. The Chinese system of writing, and very complex rules of accentuation and intonation, which a foreigner scarcely ever catches with sufficient correctness to be perfectly intelligible, is not likely to extend beyond the three or four hundred millions who at present make use of it or its dialects. The contest lies between English and French. Our commerce and colonial possessions must, in the course of things, decide 1849. English Spelling Reform 37 for the English, independently of any other consideration; but when it is recollected that the English can appropriate all and every word in the French language, and completely naturalize it when wanted, while it has the further resource of its own German parentage, there can be no doubt as to which language is most likely to answer the requisitions of a universal tongue." The English language is, indeed, spoken by forty-five millions of the most enterprising race in the world, as their native and only tongue. Of the several Chinese languages, none which is at the same time written and spoken, has so great a number who speak it; and we utterly disbelieve as to the seventy millions who are said to speak the Muscovite, or literary Russian. The English language is more simple in its structure, and if we may so speak, more nearly Daguerreotyped thought than any other, and is, beyond comparison ( and we are joined in this opinion by most foreigners), the easiest language in the world to learn to read. To read - silently that is! but to pronounce! - no, not to pronounce, but to read aloud, it is among the most difficult. Why is this; why does this stumbling-block to our patriot's desire stand in his path? Can it now be removed? We shall see. We have been speaking hitherto of language as language literally; let us now view it in its printed form. We have spoken of the patriot's wish; we shall now speak to the English patriot and philanthropist, and shall assume his admiration for the civilizing influence of the press - an engine which, with all its abuses and all its faults, has done more for mankind than almost any other human invention. Of the English philanthropist, then, we ask - How is it that, of the twenty-five million inhabitants of the British Islands who speak English as their native tongue, and speak no other - how is it that, of these, so small a number read and write it with such a facility as to make doing so an agreeable relaxation instead of a painful task? How is it that a third of the adult population can neither read nor write at all, and that not one-tenth can do so with facility? We need not, we hope, enlarge upon the civilizing influences of which this ignorance deprives them. We need not tell him that this ignorance is one of the causes which makes our labourers such, that the flippant Frenchman (Michelet) should view them merely as"machines of a disgusting speciality," and "things of gin;" and that the American essayist (Channing) should deprecate the adulteration of the workman of his own country by the presence of the ignorant and brutalized labourers of ours, "who never thinks of redeeming an hour for personal improvement." But, before we retort upon the spiteful foreigner, or contradict our transatlantic cousin, let us in sorrow confess that there may be a grain of truth in the charge; and let us, with humility inquire whether the serious spirit of our countrymen is not precisely the one to be most benefited by that silent converse with the good and great which reading would afford them, and whether many a Burns, many a Cooper,* and many a Miller+ is not rendered ineloquent and dumb, from want of the power to read and write? How, as protestants, can we see them, in effect, as deprived of the right to "search the scriptures," as if they were under the darkening influence of Rome? How, as political lovers of order, can we complain of their appeal to physical force, when we see them deprived of one of the most efficient instruments for intellectual regulation and moral control? If we lament this ignorance, let us at least endeavour to remove it. Is there any special cause (other than these causes which render all education difficult, and which we do not intend to inquire into) that makes reading an art so hard to be acquired? Is it that to "spell English, is the most difficult of human attainments?" Mr. Ellis says that is the cause. He answers our former question, too, by pointing it out as the stumbling-block in the way of the future probable universal adoption of English. So all foreigners will tell us, that if there were no other objections to such a spread of our language this alone is a mighty and effectual one. So says Dr. Rapp, and we will now finish the quotation we began at the commencement of this article. English would be that best fitted for universal adoption, "were it not," says he, "obscured by a whimsically antiquated orthography; and the other nations of Europe may esteem themselves fortunate, that the English have not yet made this discovery." If the reader will walk along the north side of the Strand, and stop some six doors east of Waterloo-bridge, he will perceive a shop surmounted by a board on which are painted letters of a gigantic size and strange shapes; and in the window pamphlets and sheets printed in type of the same quaint forms, the greater number of which forms, however, upon examination, he will find to belong to letters already known as "Roman." He will then, perhaps, if a very "artful man" man, decide, as a friend of *The author of "The Purgatory of Suicides." + The author of "The Old Red Sandstone."38 English Spelling Reform. April, ours did, that the premises are used as a branch office of the Russian Consulate; or, if less artful, that some rival of the Wizard of the North there works his wonders. In either conjecture he will be wrong. For, upon "inquiring within," he will be told by a dark-eyed, enthusiastic old man who keeps the house, that he there represents four sons, all associated with Mr. Ellis in his plan for the reformation of English spelling; that the spot on which he stands is the cradle of the new knowledge; that the printed sheets around him are the treatises of its apostles; in fact, that he is in the office of the Phonetic News, with a copy of which he may be supplied-for a consideration. The prophetic books of this new knowledge which we have now fairly introduced to our readers, are the first and second at the head of this article. The 'Plea for Phonotypy' may be divided into three parts. The first would teach us that the spelling of words, "foul as in the best spelled languages it is," is in ours "most foul, strange, and unnatural." The second part explains the means by which any one may learn to read all written or printed words, and to write or print all spoken words, in every language, with complete accuracy. In the third part, the author pleads for the adoption of these means, which are-that the same combination of spoken sounds should, under the same circumstances, be always represented by the same combination of written or printed symbols; and that the same combination of written or printed symbols should, under the same circumstances, always represent the same combination of spoken sounds. We shall, for the present, suppose the spelling of English to be such that no one would be able to spell correctly a word heard for the first time, or pronounce correctly one seen for the first time; we shall further suppose Mr. Ellis's plan to be so successful that by means of it any one out of the years of babyhood could in a month or two learn to read and write English with perfect facility: and we shall examine his plea for adopting such a reform. In the 'Plea' (p. 83) Mr. Ellis states all the objections he has heard made against it. These are- 1st. The Etymological objection; that is, that it would tend to obscure etymology. 2nd. The Homonymical objection. This we shall explain hereafter. 3rd. The Pecuniary objection: or that it would be necessary to make a large outlay of money to reprint all the books now in existence, which would otherwise be useless. 4th. The Linguistic objection. This we shall refer to below. 5th. The Conservative objection. 6th. The Pronunciative objection. That people differ from each other in the pronunciation of English now; that our fathers did not, as our children will not, pronounce as we do; and that, therefore, to take pronunciation as a guide for spelling, "is to measure a shadow, and take that for a model or standard which is changing while you apply it." 7th. The Double-trouble objection; or, that it would be necessary to learn both the present method of spelling and the proposed one. The other six objections, ate to the unscientific nature of Mr. Ellis's alphabet; its strange appearance; its inapplicability to foreign languages; to the small number of persons who can read it; the small number of books published in it; and the partial success which can be hoped for it, and therefore the waste of time to poor people who learn that will consequently be useless to them. For the refutation of the greater part of these objections, we must refer to the book itself: we shall, however, attempt to reply to the linguistic and conservative objectors. With the former, we confess to have a strong fellow-feeling. "What!" say they, "is it seriously proposed to change the time-honoured forms under which the words of Chaucer, Shakspere, Spenser, and Milton first appeared? What! is one of the most picturesque means of carrying our thoughts back to the times and manners of those who wrote such wise and inspiring words to be torn from us? Are the works of these great intellectual giants of our race, to appear in the last new patented dress? Are they, too, to be 'civilized off the face of the 'tarnal world?' Forbid it taste! forbid it scholarly feeling! Is even our antique and majestic idiom to be swept away? Are our very words to be abrogated? "But," says Mr. Ellis, (p. 121:)- "We do not now spell as we did; Shakspere, and the authorized translation of the Bible, are never published (except for a very limited sale, as a curiosity of literature) in the orthography of the time when they were first issued; and we cannot but feel, that if a change in the orthography, so as to reduce it to one system, occasions havoc in poetry, or "abrogates" the English language, the havoc is already played, the "abrogation" is an accomplished fact; for the spelling of the present period is an attempt, however feeble and unsuccessful, to reduce spelling to a sort of undefined plan, whose existence indeed it would be difficult to prove, though it must be 1849. English Spelling Reform. 39 firmly believed in by the majority of those who advocate its retention, if any meaning lie in their words. The words which Shakspere wrote, he wrote to be spoken and heard: he did not even trouble himself to edit so much as one of his own plays, but left it for the actors to collect them after his death, or for who would, to publish them during his life. When his works were spoken, they were published in the hearts and minds of those that heard them. If by any means we reproduce these sounds, either by declamation on the stage. or by a phonetic representation which shall allow the sense of their sound to enter the mind with ease and certainty, then Shakspere's verses remain as he penned them. They are essentially the same, whether disguised in the quaint and disturbing orthography of the Elizabethan or Jacobite age, or tortured by the new Johnsonian system of tightlacing, or allowed their native suppleness of limb in the flowing and gracefully fitting robes of phonetics. Poetry remains poetry 'for all that.'" In answer to the charge that the phonetic alphabet was invented "for the speedy and effectual abrogation of the English language," he says:- "We feel that these words must have been used without due consideration. If, as we believe, a language consist in a collection of sounds quite independently of any description of writing, and these sounds tend to change exceedingly unless fixed by some phonetic system of writing, forming a constant standard by which future generations may be enabled to check their mutatory tendency, the only effectual means of preserving a language, is to write it phonetically. In this sense the Sanscrit language-although there are slight differences of opinion as to the value of certain symbols, because the Neschee or Arabic written character has superseded their use in the common writing of the modern language of India-may still be more properly said to be preserved to our use, than to have become dead. If the Sanscrit phonetic letters had remained in daily use, the Sanscrit language would have been as much a living language now as if it had still been really spoken by the Brahmins. The literature of the Sanscrit language which we now possess, dates from a period when we cannot tell if there were even any inhabitants to speak the languages of Europe, and when we know the present languages of Europe had not even been born; yet we can read the Vedas, and gigantic Râmâyana and Mahâbhârata, with more certainty as to the pronunciation of the words, and therefore as to the real language. than even the poems of our own Chaucer! certainly, than we can read English of the transition state, or the Anglo-Saxon period. And any person who does not known Sanscrit can be taught to read these fabulously old poems with much more rapidity and certainty, despite the strangeness of the characters in which they are written, than a person who does not know the English language can be taught to read it, when clothed in its present heteric spelling. A person can teach himself to read Sanscrit; no foreigner, with any amount of labour, could teach himself to read heteric English, even after he had mastered all the English sounds. We see, then, that the 'speedy and effectual abrogation of the English language' may indeed be accomplished under the present system; and can only be averted by the general introduction and use of phonetic spelling. Loving our own language; anxious to facilitate its use, and diffuse its advantages, and eternize its literature,- we are the last of men to whom such a design as 'the speedy and effectual abrogation of the English language' should have been attributed." We will add, that to the lovers, few as they are, of the quaint orthography of our earlier sages, will still be left the same means as they now enjoy of gratifying their tastes, and equal means to those now possessed by English readers of Greek and Latin. But to these objectors (if they be only over-anxious guardians of our ancient literary glories, and nor the mere conservative objectors whom we shall next notice) we would say,-"Would you rather that your divinities should be worshipped by millions than by thousands, and that the words they uttered should be more nearly pronounced than the words they wrote and are now read? If so, object no more. Phonotypy will enable millions in remote regions and in distant ages to make the air vibrate with the words uttered by your darling Shakspere, more nearly than the thousands of educated Anglo- Normans now read what he wrote," How should we rejoice if Latin and Greek had been written phonetically, we should then be able still to act the De Coronȧ and the Catilanarian to the life. But, alas! this we cannot do. Let us save the "Friends, Romans, countrymen," and the Agincourt speech of our fifth Henry from the same fate. Let us at least do our best to make our great dramatist live for all people and for all time." Our language has reached the last stage,- that of over-sharpening and epigrammatic smartness. In this deteriorating match the French language has preceded ours. We have, we fear, already lost some of the honied richness of the language of Shakspere's time. The sound of our language has certainly deteriorated from the shortening of words, the unsparing introduction of the letter s, and other anti-musical changes. Let us stop the increase of this damage. Let us fix the pronunciation now. Before we come to the next objectors, we will give an example or two of early English spelling. In Chaucer's 'Canterbury Pilgrimage,' the lady-like behaviour of the nun whilst at table is thus described:- English Spelling Reform 40 April, "At mete was she wel ytaughte withalle- She lettte no morsel from hire lippes falle, Ne wette hire fingers in hire sauce depe, Wel coude she carie a morsel and wel cepe, Thatte no drope ne fell upon hire brest. In crtsie was sette ful moche hire lest. Hire over lippe wiped she so clene, That in hire cuppe was no ferthing sene Of grese, whan she dronken hadde hire draught, Full semely after hire mete she raught." About the same date as that in which the above written, namely, about the middle of the fourteenth century, Sir John Mandeville writes - "And therfore I shall telle you what the Soudan tolde me upon a day, in his chambre. He leet voyden out of his chambre alle maner of men, lordes, and othere: for he wolde spake with me in coonseille. And ther he asked me how the Cristene men governed hem in oure contree. And I seyde him, 'Righte wel, thonjked be God! And he seyde, 'Trenlyche nay, for ye Cristene men ne rechten righte noghte how untrewly to serve God. Ye scholde geven example.'" In the original edition of Hamlet, printed in 1603, we have - "O my prophetlike soule, my vncle! my vncle! "To be or not to be, I there's the point - To Die, to slepe, is that all? I all." "Last night of al, when yonder starre that's westward from the pole, had made his course to Illumine that part of heaven. Where now it burnes, The bell then towling one." "For here the Satyricall Styre writes, That olde men haue hollow eyes, weake backes, Grey beardes, pittiful weake hammes, gowty legges, All which, sir, I most potently beleeue not." Mr. Halliwell's researches furnish us with thirty-four different ways in which various members of Shakspere's family spelt his name. How the poet pronounced his words it would be difficult to say: we hope we shall not shock our readers if we give it as our opinion that his pronunciation must have been more like the rich and full-toned Irish than the modern English of the south-eastern counties. Yes, we suspect that Shakspere had a touch of the brogue. The (ea) particularly, was probably pronounced like (a); witness Falstaff's pun "Give you a reason on compulsion! if reasons (raisins) were as plentiful as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion, I." - (1st part of Henry IV, Act. II. Scene 4). Witness too the answer to the more modern riddle, viz., "a plum-pudding is like a good argument because it's full of reasons (raisins)." In both of these instances, the (ea) must be pronounced like (a). Shakspere seems also sometimes to have pronounced Rome, room. As in - "Now it is Rome indeed, and room enough, Since its wide walls encompass but one man." Sometimes he seems to pronounce it as we moderns do, as "This Rome shall remedy. Roam thither then." 1st Henry VI., Act III. Scene 1. The following passage, too, may throw some light upon the question, though whether Holofernes is over-pedantic, or Armado over-affected, we cannot determine. We must not omit saying, however, that to us it is very doubtful whether Shakspere himself really wrote it. "Hol. He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasms, such insociable and point-devise companions, such rackers of orthography, as to speak dout, fine, when he should say doubt; det when he should pronounce debt, d-e-b-t not d-e-t; he clepth a calf, cauf - half, hauf, - neighbour, vocatur neebour - neigh, abbreviated ne. This is abdominable (which he would call abominable), it insinuateth me of insanie. Ne intelligis, domine? to make frantic lunatic." Love's Labour's Lost, Act V. Scene1. Doubtless he pronounced the (h) in such words as when, which; and probably the (r) always. He probably also gave the guttural pronunciation to the (gh), in such words as fought, nought, &c. The question of the pronunciation of Shakspere's time is a curious one, and not altogether incapable of solution. But we proceed to our conservative objectors. With these we have no sympathy. The age of railways, art-unions, and 'Vanity Fair,' is not that of post-chaises, literary patrons, and fulsome dedications; the age when we teach the people to be independent of that paternal charity which the middle age gentry extended to their serfs, and to trust to themselves alone, is not that in which we can deny them facilities for intellectual culture. Past is the age of the esoteric doctrine, the mystic cypher, and the cloistered learning; that of Polytechnics, Mechanics' Institutes, and the Edinburgh Chamberses is here. With these conservative * objectors, we reason not. *This reform, like all others, must hail as a sign of its expected success, the conservative charges of its infidel and revolutionary tendencies; but as a matter of fact, its tendency is conservative in the literal sense. It will preserve for future historians the living sound of all those teasing dialects, the retention of which is so obstructive to a people's advancement. Irish and Welsh cannot English Spelling Reform 1849 41 "We do not require them" - we quote Mr. Ellis - "we do not require them to learn our system. They have books enough, and to spare, at hand for themselves. As long as such men live, books will be printed in the character they so much admire. We may leave them the antiquities they covet, but they must allow us the comforts we require; as the railway spares the Abbey* which it brings thousands to see, who would never else have beheld it. The new system is for the millions who would never have used the old, and for other millions yet unborn, in whose ears a cry for conservation of the present orthography will when they have learned to read phonetic works, sound as a cry for the conservation of stage-coaches and destruction of railways would sound in our own." The Double-trouble objectors Mr. Ellis answers by simply stating, that it has been proved that totally uneducated persons may be taught to read and write in the present orthography more quickly by first learning to read and phonetically, than by learning the former only. The etymological objection is very fully noticed in the 'Plea;' we think justly so. Indeed, we must confess that, to us, this objection seemed at first sight to be a very formidable one. For a full refutation of its our readers must consult Mr. Ellis himself; we would tell them merely that etymology is is favourite study, and he is a man of various learning, a good scholar and a ripe one; and that, if on the subject of phonetics he be a little mad, verily much learning hath made him so. We will content ourselves by observing that literature does not live by etymology alone; and that the knowledge of the derivation of a word assists us far less in a knowledge of its proper modern meaning and use than is generally supposed. Ladies, when acquainted with the subject on which they write, use words of Greek and Latin derivation quite as aptly as their male rivals. Further, let us recollect that, out of the forty-five millions who speak English as their native language, probably not five hundred + know anything of etymology; that as it is better that forty-five millions should eat bread than that five hundred should eat turbot, so it is better that the former number should read than the smaller number should study etymology; but,that the more readers there are the more etymologists there are likely to be; finally, that phonetic writing will be of great assistance in etymological investigations. We cannot here avoid quoting that incarnation of common sense, Benjamin Franklin. We shall allow Mr. Ellis to introduce him ('Plea,' p. 87): - "'Etymologies,' says Dr. Franklin, 'are at present very uncertain, but such as they are, the old books would still preserve them,, and etymologists would there find them. Words in the course of time change their meanings as well as their spellings and pronunciations, and we do not look to etymology for their present meanings. If I should call a man a Knave and a Villain, he would hardly be satisfied with my telling him that one of the words originally signified only a Lad or Servant, and the other an Under Ploughman, or the Inhabitant of a Village. It is by their present usage only that the meaning of words is to be determined.' * Although we feel (continues Mr. Ellis) that there is little of practical value that can be added to these pithy remarks, yet we should seem, perhaps, to be slighting our opponents too much by dismissing their arguments so summarily. They would look upon us, perhaps, as ignorant of etymology and language, and, therefore, in their judgment, entirely incapable of properly entertaining the question, while we sought to screen our impotence under the shade of a great and justly-honoured name. This is not the case. From the peculiar circumstances of our position, then, we may be, perhaps, excused for descending to such personal information as the following, which, we believe, should be given to prevent any misconception with regard to our intent in the line of argument which we shall adopt in reply to this etymological objection. Etymology is one of our own favourite studies. We have been amusing ourselves with it for years, and making collections with the hope of one day being able to put together a work, which may have some pretension to completeness, on the etymologies or our own language, and its connexion with its sister dialects. To trace the grammatical and etymological relations of words and phrases, is to us so great a pleasure, that we should be sorry by any act of our own to throw impediments in the way of those engaged in like pursuits, and had we imagined that the introduction of phonetic printing were likely to 'destroy' or even 'obscure,' our etymologies, we should have been loath to introduce it; hold out much longer; go they must, notwithstanding all the attempts of those who would keep them up as national. National- the Welsh nation, forsooth! - and as if the arrival of the time when the Irish shall be deprived of all their national peculiarities were not most devoutly to be wished. To the ethnologist a good phonetic alphabet would be invaluable; this, however, requires no proof. The New Testament has been translated into the Canarese tongue; and as it is written phonetically, a Missionary tells us, "we are able to read the language so that a native Canarese can comprehend every word we are saying, although we cannot understand it ourselves." *Alluding particularly to Easeby Abby, near Richmond, Yorkshire. + The accuracy of this statement has been doubted. But though the students of Latin, Greek, and French may be counted by thousands, and though Anglo-Saxon scholars may amount to hundreds, yet we feel convinced that the number of those who have any knowledge of etymologies more than sufficient to mislead them, is within five hundred, and with a tolerable margin to spare. * Works, vol. ii. p 363. 42 English Spelling Reform April, although we own, that as the eminent services which phonetic spelling appeared likely to (?) to humanity, opened more and more upon us, we felt, that, had we to choose between expunging all the records of our etymologies which at present exist, and forwarding the interests of the great boon to mankind, for which we are now pleading, we should have had no hesitation in making our choice. The few must yield to the many. Millions must not be kept in ignorance in order that hundreds may indulge in one of the pleasures of science." One more objection, trivial as it is, we must notice, because Mr. Ellis has not done is cause justice. It is the Homonymical objection. We state it:- "By phonetic writing you cease to distinguish between words of the same pronunciation but differently spelled; such as ale, ail, hare, hair,&c." Granted; but we do make a distinction, which is not made at present, between words now spelled alike but pronounced differently, as row ( a rank), and row ( a tumult), a tear and to tear, &c. Words of the latter description are called polynyms, of the former homonyms. To compare the loss with the gain, Mr. Ellis gives two tables, one of words of like sound but different spelling, the other of words of different sound but like spelling. In the former table we have 364 spoken words spelled 728 ways; in the latter 406 spoken words spelled in 201 ways. This table should have given 676 words spelled 210 ways.* The case then stands thus. By our present spelling 1040 different spoken words are confusedly represented (i.e. some words have two and some three spellings) by only 938 written words; by the phonetic method they would, of course, be accurately discriminated by 1040 different written words. The gain, therefore, is on the side of phonetic spelling. We must just mention two other objections we have heard to phonetic spelling. One is that very many words being common to all literary European languages, are recognized immediately when seen, though not when heard or written phonetically. This is a loss as far as it goes. But we need only ask foreigners whether they will submit to the loss for the sake of the gain? The loss, indeed, is only the absence of gain to those who wish to speak English: for, with the exception of these common words, which they have only to learn to pronounce, they have to learn every word in our language twice, or rather two words for one, i.e. - the spoken word and the written word. In phoetic writing they need only learn every word once. The other objection is, that the difficulty of spelling English, which it is proposed to remove, makes it a capital "stone for children to rub their heads against," and by bringing out the qualities of patience,perseverance, &c makes our peoople what they are. To this we reply, that we have no doubt it does so. We fear it is the cause that one-half of our population is about on a par with Jack Cade's army.* From the above considerations, then, but still more from the masterly arguments of Mr. Ellis, supported by all the necessary tables and proofs, we are fully prepared to accept his invention of phonotypy, if our present spelling be as faulty as he represents it, and if his system shall appear tolerably accurate. As to the former question, we need only test our own powers, by trying to spell or pronounce any unfamiliar word. We need not travel to the newspapers of this year, rich in dreadful foreign names; nor need we inquire, with the unhappy correspondent of Punch, how such horrid words as Jellachich, Windischgratz, and Czech, are to be pronounced, for they are outside barbarians; nor need we search the fertile field of English proper names. Arcedeckne, Beaulieu, Marjoribanks, however, *Many words have been omitted altogether, as misconduct, pasty - and in almost every case the inflected words are left out. Thus, although tear, use, row, conjure, are inserted, yet tears, uses, rows, conjures, conjured, are omitted. We have counted about 270 omissions of this kind. * The New York Home Journal gives the following dialogue between a Frenchman studying English and his tutor: - "Frenchman: Ha, my good friend, I have met with one difficulty - one very strange word. How you call h-o-u-g-h? Tutor: Huff. Fr." Tres bien, huff; and snuff you spell s-n-o-u-g-h, ha! Tutor: O, no snuff is s-n-u double f. The fact is, words ending in ough are a little irregular. - Fr.: Ah, very good; 'tis beautiful language. H-o-u-g-h is Huff, I will remember; and c-o-u-g-h cuff. I have one bad cuff, ha! Tutor: No, that is wrong. We say kauff, not cuff. Fr: Kauff eh bien. Huff and kauff, and pardonnez-moi, how you call d-o-u-g-h? Duff, ha! - Tutor: No, not duff - Fr. Not duff; ah! oui! I understand - is daugg, hey? Tutor: No. d-o-u-g-h spells doe. - Fr.Doe! It is very fine ,wonderful language, it is doe: and t-o-u-g-h is toe certainement. My beefsteak was very toe. Tutor: O, no, no, you should say tuff. - Fr: Tuff? And the thing farmer uses: how you call him p-l-o-u-g-h, pluff? ha! you smile: I see I am wrong, it plauf? No? ah, then, it is ploe, like doe: it is a beautiful language, ver' fine - ploe? - Tutor: You are still wrong my friend. It is plow. Fr: Plow! Wonderful language. I shall understand ver' soon. Plow, doe, Kauff; ad one more - r-o-u-g-h, what you call General Taylor; rauff and ready?- Tutor: No; t-o-u-g-h spells ruff. - Fr.: Ruff, ha! Let me not forget. R-o-u-g-h is ruff, and b-o-u-g-h is buff, ha! - Tutor: No, bow. Fr. Ah! very simple, wonderful language; but I have had what you call e-n-o-u-g-h; ha! what you call him? English Spelling Reform 1849 43 are tempting touchstones. Let us recollect that Sheridan could not spell; let us listen to the complaints of teachers; let us remember our tortured childhood, and our accursed Mavor; and let us honestly confess with the author of the 'Plea" that we have often, when at a loss how to write even some common word, scratched it down upon some secret slip of paper,"just to see how it looked." We, ourselves, to this day blush, when we remember that we once - aye, since our boyish days - wrote down a man as a carver and guilder' + and we have a friend, a man of education and literary habits, who, though familiar with the spoken word mid-led, yet never connected it with the written word misled, in which e pronounced the i, like i, in isle, and which he imagined to be the past tense of some verb to misle!! Let us ask foreigners-no, let us ask no more - let us say carried nem, con., that to spell English, is "the most difficult of human attainments." We give an extract from Mr. Sullivan 's work, the 'Spelling-book Superseded;" he is quoting the Edgeworths we believe. 'Spelling comes next to reading. New trials for the temper; new perils for the understanding; positive rules and arbitrary exceptions; endless examples and contradictions; till at length, out of all patience with the stupid docility of his pupil, the tutor perceives the absolute necessity of making him get by heart, with all convenient speed, every word in the language. The formidable columns rise in dread succession. Months and years are devoted to the undertaking; but after going through a whole spelling-book, perhaps a whole dictionary, till we come triumphantly to spell Zeugma, we have forgotten how to spell Abbot, and we must begin again with Abasement." - "All this is very true," says a candid school-master, "we see the evil, but we cannot new-model the language, or write a perfect philosophical dictionary; and, in the meantime, we are bound to teach children to spell, which we do with the less reluctance, because, though we allow that it is an arduous task, we have found from experience, that it can be accomplished, and that the understandings of many of our pupils do survive all the perils to which you think them exposed during the operation." "Their understandings may, and do, survive the operation; but why should they be put in unnecessary danger, and why should we early disgust children with literature by the pain and difficulty of their first lessons? * * * * As to the rest, we refer to Lady Carlisle's comprehensive maxim, 'Spell well if you can.'" And we will add, that we rejoice to think that our printers will spell for us. How little do we in England act upon the advice of Quintilian, who says: - "Eco sic scibendum quicque judico quomodo sonat: hic enim usus est literearum, ut custodiant voces et velut depositum reddant legentibus; itaque id exprimere debent, quod dicturi sumus." (Quint. Inst. Orat. lib.i.cap.vij). Coffee we know has been spelt without a letter belonging to it, as kaughy; and the housemaid was right who spelt wife, uf, 'For' said she, 'what should wi-eff spell but wife.' We will give one real instance of rich spelling, we transcribe it from the 'Plea.' p. 40. "The following is a true and correct transcript of some items in a bill sent in by a poor shoemaker, for services rendered, and goods supplied by his sick wife. suzon on Wheak Waittin (Susan one week waiting) 1 pound of rushlits (rush-lights) 2 pouns of suger half pound of Rise (rice) 4 penney Whorth of Bickets (biscuits) harrarut (arrowroot) 2 small loves of Bred (loaves of bread) 3 penney Worth of Egs 1 nut mey (nutmeg) 1 foul (fowl) suzon 1 Wheak Whaitin 1 Boottol of custeroyl Wich you send for to tak With win (one bottle of castor-oil, which you sent for to take with wine) 2 foules (fowls) 1 Rabit (rabbit) 3 penney caks (penny cakes) suzon one Wheak Whaittin 1 Ounc of Tea (ounce of tea) 1 Bottol of porter (bottle of porter) suzon one Wheak atindenc (Susan one week attendance.') The following is a liberatim copy of a letter from a Poor Law Guardian, a man who therefore holds a responsible office, and from whom we are entitled to expect something better than from the poor fellow who committed the above mistakes. "Feby. The 4 Mr. P -- "I hav rought toe you A Bought this man is Jobe Lear he as Beening living in Hodford for this last twenty hor more & has tell mee that he as Beening living in Birkenhead for this last 3 yers and hour toun men Dous not think that he bee long to hus. "I Ham "Your Troule "J.H. E." We extract from the 'Plea' a fictitious example of bad (query good) spelling by 44 English Spelling Reform April, Dr. William Gregory, Professor of Chemistry in the University of Edinburgh; premising that under each word is written {{column break}} another word which justifies the spelling employed. We shall leave our readers to decipher it if they can. "Though thea Eaditer auph thie Foughnotipick Jolonal. through tea head laurel nephew grief though colonel Syrrh, - Eye obzerve yew proepeauz two intowduice ay nue sissedem ov myrrh eye zeal yew doe beaux two know juice may sue missed vie righting, bigh witch ue eckspres oanly theigh sowneds anned knot thee right high witch hue pecks loan Leigh corwned fanned knot thee orthoggerafey oph they wurds; butt Igh phthink ugh gow to doggerel barley Stephen key curds butt sigh apophthegm Hugh know to fare inn cheighnjing owr thyme-onird alfahbeat, aned ading sew menny are inn weigh cow thyme bird Hannah sweat have had sew penny neau lebtors. Ie meyk bould teo saigh thaat eit izz ewict eyezi beauty debtors die they soul gelleon straight Isaac forfeit whizz indict keyed toe ruyt akarding too sowend, withe theo leabtors hov theau shoe buy warding too allowed live people head debt honour Beauchamp cald alfabebt, aind indead Ui halv faor maini yeirs begn coal debt plaid plead beguiling salmon extraordinary said weirs impregn een tye habbit auv dooin sough.* Greenwhich keyed abbey laurel loo sough." The great German poet, Klopstock, gives the following as the priciples upon which he presumes the German (with how much more force may we say English!) spelling to have been constructed: - "First principle. - It shall be so constituted as not to admit of being reduced to rule. Second principle. - What regularity it has shall be unnatural. Third principle. - There shall be no assignable rule for writing or omitting any etymological hints in the spelling of a word. Object. - Spelling, which is a matter nearly as useful to us as speaking, is to be rendered difficult in every conceivable manner." We now proceed to Mr. Ellis's system of phonotypy or phonetic printing. It is founded upon a very careful analysis of all the sounds and modifications of sound used ----------------------------------------------------------------- *Major Beniowski in his 'Anti-Absurd Spelling Book,' (p. 6), with rather more broadness of humour, compares the rules for heteric orthography, to the following 'Specimen of a Philosophical Dictionary.' "The piece of furniture usually called 'table' you should continue to call 'table,' with that following few restrictions: - 1. You shall call it 'broom,' on Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. - N.B. The m to be silent. 2 On Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, you shall name it 'window,' (except the first Saturdays of January, April, June, September, and November, when it must be called, according to statute 1, 'broom,')-N.B. The oo to be sounded i. The same piece of furniture you shall name 'candle,' according to the following exact philosophical rules: (1.) On Sundays, from 35'49" after twelve, till sunset, call it 'candle,' sounding the c as shi, and the a as o, (except on cloudy days, to be defined hereafter.) (2.) You will occasionally call the four-legged furniture, not exactly candle, but candle with the prefix kabooo, and sometimes with the trifling addition of a few mute liquido-hard dipthongal consonants; for instance, thus 'kabooo candle-shwyoourkrt,' (bearing always in mind the regulations above mentioned). Sometimes, though, you will call it simply table; but this must be left to your tact and taste, which we hope and trust are very great, and will be unavoidably become still greater, by bringing into operation the choicest qualities of your goodnaturedness, while studying our lexicon. By the word broom, which, under the above regulations, reads and designates table, we will also understand the objects stick, umbrella, man, and a few more; this is imperative, on account of the analogy that exists betwen these objects; - we see, often, a man with a stick and an umbrella, and something else; besides they are all made of wood - (man made of wood!!!) Window, (which, you recollect, is consecrated to the four-legged furniture on certain days, and under certain circumstances) will also mean, ocean, pepper, and boot; namely, 1. Window means ocean, when it is preceded by the third person of the plural, of the pluperfect of the sub-conjunctive mode, of the 739th conjugation of our popular grammars -- (except when it is followed by a word beginning with m, p, r, a, s, f, or t). - N.B. With the gravo-sharp accent on the sub-ante-penultimate. 2. Window means pepper, when it is preceded by words ending in the following liquido- mute, stomachical-aspirated, consonato-quasi- vowels - pp, rrr, zzz, xx, &C. &c." Now, although this is, as the Major himself characterizes it, "decidedly most tyrannically ridiculous nonsense;" yet if for words and their meaning, you substitute heteric letters and their meaning, and, for the above rules, you substitute those given to foreigners that they may have an idea how to pronounce our various words, we feel bound in honour to declare, that the picture is not overcharged. 1849 English Spelling Reform. 45 in the most remarkable languages now spoken, and for this purpose he studied, he informs us, several languages, solely with a view to pronunciation. The 'Alphabet of Nature' exhibited the result of this investigation, and the 'Essentials of Phonetics' may be considered as a second edition of that work, and as representing the matured effect of his labours. This latter work is printed in phonetic type, and contains specimens of its application to twenty modern, and seven ancient, languages. The analysis of all the sounds which occur in the spoken languages does not appear at first sight difficult; but unfortunately any two persons will find it very easy to differ as to the sounds they respectively utter or hear. We have not any other means of constructing a natural alphabet than by the subjective test of our own sensations. No objective standard as yet exists. Professors Wheatstone and Willis, and Mr. Faber, * have indeed made some advances in this direction, but they are of little value for our present purpose. We have ourselves tried to produce the vowel sounds artificially, in the manner described by Professor Willis; but, probably from some inexactness in our experiment, we failed to perceive any indication of such phenomena. We have never tried the experiments of M. Kratzenstein, nor of M. Kempelin. They are described in Murray's 'Family Library,' vol. xxxiii. p. 206. Mr. Faber's speaking machine, though a great step forward, is as yet far distant from complete success. Although, in this absence of any objective standard, authors have differed in the minute poits of phonetics, yet in the broader facts necessary for practical phonetic spelling they have been tolerably uninimous; and many attempts have been made, both by Englishmen and foreigners, to construct a set of symbols which should accurately indicate the sounds of words; for a very slight investigation made it evident that our present letters, even if they had each a separate phonetic value (which they had not), were insufficient. the first Englishman whom we know to have made any decided effort to write phonetically was an ecclesiastic, named Orm or Ormen. He wrote a metrical paraphrase of the Gospels, entitled 'Ormulum,' upon a phonetic scheme of his own, somewhere about the 12th or 13th century. We have not seen *the inventor of the speaking machine, lately exhibited in London and elsewhere. +Vide 'Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society,' vol.iii. p. 10; from which large extracts are made in the 'Alphabet of Nature,' p. 26. this work, but an account of it and an extract from it, may be found in the 'Essentials of Phonetics,' p. 179. The first work of the kind which we have seen is 'The Principles of Music,' by Charles Butler, Magd., M.A. London: printed by John Haviland for the author, 1636.' Some six new characters, with the use of commas and dots, enable the author of this treatise to effect his purpose of writing phonetically to a tolerable extent, particularly when we consider that the pronunciation of that time was probably much more faithfully represented by the common orthography than is our pronunciation now. His system, however, even with this allowance, is by no means perfect. The work of Bishop Wilkins, before referred to, is an exceedingly elaborate and learned essay upon universal grammar and phonetics. Since this work there have been many authors who have written upon the subject, among whom are Dr. Darwin, Sir W. Jones, Professor Key, Dr. Rapp, Dr. Young, M. De Volney, and Dr. Latham.* A full account of their labours may be found in the 'Alphabet of Nature,' p. 159. The 'Church Missionary Alphabet,' explained by the Rev. Henry Vane, we believe to be the latest attempt of this kind. Mr. Ellis's work, 'The Essentials of Phonetics,' by far the most complete and accurate of all, is, as we said before, printed in the phonetic type, which would, at first sight, appear to take away from its utility. This is not the case, however; as, after reading a page of two, we can go on instinctively, and with the greatest ease, without even examining the new characters, which are, however, only sixteen in number, and are mostly formed, as it were, out of the old letters (three only of which are rejected), in such a manner that their shapes almost at once indicate their phonetic values. We cannot pretend to enter into a critical examination of this work on the present occasion; those who delight in phonetic investigations, will find the subject almost exhausted in this treatise. The result of the author's inquiries is the production of a 'Theoretical Ethnical Alphabet,' by which he thinks that ever sound, and modification of sound, used in the twenty principal languages of the world, may be represented with almost perfect accuracy. This alphabet contains, however, a great many more signs than are absolutely necessary for a very efficient practical printed representation of speech; and he accordingly pares *see two excellent papers by this gentleman in the 'Athenaeum' of February 24th and March 3rd. 46 English Spelling Reform. April, it down, and furnishes us with one that he calls the 'Englishman's Practical Ethnical Alphabet," by means of which, all known languages may be printed in as perfect a phonetic dress as is desirable. We have studied the 'Essentials of Phonetics,' with great care, and are happy to be able to agree in this opinion. This latter alphabet consists of all the Roman type at present used, excepting X, and of twenty-one new letters, so that, with the assistance of two or three diacritical marks, we get fifty-six signs to represent the simple vowels, consonants, and breathings, together with four vowel-diphthongs and two consonantal-diphthongs. Of these fifty-six signs, forty only are used in English. We give as good an imitation of the English Phonetic Alphabet as we can, in the absence of type to represent Mr. Ellis's characters. The first column contains the signs which we substitute for the phonotypes, the other columns show their powers. LONG VOWELS. 1. E ee in eel 2. a a in ale 3. A a in alms 4. Θ a in all 5. Ω o in ope 6. [?] oo in food SHORT VOWELS. 7. i i in ill 8. e e in ell 9. a a in am 10. o o in oltve 11. u u in up 12. [?] oo in foot DIPHTHONGS. 13. I i in isle 14. [?] oi in oil 15. [?] ow in owl- 16. [?] u in mule COALESCENTS. 17. Y y in yea 18. W w in way ASPIRATE. 19. h h in hay EXPLODENTS. 20. p p in rope 21. b b in robe 22. t t in fate 23. d d in fade 24. [?] ch in cheer 25. J j in jeer 26. C c in came 27. g g in game CONTINUANTS. 28. f f in safe 29. v v in save 30. [?] th in wreath 31. [?] th in wreathe 32. s ss in hiss 33. z s in his 34. Σ sh in mesh 35. [?] s in measure LIQUIDS. 36. r r in for 37. l l in fall NASALS. 38. m in seem 39. n in seen 40. [?] ng in sing (') is used in such words as double, as d u b ' l. In addition to these, we have for writing foreign languages characters for the vowel sounds in 41, ch[?]ne; 42, p[?]te; 43, patte; 44, bonne; 45, v[?] and k[?]hnste; 43, hutte and k[?]nste; 47, je[?]ne and Goethe; 48, eune and b[?]cke; 49, French e mute; 50, for the nasal effect of the n in fin, an, on, un; 51, for the final softening effect in fille, regne; 52, for the whisper heard in the Welch words, llal and rhag; 53, 54, for the gutturals in ich, sieg; 55, the Arabic ain; 56, the trill, a character which is necessary towards expressing the Arabic ghain and the Polish przez. This system includes, also, two orthographical signs to express regret and irony; and the (?) is used at the commencement as well as at the end of an interrogative sentence. This last method is adopted in Spanish writing. The rule for accentuation is, that words in which the accent is not marked are to be pronounced as if accented on the last syllable but one, in dissyllables, in words ending in ic or ics, in words having [?], [?], or y, immediately before their last vowel or diphthong, and words having E, a, A, Θ, Ω, [?], I, [?], [?], in the last syllable but one; other words are read as if accented upon the last syllable but two. We add a specimen of the Lord's Prayer in phonetic spelling, according to Mr. Ellis's pronunciation:-- 1849. English Spelling Reform. 47 [Not English writing] We have said that we accept the above as an excellent Practical Ethnical Alphabet to begin with; it will never need many alterations, and those which may hereafter be made must be the result of the friction of many minds. We recognize in our author so thoroughly conscientious as employment of all the means within his power for prosecuting his inquiry, and a sense so sharpened by practice to an aptitude for minute phonetic discriminations, that with great diffidence we mention two or three points on which we are compelled to differ from him. We admit generally the distinction between the stopped and unstopped, or, as he calls them, long vowels. We think he carries his theory too far, however. We think that both stopped and unstopped vowels may be, and are, used as either long or short; we think (41) is merely long (e) practically; theoretically it is long (a); (42) and (43) are merely long and short (A); (44) merely short (Ω); we agree with those authors who think (a) a pure dipthong "It is a very frequently necessary, in speaking, to give importance or dignity to some syllable or word above those which precede or follow it. This may be effected by a great variety of difference intonations, by rapidity or slowness of utterance, by roughness or gentleness, by raising the voice to a higher pitch or sinking it to a bass tone, by whispering, or speaking with great loudness and so on. Of all these plans the most common in usual speech is loudness; any syllable or word which has to be better heard than the others is spoken louder, and is occasionally dwelt on longer; but is, at any rate, made more audible by a perceptible intention on the part of the speaker. This we may prove by listening to a person speaking at such a distance as not to hear clearly all that he says; the important syllables alone catch the ear, the rest are inaudible. Confining ourselves for the present to the case where one syllable of a word is thus distinguished, the effort made is called an accent" Now, the true explanation we believe to be the following. Speaking differs from singing in this: that in the former the voice, however long the vowel may be held on, never rests on any one musical note long enough for the ear to appreciate it; but, even in the shortest exclamation, slides up or down to another point of the musical scale: therefore, as the ear is not struck by a number of equally distant vibrations, succeeding each with a rapidity peculiar to any musical note, but by a number at unequal intervals, no musical note is heard. That is, the voice is no longer a singing but a speaking voice. This may be easily proved by sliding the finger along the string of a violin while we draw the bow across it. Any instrument on which we can readily slide from one note to another will, of course, do as well. The musical intervals through which the speaking voice thus slides, are varied according to the emotions intended to be expressed. The voice may of course upon the whole rise, or fall, or return to its original pitch, in the course of uttering a word or phrase, and yet have fallen or risen to a less extent, in the contained words or syllables. The voice naturally returns to the point whence it started. Therefore, when we express surprise, or ask a question, we use the rising slide, to show that the phrase is incomplete until we get the explanation or answer, for which therefore, we use the falling slide. Now, of any collection of syllables, that in which the slide is the greatest is the accented one. This is the essence of the tonic accent. A more lengthened and louder utterance of the accented syllable, though making it more noticeable, does not constitute accent. This may be48 English Spelling Reform. April, tested on the violin. And the inquisitive reader may imitate on that instrument, the rise and fall of the voice in the following words, when strongly inflected:-"Confíne?!" "Confíne!" "Cónfine?!" "Cónfine." Let us next inquire how we are to spell our words when we have an instrument by which we can accurately represent spoken sound. People pronounce very differently; they will, therefore, spell differently. The question of spelling will, we presume, be decided by the same considerations as that of pronunciation is now, or, rather, it will resolve itself into it . The best rule, when the pronunciation of the word is unfixed, will probably to be choose out of those pronunciations which are sanctioned by equal use among the educated upper classes—that one which our present spelling would seem most to justify, or which analogy or etymology would dictate. By words of unfixed pronunciation, we mean words that are pronounced distinctly, but in several ways. There are, however, in our language, many words of indistinct pronunciation. As far as this indistinctness arises merely from the inability of the unpractised ear to detect minute differences of sound, we may disregard it; but in an immense number of English words, the vowel in unaccented syllables is heard by different ears as a different vowel. Thus, ought we to write memory, mémori, mémuri, or mémΩri,? Practically, we all pronounce mémuri; at least in conversation, we think. But when the singer wishes to dwell upon the second syllable, what does he do? Again, are we to write s𝘢vag or s𝘢veg, for savage. In such cases. we think, the Roman vowel used in the present spelling should be employed, except when (a) would be clearly better replaced by (𝘢), as in jurn𝘢l, for journal. When two vowels are used in the present spelling—as in forfeiture, penalties—we must trust to time to settle the point. The above rule would seem to be more simple than any other, and the alteration in the appearance of words would be less. Mr. Ellis's rules for spelling may be found at page 101 of the 'Essentials.' In monosyllables, and the accented syllables of all words, when the sound ur is heard, it should always be written so. Mr. Ellis writes s e r v, s é r c u m s t 𝘢 n c e z, f e r s t, h e r, s e r, for serve, circumstances, first , her, sir. we should prefer s u r v, s ú r c u m s t a n c e z, f u r s t, h u r, s u r—at the same time he writes (journal), jurn𝘢l, (work) w u r c, (world) w u r l d. Now this is departing from what, we think, ought to be an imperative rule, viz., to write phonetically wherever it is possible. It occasions also great doubt and inconvenience. Thus we desired to know how he pronounced girl-- whether g u r l, or g 𝘢 r l; we find he writes g e r l; which leaves us still in the dark. So in a disquisition upon Scotch pronunciation, we were left in doubt whether the Scotch words, kirk, dirl, were pronounced c e r c, c i r c, or c u r c, and d e r l, d i r l, or d u r l, as he writes them c i r c and d i r l. How, also, should we learn from him the pronunciation of such words as squirrel, stirrup? We should prefer him, too, to mark the (') before the (r) in such words as Mary, dear, fear, mare, ire, which we should write, me'ri, dE'r, fE'r, me'r, I'r, but which he writes m a r i, d E r, f E r, m a r, I r. We should write (payer) paur, (pair) pe'r, (perry) peri, (see, however, 'Essentials,' pp. 94 and 103). We disagree with Mr. Ellis, also, in his pronunciation of some words. Thus, for the words, Nature, Christian, he adopts the somewhat affected pronunciation, n a t y r, c h r i s t y 𝘢 n , instead of the common pronunciation, n a t ch u r, c r i s ch u n; whilst at the same time he prefers towθ'rdz (towards), c i l n (kiln), a g' a n (again), and p s y d o (pseudo) the vulgar pronunciations t Ω r d z, c i l, 𝘢 g é n and s y d Ω. Hear he spells h E r, we should say h y e' r. We observe too, that he preserves the h in such words as when and what, thus adopting the Scotch and Irish pronunciation. Conquer he spells c o n c e r, instead of c o n c w u r; earned, e r n t, instead of u r n d; Alexander; 𝘢 l e c s A n d e r, instead of 𝘢 l e g z a n d e r ; and French f r e n c h, instead of frenΣ. We only give these examples to show that, by the use of phonetic writing and printing, difference of pronunciation become visible as well as audible, and are, therefore, more likely to disappear than at present. The English language is by no means so difficult to pronounce as some suppose. It is difficult for foreigners to know what they ought to pronounce. Phonetics will diminish this difficulty. To an Englishman, the only really difficult French sounds are those of the (u) and (eu ); and by merely calling his attention to the fact, that the sounds at the end of that stumbling-block, Boulogne, is a murmured ( yu ) ; that a Frenchman never puts an (') before his ( r ), but says, d E r' instead of d E' r, for dire; that he pronounces ferais, fur𝘦, and not fer𝘢; that his words have rarely a tonic accent; and that the voice generally slides upwards to the end of the sentence, he will be enabled, without overcoming those really 1849. English Spelling Reform 49 difficult sounds, to pronounce French better than many who have lived much in France. Mr. Ellis's rules for the accent of English words are very simple and convenient, and will settle the question of doubtful spelling very frequently, by causing us to adopt that one which will enable us to write the word so that it shall stand without the accent mark. Finally, we recommend the 'Plea for Phonotypy' generally; it is really a very amusing book. The 'Essentials of Phonetics' is an invaluable work to those interested in the scientific part of the question; it contains, too, some very curious inquiries as to the pronunciation of several unspoken languages. We must now devote a few lines to the history of the invention and its inventors. Mr. Ellis modestly tells us that Mr. Isaac Pitman, of Bath, is to be considered as the founder of the system. This latter, sprung from the people, showed as a boy a rare amount of energy in making himself, despite the difficulties of his position, a thorough master of the English language and its orthography; but in the course of his studies, he became so impressed with the absurdities of this so-called orthography, that in 1837, he published his 'Phonetic Short-hand,' which, we believe, is allowed by competent judges to be by far the best system of stenography extant. Indeed, so successful was it, that, in 1842, he was enabled to publish a lithographed periodical in his Phonetic long-hand.* In 1843, one of Mr. Pitman's earliest friends and supporters, the father of the Post-office reformer, conceived the notion of printing in types constructed upon Mr. Pitman's principle of phonetics, and by their joint exertions, the Phonotypic Journal was so printed and published.+ Mr. Ellis then joined the movement; the cause and the journal progressed, until in 1848, the phonotypic alphabet was perfected, and the Phonetic Journal was printed and published by Mr. Ellis, who took entirely into his own hands both these departments, which had been hitherto supported by the subscription originally started by Mr. Smith. And now, January, 1849, the Phonetic Journal gives place to a phonetic weekly newspaper, the Phonetic News, (fΩnetic nyz.) ++ The system has also as *Three monthly Journals, in Phonography, or phonetic writing, are now published. +Mr. Hill, sen., has also published several reading primers in phonetic spelling, for the use of schools. The subject is one which had engaged the attention of this veteran educational reformer, now in his 86th year, from the period of his own boyhood. ++A journal conducted with considerable ability, and which we have much pleasure in recommending to our readers, as deserving the support of all friends of progress, whether friendly or adverse to the proposed Spelling Reform. —Ed. VOL LI. 4 supporters, the members of the Phonetic Corresponding Society, who instruct each other by means of phonetic correspondence. The members of this Society amount, in Great Britain, to 2,400. Several books of instruction and popular tales are also printed in phonotypes. Two editions of the New Testament are advertised. The disciples of the phonetic reform movement now amount to some thousands;* and their cause has all the executive elements of success:—the energy and enthusiasm of a self-raised son of the people, working to promote a system invented by himself and for the people's use; the aged wisdom and practical knowledge of the venerable father of a great and successful practical reformer; the learning, countenance, and purse of a man of education, position, and wealth. If, then, it has also, as we believe it has, internal elements of success; if, like Christianity (we say it reverently), it be born among, necessary to, and demanded by, the people, like Christianity we think it must succeed. It destroys it not, that it should have as enemies those who would admire it as an elegant pastime whilst confined to the scholar and the dilettante, but who, with the geometer of old, think it degrading to pander to the vile and material necessities of the herd. It wants not the assistance of the fain𝘦ant, who thinks it, perhaps, "not a bad thing in itself, but too difficult to carry out." It leaves the contemptuous mockers of its "snobbishness" to the Flunkey-quelling Thackeryian pen. To the derisive fun of Punch we "would not an we could" reply in phrase jocose. Punch! it is no joke. Your mirthful company of wearers of motley have done more than aught else to strip the motley from society and from the man—they have shown us ourselves undressed; they must help us tear the bizarre and motley garb from our language, and make it decent. No, Punch! your comic historian of England, whose probing pen has pierced the tawdry garb of our golden age and shown us the rags beneath, ought not to oppose such a graceful change of dress; your utterer of the newspaper for the million dares not, without proving traitor to his own cause; and as to the Poet of the "Pallis-coart," the Two newspapers and one or two periodicals, printed in Phonotypes have been in existence in the United States for some months. *We might, we think, say many thousands without exaggeration, considering the large sale of phonetic publications, the number of classes for teaching, and the number of pupils. 50 Illustrative Act. April, aristocratic Jeames, he is already, we presume, a disciple of the "holi coz." No! that self-deceiver, who thinks he hides, under the cynical phrase and the fool's jerkin, his intensely human heart, he must support it. But should they oppose it, the million- tongued voice of uneducated labour will still be strong enough to doom our present cacography, and shout "Away with it! why cumbereth it us?" And to you, disciples of this reform, we will quote, for your consolation, the words of Mr. Macaulay, when speaking of the opposition to lighting the streets of London, which was first proposed, and partially carried out, in 1670. He says:- "The cause of darkness was not left undefended. There were fools in that age who opposed the introduction of what was called the new light, as strenuously as fools in our age have opposed the introduction of vaccination and railroads-as strenuously as the fools of an age anterior to the dawn of history, doubtless, opposed the introduction of the plough, and of alphabetical writing."--History of England, vol. i. p. 362. ART. IV.-1. L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. By John Milton. With Thirty Illustrations, designed expressly for the Art- Union of London. 1848. 2. L'Allegro. By John Milton. Illustrated by the Etching Club. London. 1849. 3. The Babes in the Wood. London: Joseph Cundall. 1849. LIKE a written commentary, or as the variation is music, the pictorial illustration of a book should either expound for the student the doubtful or abstruser passages of the text, or carry on the original idea through avenues of richer beauty, "With many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out." It should add either distinctness or grace. It should bear some relation to its subject, throw some light, some splendour, upon it. We may venture to say--an illustration should be illustrative: surely not too great a requisition. Consider what this word illustration means. "To illustrate," says Johnson, who may be sufficient authority in this matter, "is-- "1. to brighten with light; "2. to brighten with honour; "3. to explain, to clear, to elucidate." Shakspere writes a Hamlet or a Lear. Therein are displayed before us the deep workings of the human heart, not "made plain to the meanest capacity," but in language worthy of the theme, plain only to those whose capacity can hold the Poet's thought. It is supposed that all readers are not capable of clearly distinguishing the portraiture; that even the best appreciators may be further enlightened by collaring their several readings of the text; or perhaps it is deemed a worthy task to uplift some crowning honour for the work so much admired: wherefore we have commentaries and pictorial illustrations. But if the commentator prate of some matter altogether foreign to the play, will we for him be any better learners of the poet's depths? or shall we gain by the pictorial notes, if they run counter to the text, or treat but of things which have no place in the argument? It matters not whether perpetrated by word or design, an "illustration" should certainly illustrate; it should brighten with light or honour; or explain, or clear, or elucidate. So far premised, we proceed to review the "illustrations: whose titles we have here prefixed; to endeavour to show where and how they succeed or fail; and, as deeply as we can, to probe the causes of success or failure. First on our list, stands the work published under the superintendence of the Art-Union of London, purporting to be thirty illustrations of L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, by John Milton; published for the elevation of the popular taste. Some of them we will honestly try to describe, "nothing extenuate, nor aught set down in malice." No. 1 has for its theme the following lines:- "Hence, loathed Melancholy, Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born, In Stygian cave forlorn, 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy! Find out some uncouth cell Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings, And the night raven sings; There under ebon shades and low-brow'd rocks, As ragged as thy locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. But come, thou Goddess fair and free, In heaven yclep'd Euphrosyne!" How does the reader imagine these lines are illustrated: i. e., brightened with light and honour, explained and elucidated? Thus:--In the centre of the picture, "Milton" -with one foot on a chair, or station-American Phrenological Journal. A repository of science, Literature, General Intelligence. VOL.XXIV., No.2] New York, August, 1856. [ $1.00 A Year Published by FOWLER AND WELLS, No. 808 Broadway, New York. Contents. A Word for Woman, ... page 25 Origin of Speech - History of Alphabets, ... page 26 Confessions of a Tobacco Chewe - No. I. ... page 27 Fillmore, Millard -- Portrait, Character and Biography, ... page 28 Fremont, J.C. - Portrait, Character and Biography ... page 28 Humanity True to Itself, ... page 31 Mind and Body, ... page 31 Extraordinary Memory, ... page 31 Steam Saw-Mills -- Illustrated, ... page 32 Folley-Cutting Machine, ... page 33 Art of Rising in Life -- No. II. ... page 34 Spirit of the Age, ... page 35 Level Up, not Down, ... page 35 Samuel Rogers -- Two Portraits, Character and Biography, ... page 36 Event of the Month: -- Philadelphia Convention -- California Troubles, ... page 39 Foreign Items -- Personal News -- Business, ... page 40 Notes and Queries -- Literary Notices, ... page 41 Phrenology "When a man properly understands himself, mentally and physically, his road to happiness is smooth, and society has a strong guaranty for his good conduct and usefulness." -- Hon. T.J. Rusk. A WORD FOR WOMAN. Sedentary habits, deficiency of bodily exercise, and improper postures in sitting, are prolific sources of ill health and premature death to thousands of the women of the present day, who, with proper habits, might not only enjoy robust health, and transmit good constitutions to their children, but also live to bring them up, and at [Illustration with caption PROPER MODE OF SITTING.] last, in full maturity of age, sink to the repose of the grave like a glorious setting sun. In the first place, the dress of girls should be loose, in no sense restricting the free action of the muscles and the process of respiration; whale- bones, corsets and shoulder braces, as a support, should be repudiated, and the muscles should be exercised to give them growth and power to brace up the spine. The posture in sitting and standing should be self-sustaining and erect, balanced on the spine as the centre of gravity. Then the motions will be easy and graceful, and all the muscles on every side of the spine called into healthy activity and power, each acting as a brace, like the shrouds that support the mast of a ship. Children at school and at home should be admonished to sit erect; not to lounge, and half double themselves up in deep rocking-chairs and broad sofas. Many, in sitting, bend their bodies in such a way as to cramp themselves at the pit of the stomach and bring their shoulders forward so as to compress their lungs, inducing a torpid [Illustration with caption IMPROPER MODE OF SITTING.] condition of the liver, stomach and lungs, a general depression of vital action if not dyspepsia spinal disease and consumption. A mere glance at the accompanying figures will show the true and the false mode of sitting, and it will not be difficult to infer the unfortunate effects of the one upon health, as it is upon the laws of taste, grace and beauty. 26 AMERICAN PHRENOLOGICAL JOURNAL. [AUG., THE ORIGIN OF SPEECH. ALPHABETS: THEIR HISTORY. THE subjoined paragraphs are taken from the "Introduction" to "Pitman's Manual of Phono- graphy" furnished by Alexander John Ellis, B.S., the distinguished English philologist. They contain much valuable information condensed into a small compass. SPEECH: ITS ORIGIN.--An easy and distinct mode of communicating our thoughts and feel- ings to similarly constituted beings, is one of the first and most pressing wants of social life. Looks, signs, gestures, are not in all cases suf- ficiently expressive, and it would be difficult to imagine that two human beings, whose vocal organs were unimpaired, should pass any con- siderable length of time in each other's com- pany without using articulate sounds as their medium of communication. Indeed, we never find a family of human beings without a common language. As long as intercourse between family and family remains difficult, each family has its own language. Facilitation of inter- course diminishes the number of dialects; and now that travelling is becoming so general, we may look forward, with some degree of hope, to a title when "the whole earth" shall again be "of one language and of one speech." But how- ever great the facility of travelling may become, there will always exist a necessity for a means of communication independent of personal inter- course. To effect this, recourse must necessarily be had to durable, visible signs. The day may be far distant in which a universal language will be realized ; but the means by which it will be expressed, when it has grown into existence, and which, if previously prepared, may have great influence on its formation, may be already de- veloped. ITS REPRESENTATION.--The human organs of speech are the same in all the world, their mode of action is the same, and, therefore, the sounds which they are capable of producing are the same. From these sounds, which, probably, do not exceed one hundred for the expression of all the languages in the world, each group of fami- lies, called a nation, has adopted a comparatively small number to express its own ideas. But the first persons who struck out the noble idea of representing the sounds of speech, were not ac- quainted with any languages beyond their own ; or, at most, beyond the group of languages to which their own belonged ; and they, conse- quently, limited their signs to the expression of those elements only with which they were ac- quainted. Their success was various ; but, in one of the oldest systems of writing arranged on this principle, the Sanscrit, we have an ex- ample of the most perfect attempt at represent- ing the elements of spoken sounds by visible signs that has yet been adopted by a whole na- tion, as the dress of their literature. ALPHABETS: THEIR HISTORY.--The European languages, it is well known, are closely related to the Sanscrit ; and a very slight modification of the Sanscrit characters would have fitted them for the representation of the elements of Euro- pean sounds. But it was not to be. The Euro- peans, probably, left India before the invention of writing; and the idea of representing the elementary sounds of speech by visible signs, seems to have been conveyed to them from a totally different quarter. The languages known as the scientific, namely, the Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic, contain sounds very dissimilar to the European, with, of course, some similar or identical ; and the first imperfect attempt to represent those sounds in a kind of skeleton character, was brought by commerce from Phoe- nicia to Greece. The Greeks adopted the char- acters of the Phoenicians, and as their pronun- ciation of the Phoenician names, for the first two characters in the scheme, was alpha, beta, the term "alphabet" has descended to modern times as the name of any collection of symbols which represent the elements of spoken sounds. That this alphabet did not represent the Phoenician language with great accuracy, is more than pro- bable ; but it certainly represented the Greek language much worse. The Greeks contended themselves with rounding the forms of the let- ters, and adding one or two characters, chiefly contractions, and thus left the alphabet to come down to posterity. But the mischief of the orig- inal error still remains. The Romans adopted the Greekv characters, with a few unimportant variations; notwithstanding which, it remained very inadequate to the representation of Latin ; while the northern nations, who came down like locusts upon the Roman empire, seized upon the Roman letters, among the other spoils, and vio- lently contorted them for the representation of languages which differed most remarkably from the Latin, both in the number and quality of the elementary sounds. Some few (the Sclavonic, for example) were happy enough to escape this second Babel, and rejoice in a convenient alpha- bet of their own. But each nation that did use the Roman alphabet, used it in its own fashion, and the variety of fashions thus introduced, was, as may be supposed, very great. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.--Out of a mixture of Saxon, Danish, French, Latin, and Greek ele- ments arouse our own tongue, harsh and uncouth at first, but gradually winning its way and now bidding fair, by its own inherent merits, by the richness of its literature, and by the extent of our commerce, to become, if not the universal language itself, its immediate progenitor. "The English language," observes the eminent phil- ologist, Prof. Grimm, "possesses a power of ex- pression such as never, perhaps, was attained by any human tongue. Its altogether intellectual and singularly happy foundation and develop- ment, has arisen from a surprising alliance be- tween the two noblest languages of antiquity--the German and Romanesque--the relation of which to each other is well known to be such that the former supplies the material foundation, the latter the abstract notions. Yes, truly, the English language may, with good reason, call itself a universal language, and seems chosen to rule future times, in a still greater degree, in all the corners of the earth. In richness, sound reason, and flexibility, no modern tongue can be compared with it--not even the German, which must shake of many a weakness before it can enter the lists with the English." ITS DEFECTIVE REPRESENTATION. --But into this language, which grew up almost unawares, as a wild plant in a fertile soil, the mode of writing each word was (with, of course, frequent variations) copied from the language from which the word itself was derived ; each of the primi- tive languages using the Roman alphabet after its own fashion. Custom sanctioned the abuse, and at the present day we have a mode of spell- ing so far removed from any apparent attempt to represent the sounds of speech, that we should scarcely have guessed there had ever been any intention of doing so, had we known its history. The English language, although arrived at a high pitch of refinement, is, in its dress, almost in the primitive ideagraphic stage. Its words are symbols of ideas rather than of sounds, and it is only after severe, long, and harassing prac- tice, that we can be sure of associating the right sound with the right sign. The present alpha- bet, considered as the groundwork of a system of orthography in which the phonetic system prevails, is an entire failure. It is defective in means for representing sounds, and the symbols it employs are used in such various senses that the mind of the reader becomes perplexed. Di- graphs must be looked upon as single letters, quite as much as the single letters themselves ; for they have not the value of a combination of letters, but of one letter. Viewed in this light, the English alphabet will be found to consist, not of twenty-six letters only, but of more than two hundred ! and almost every one of these two hundred symbols varies its meaning at times, so that after having learned one meaning for each of them, the reader has not learned all their meanings ; and having learned all their mean- ings, he has no means of knowing which one he is to apply at any time. We violate every prin- ciple of a sound alphabetical system more out- rageously than any nation whatever. Our char- acters do not correspond to our articulations, and our spelling of words cannot be matched for irrecularity and whimsical caprice. [*Worcester's Dictionary*] 1847.] As Elements of National and Individual Prosperity. 507 their money, and thus afford additional facilities to those who wish to borrow, and in this way increase the amount of business, which can be safely transacted upon any given amount of money. Or, upon the credit system, the first may draw his bill of exchange upon the twentieth, and pay such bill to the second, the second to the third, the third to the fourth, and so on to the twentieth. This latter operation is not so common in this country because we have few private bankers, but in England, where there are many, it is a daily practice. Are not the beneficial effects of the banking and credit system here made very manifest, and is it not here shown that specie plays a very subordinate part in the great operations of trade in large cities ? Nay, but it is the same thing in the debts due from one part of the United States to another, and to every foreign country. One merchant in New York is indebted to another in New Orleans, or in London, while with others the case is exactly the reverse, hence arises what is called exchange, and the merchant in New York who has a debtor either in New Orleans or London, sells his draft to the merchant or merchants who is his debtor in either or both places, and thus the debt is cancelled without the intervention of specie, rendering the transmission of specie only necessary to pay any balance of indebtedness. It is therefore clear, that they vast majority of mercantile transactions, both individual and national, are paid without the intervention of the precious metals-- the whole being upheld by a system of mercantile confidence and credit, without which trade and commerce, to any great extent, cannot be carried on. The whole course of trade, commerce, and finance, is so simple, that we feel really unwilling to offer any further explanations of what is well known to every merchant's clerk--and yet, strange to say, attempts are constantly made to throw a mystery around these very simple and plain operations ; and men who know much better, are continually pretending that it is a great thing to be a financier, and to understand the management of concerns of that nature, be they of an individual or of a nation. We freely admit, that there is often great difficulty in the management of both, where there are not competent means to do so. A mercantile house may overtrade, and not have sufficient means of credit or capital to meet its engagements, as may be put to great straits to sustain itself. So a secretary of the treasury or a finance minister, may not provide a sufficient revenue to meet the expenditures of the country, and may have the same difficulty from the same source ; but with the means at hand, in either case, the credit system is so well regulated that no difficulty can occur. Punctuality, accuracy, and means, are all that are necessary to make a good financier ; no one should attempt the duties without a knowledge of his subject, and with such knowledge he will save fewer obstacles in his way, than in almost any other pursuit. Losses will sometimes occur in finance, as in every other vocation, but both individually and nationally, so far as this country is concerned, these losses have more often arisen from want of principle in those who administer them, than from any inherent defect in the system when properly applied. Food, clothing, and habitation, being the real desiderata in civilized life, and specie partially the medium through which they are exchanged, it surely will not require many examples to prove our postulate, that where there is the greatest amount of such of these commodities as are exchanged with foreign nations, there will there be the greatest amount of specie. Great Britain usually creates and exchanges the greatest amount of manufactures, &c. Consequently Great Britain has usually the greatest amount of specie in proportion to her population. But her crops occasionally fall much short of her consumption, and when this happens to such an extent, as to exceed the amount of what she has to sell, the balance is paid in specie. Such is the case at this moment, when, from the famine in Ireland, caused by the failure of the potato crop, and the scarcity of grain in Europe, specie is flowing into this country, because our superabundance of grain enables us to supply her need of that indispensable commodity. We fortunately now manufacture so much clothing, &c., for ourselves, that she cannot pay us in those articles, and therefore the rate of exchange is sufficiently against her to make it profitable to import specie, and hence it flows in upon us, in accordance with the law of trade to which we refer. To show that the amount of specie in 508 A Universal and Critical Dictionary [May, Europe and America is no proof of the amount of property or value in these countries, or indeed in any other, at any specified period, we need only refer to the tables published in our last number, which show the stock of specie in 1810 to have been £380,000,000 sterling ; whereas, in 1830, it was ten per cent. less, say £345,640,780 sterling. Yet who can doubt that the amount in value in Europe and America was vastly greater in 1830 than in 1810. We promised, in the last number of the Review, to show how the receipts and dis- bursements of the public funds may be safely conducted, without the use of the precious metals or the intervention of bank notes, and we propose now to re- deem that promise. First, then, we state the case as it real- ly is, viz: We say that the credit and debit side of the account ought to be so nearly equal, that any balance which may remain in the treasury after the public debts of the year are paid, should be only such as is deemed requisite for a case of emergency, say two, three, or if need be, four millions. Let the receipts then, from whatever sources, exceed the disburse- ments in that amounts. These receipts may be rendered very nearly certain in their amount, and they are always cer- tain in their payments. A certain num- ber of persons are debtors and a certain number creditors. Let Congress then authorize a limited issue of revenue bills, bearing no interest, sufficient to pay the public creditors; let a branch mint be es- tablished in New York, and let these revenue bills or specie be alone receiva- ble for the public dues; let them be re- deemable in specie at the mints in Phila- delphia, New Orleans, and New York, which will always keep them at a par value, and then always taking care that the revenue shall exceed the amount is- sued, and the government will be their own guaranty for the safety of their re- ceipts--and as in the case stated in the fore part of this article, they may pass into as many hands as may be, they will eventually perform the part of a bill ex- change drawn by the government upon the debtor, who will pay the creditor. All that the government have a right to demand, is safety and facility in the collection and disbursement of the public moneys ; and surely nothing can be safer than their own obligations or specie. To demand specie for the liquidation of an account, which is like the bills payable and bills receivable account in a mer- chant's ledger, is an arbitrary exercise of power that never should be submitted to by the people, because, as we have shown, specie pays under the credit sys- tem, with which the people are well con- tended, debts to a much greater amount than its actual value ; and it is a robbery of so much of the material of trade from the trading community to exact it in the payment of dues which, in reality, are nothing, since those who administer the government are nothing but trustees charged with effecting the exchanges in value which take place between the pub- lic debtor and the public creditor. A UNIVERSAL AND CRITICAL DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LAN- GUAGE* THE complier of this work has been conversant, for many years, with Dic- tionaries and the making of Dictionaries. About twenty years since he edited "Johnson's Dictionary, as improved by Todd," &c. While executing this task, he formed the plan of his small work, entitled, "A Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the Eng- lish Language ;" but before completing this latter work, he was induced to make the octavo abridgement of Dr. Webster's American Dictionary of the English lan- guage. Last of all, he has come before the public with the work, the title of which we have given. The remarks *A UNIVERSAL AND CRITICAL DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE; to which are added, Walker's Key to the Pronunciation of Classical and Scripture Proper Names, much enlarged and improved, and a Pronouncing Vocabulary of Modern Geographical Names ; by Joseph E. Worcester. Boston : Wilkins, Carter & Co. 1846.1847.] Of the English Language. 509 which have occurred to us upon the word, we offer without preface under the following heads : 1. Pronunciation.--This subject the complier has painfully elaborated, and the results are placed at the command of the reader. He has not merely given the results of his own investigations and in- quiries, by indicating what he supposes to be the usage of those esteemed as authorities; nor has he, where authori- ties are divided, and, as it were, equally balanced, given the two or three methods, with the authority on which each de- pends; but he has collected and attached to every important word, every method of pronouncing it that has ever been re- commended by a writer, whether great or small, conceited or well-informed, ju- dicious or affected. In this way he has gathered more curious information on this subject than can be found in any other work; which will be highly es- teemed by all literary antiquarians, stu- dents of the "curiosities" of English pronunciation, and hunters after odd ways of affected utterance. We doubt the pro- priety or the good taste, however, of attaching this variety to a dictionary de- signed for common use; a dictionary which, from its size and pretensions, is intended to answer questions directly and briefly to the popular mind, rather than to be a thesaurus of the materials from which opposite usages may be defended, and nice questions may be laboriously adjusted. What is wanted in such a dictionary is the good usage of educated and sensible people in England and Ame- rica--not the utra and impracticable af- fectations of the salon, not the stiff and studied overdoing of the actor, or the professed doctor of pronunciation, not the refined nor the coarse cockneyisms of the cit, not again the negligent and vil- gar provincialisms of Old or New Eng- land; but the actual use of the intelligent and refined who speak the English lan- guage. Greater deference is to be yielded to English usage, under certain circum- stances, than to the American, but not to such an extent as is sometimes claimed ; least of all is that which is not the Eng- lish usage of the truly intelligent and judicious to be insisted on, because it is observed by the affected Englishman. To do this, as was done by Walker, and as is done to a limited extent by Worces- ter, is to commit the mistake of the im- porter of the latest fashion, who gives the coat, the cravat, the hat or the boots, of the London dandy, rather than those of the English gentleman. If we are to err in either direction, we had rather err from provincial ignorance than from mis- takes of affected imitators. Let our errors be those of well-meaning but simple rus- tics, rather than those of the travelled fool. Mr. Worcester is in the main re- liable, though with a little leaning to af- fectation and overdoing. 2. New Words.--Mr. Worcester in- forms us that, "to the words found in Todd's edition of Johnson's dictionary, nearly 27,000 more have been added." We are not surprised to learn this. We should not have been surprised, if we might trust the impression received from a simple inspection of single pages, if he had told us that he had added 50,000. On some of these pages, we are obliged to look with care in order to pick out, here and there, the familiar and well- known words of ordinary conversation and writing. A foreigner who had ob- tained a tolerable knowledge of the Eng- lish language, would be appalled by an inspection of these formidable lines of new words, if he were told that they all yet remained to be mastered. Mr. W. has of course made many valuable addi- tions. The wonderful progress of the physical sciences, with the arts depend- ing on them, since Johnson's day, has called into being, of necessity, thousands of new words. These words, as far as they have passed into the vocabulary of educated men, and occur, however rarely, in books, not technical and purely scien- tific, ought to be defined. With the pro- gress of thought and the wide extension of general intelligence, with the new creation of hosts of writers of peculiar education, habits of thought, sources of illustration, &c., as well as from that liber- ty of creation taken by, and allowed to, men of commanding genius, hundreds of new words, neither technical nor scien- tific, have made for themselves a room and a place in the language. These all should be added. But to give a glossary or catalogue of all the words that have ever been used by those who are claimed as writers of English, or even by those who are acknowledged as English writers, is a liberty a little larger than the largest that should be allowed. Mr. Worcester has followed the largest liberty in this respect, with an ultraism that is quite equal to the spirit of the age. An Eng- lish word in his view, is a word actually used, and even once, by an English510 A Universal and Critical Dictionary [May, writer of any name. It may have been employed by the funny Charles Lamb, who created words for the nonce, for the sake of the fun, and who would no more have used the same word a second time, after the sparkle of its first crystallization was gone, than he would drink stale champagne ; or by the large-mouthed Coleridge, who, by his genius, could make a word of ten syllables appear quite passable, and perhaps as well sounding as the πολυφλοιο Θαλασ- σής of Homer. How would lamb stare to see Notelet and Epistolet, penned by him in a frolic epistle or essay--just for the fun of the thing--paraded like a regular soldier in a stiff line of dictionary array, and enlisted for life to do duty in the service of the King's English. Even Coleridge, although not easily frightened at any great word, would stand aghast at Impossibilification and Deathify, intro- duced by Worcester and credited to him- self Then we have such words as these: Devilet, Fiddle-faddlen, because the Quarterly Review was so silly as to make it possible for Mr. Worcester to add two towards his 27,000. Then we have To Facsimile, Rumgumtious, Cir- cumbendibus, Cantankerous, Dandify, Dirt-Pie, Defectionist, Dyssillabification, and Dissylabify. Then of English provin- cial and vulgar words: Scrauky, Scriggle, Scription, Scruff, Shopocracy, Squire- archy, Cutter, Dandyze. Were any pos- sible reason to be given for the intro- duction of these, and hundreds of words like them, except that it enables the pub- lisher of the book to talk of additional words by the thousand, there would be no occation for our criticism. But there being no other cause conceivable, we think it de- serves fairly to be set down under one of the arts of making a book sell. We would suggest to Mr. Worcester, therefore, the new word, Book-craft, orDictionary- craft, and a description of the process, as one of the definitions of the process, as one of the definitions of the word. Such a writer as Carlyle would be a for- tune to the makers and publishers of dic- tionaries, if dictionaries are to be made on this principle. We would suggest a pen- sion to him for his services in this re- spect. It deserves to be noticed also, by those who have so freely complained of Web- ster for his corruption of the English language, by recognizing so many new words, that in this respect the little finger of Mr. Worcester is thicket than the loins of Dr. Webster. Where Dr. Web- ster introduced ten of these nova verba, Mr. Worcester has invested a hundred with the privileges of citizenship. 3. Definitions.--Under this head, Mr. Worcester is very unequal. The defini- tions are usually correct, and under most words he gives most of the senses of which the word is capable and in which it is used. But the words are defined more usually by a synonyme than by descriptions, and synonymes and descrip- tions are strangely huddled together, with less regard to order than is desirable, and with little attention to the develop- ment of the meaning. All words have a primary and original sense, which is capable of being expressed by a definition that is logical. From this original mean- ing, the desired signification may be traced ; and often, in the order of the origin and growth of each, to the perfec- tion of a definition, it is necessary that the meaning be clearly conceived, then that it be precisely expressed, and in such a way that the description will be true of this word, and of no other words ; and not that while it is true of this word, it is also true of many others ; and last of all, that its variety of meanings be arranged according to the chronological and philo- sophical order of their development. It is owing to the fact, that Dr. Webster proposed to himself the ideal of a defini- tion, that his dictionary so far surpasses every other ; and it is this that has en- abled it to fight its own way against some well-founded and more prejudiced oppo- sition. We are impressed with the de- ficiencies of Mr. Worcester, when tested by this ideal, on a first and hasty glance at the work. We have had it confirmed by the testimony of an intelligent for- eigner, very familiar with languages, and who has been in the habit of con- sulting dictionaries to gain clear and dis- criminating knowledge of words ; and we were more deeply impressed with the deficiency when we compared a few words, selected at hazard from Worcester and Webster, and saw the contrast be- tween the definitions. Accuracy of de- finition is essential to accuracy of thought. It exerts an important influence, also, on truth and honesty of character. Honest men are proverbially clear in their defini- tions. Demagogues and sophists rejoice in confusion of terms, and in vagueness of thoughts, words, definition, propositions and reasonings. It ought to be stated that Mr. Worcester expressly affirms that, "with respect to Webster's Diction-1847.] Of the English Language. 511 ary, which the compiler several years since aoridged, he is not aware of having taken a single word, or the definition of a word, from that work, in the prepara- tion of this." We think his work would have been improved had he allowed him- self a little greater liberty. We specify the following words as erroneously defined : Coupon is defined "a dividend in a public fund or joint-stock." The Dic- tionary of the Academy gives no such sense, but defines the word is it is used in England and this country, for small orinted certificates of interest upon stocks, bonds, &c., which are cut off from time to time, to be presented for payment. Hospice--" A sort of hospital for monks." It is a religious establishment in the passes of the Alps, for the enter- tainment of travellers without expense. Perchloride--" A compound of chlorine with phosphorus." A perchloride of gold would therefore be a compound of chlo- rine, phosphorus and gold. We need not say that a perchloride is a compound of chlorine with any substance, in which chlorine is combined in its highest pos- sible proportion. Post-note--After giving the true sense of the word, Mr. W. adds another--"a cash-note to be sent by post"--giving Bouvier as authority. We doubt whether the word is ever used in this sense, or whether Bouvier has justified it. The definition in his Law-Dictionary contains nothing of the kind. We give also several instances of mere transcription, with manifest neglect to verify the thing transferred--sometimes doing injustice to the authority from whom the definition purports to have been de- rived, and in some instances contradict- ing himself under different heads. Heptandrian--"Seven-fold masculine, or having seven stamens; heptandrous ;" giving Lindley for his authority. The termination in ian, in botany, was pro- posed by Dr. Webster, but never adopted by botanists. We find no such word in Lindley as heptandrian, and certainly he never gave it the definition, "seven-fold masculine." In like manner he gives Hexagynian--"six-fold feminine, or hav- ing six pistils ;" ascribed also to Lindley. Hexandrian is ascribed to Pen. Cy- clopedia. Hexandrous, and not Hexan- drian, is given under the article Botany. Dodecandrian, Dodecagynian, are given as " twelve-fold masculine" and " twelve- fold deminine," on the authority of Smart, VOL. V.--NO. V. 34 and he is probably entitled to the honor of this very original definition. Seasonless, he derives from Byron-- " having no seasons ; unseasonably." The last definition is wholly aside from Byron's meaning, and defines an adjective by an adverb. Euphuism, Euphuist--Euphuism is defined by Euphemism ! ! and Euphem- ism by Euphuism ; and the Edinburgh Review and Scott are given as authorities. The editor certainly mistook the mean- ing of one of these words, if he had a clear view of either. Did he verify his mistake by a reference to his authorities? Garglion is given, on the authority of Quincy, as " an exudation from a bruise which indurates into a hard tumor." Quincy has no such word, nor is there any such in the language, and it is obvi- ous that somebody, from whom Mr. Worcester took the word, wrote gar- glion for ganglion. Fortalice is defined as a fortress, a cita- del ; and yet fortallage is defined "a little fort, a block-house," with the remark, " same as fortalice." If he had looked into Old Mortality, he would have found the fortalice of Scott was not the citadel, but an outwork. Edge (adjec.) and Edge-rail--The first is defined, "applied to a railroad in which the carriages run upon rails or edges of rails, as in common railroads." The second : "An iron bar or rail, upon which the wheels of a railroad can re- volve, a flange being formed upon the inner edge of the rail, projecting about an inch, in order to prevent the wheels from sliding off." The two roads, here de- scribed, are very different. Gnomiometrical seems to have been copied blindly from Smart, for goniomet- rical, as the definition plainly shows the word to be. Fluvialist is defined, "one who treats of rivers." This word, in Geology, pro- perly denotes one who accounts for the origin or certain strata, in a peculiar way. Ephah is defined to be 15 cubic inches, which would be less than half a pint, and yet a Hin, which is the tenth of an Ephah, is defined as five quarts. The fact is that the Ephah contains, accord- ing to the lowest computation, nearly a bushel, and according to Gesenius, almost a bushel and a half, of 2,600 Paris inches. Homer is defined, "a Hebrew measure, of about 3 pints." It was the largest Hebrew measure, containing 10 baths, as 512 A Universal Dictionary of the English Language. [May, stated in the Scriptures, or more than 70 gallons. Kraal is "a rude hut or cabin of Hot- tentots, with conical or round tops." It is a village of such huts, never a single one. Saddle-cloth is defined, "A cover for saddle :" if it ever means this, which we question, this is not the more common signification. Reformed is vaguely and imperfectly defined. The Reformed Churches of the continent were a large body of churches, embracing the Swiss, the Dutch, the French, and other communions which separated from Luther on the subject of the sacramental presence. The words Ecbatic and Telic are de- fined in a most vague and imperfect way. As applied to transitional particles, espe- cially in sacred interpretation, they have a forcible and peculiar use, which is only hinted at, and seems not to have been distinctly conceived. Sophister is defined, "An undergra- duate." But a freshman in the English university is also an undergraduate, but not a sophister. Sophist is defined, as one of its mean- ings, "An undergratuate at the Univer- sity of Cambridge, England ; a sophister." Is sophist ever used in this sense? Soph. is the usual abbreviation. Shingle is defined, "A thin board to cover houses ; a sort of tiling." This was designed for English readers, pro- bably. Neology--"A term applied to a new system of interpretation of the Scriptures in Germany." How much information does this convey? Why not tell what system of interpretation? Livery Men, in London, is defined, "A number of men belonging to the freemen of the ninety-one companies," &c. Why so vague? Instances like these might be given to an unlimited extent. Were we to describe this dictionary by its general principle or spirit, we should say it was composed on the principle of aggregation rather than on that of thor- ough selection and elaboration. This ap- pears in the introduction; in the curious catalogue of every variety of dictionary, cyclopedia, &c. ; in the gathering of all kinds of words, good, bad and indif- ferent; in the exhibition of every possi- ble way in which these words have been pronounced ; in the sweeping together of definitions, particularly in science tech- nology, with too little discrimination of authorities and too little revision of the information which they furnish. Such a method of making a book is far more convenient for the writer, than it is use- ful for the reader. The compiler pre- sents a greater array of learning, and avoids much responsibility. His author- ities are always presented, and his own opinion is not likely to be called in ques- tion, because he rarely uses that opinion. He will be likely to offend no party, be- cause he takes no ground. It is rather a favorite way of making books in this country, but it is not the way to bring out useful and lasting results : least of all will it have any good influence in making more pure and accurate the pre- vailing use of language. We observe that this dictionary is no- ticed with favor by many who take oc- casion to speak slightingly of Dr. Web- ster; and in one or two instances, such a notice has been made the vehicle of an indiscriminate and ferocious attack on the venerable lexicographer. It is natural and fair that the friends of Mr. Worces- ter, and Mr. Worcester himself, should set forth the particulars in which his work may be contrasted with Webster's, to his own advantage; but the mere as- sertion that Worcester is conservative, with no specification of the points of su- periority does little credit to the cause which it is designed to serve. The peculiarity of Mr .Webster which has excited so much odium was his ortho- graphy. This has created and aggravat- ed a prejudice which the friends of rival works know how to use his disadvant- age. We by no means approve of Dr. Webster's way of spelling certain words in the language. The reasons urged in their favor we think insufficient, and the taste that urged them we deem still more defective. Other improvements, which respect certain classes of words, we think were demanded by the condition of usage, and were indicated by a strong tendency of the language towards their adoption. The cry against innovation is the easiest of all cries to raise. To protest against any sacrilegious innovation upon the sacred spelling of our forefathers has a look of profound and tender veneration. It is only to be regretted that those per- sons who are zealous against every re- form do not recollect that it is not many decades of years since our forefathers had any fixed way of spelling at all ; and that since the publication of Johnson's dictionary the tendency towards simplifi-1847.] Music in New York. 513 cation had wrought manifold more nu- merous changes than Dr. Webster pro- posed ; and that most of the changes which he proposed were founded in rea- son, and had brought themselves almost into being. The termination ter had been gradually taking the place of tre in that class of words derived from the French. Dr. Webster finished the change by mak- ing all that class of words uniform in their termination. The dropping of the u out of honour and similar words, about 20 in all, was but fixing a change that had been carried into effect in quite a nu- merous class ; and so of other changes. Those men who laud the venerable Eng- lish of the best writers, seem not to be conscious that of all the anomalous things under the heavens, the most irregular, arbitrary and labyrinthine is the English orthography to a student of our language from the continent. While they are scolding about Webster they seem to be profoundly ignorant that the German lan- guage is continually undergoing chances ten-fold more numerous and vital in its spelling, its structure, and by the com- mon consent of the learned; and yet the rugged old version of Luther's Bible is just as dear to the learned and the un- learned as ever--that the French Acade- my are continually giving laws to the language of la belle France. But in re- spect of the English language, say they, the thing is not to be thought of. The English of Johnson is good enough for us, say these men, and the venerable old wells of English undefiled are not to be intermeddled with. Baxter, Taylor, Shak- speare, &c., are to be followed, spelling and all, thought they had no fixed spelling to be followed. And so because a most laborious, and in most respects most thorough and judicious lexicographer, was a little deficient in taste, or a little too pertinacious in his own opinion in respect to some few scores of words, all of whose worst changes were pronounced reasonable by Germans, there are many who cast out his name, despise his aid, and have neither sense nor magnanimity enough to honor to his many and un- matched excellences. This outcry re- sembles too much the John Bullism that cleaves to its rotten boroughs, and raises the cry of the throne and the altar are in danger, if but one rook is driven out of his undisturbed abode by the hand of in- novation. The forthcoming edition of Webster's dictionary will, we are quite sure, from the character and taste of its editor, be freed from those peculiarities in ortho- graphy which have given just offense, as well as be greatly improved in respect to the fullness and accuracy of the exhibition of the pronunciation. The definitions, now by far the most perfect and satisfactory that are to be found, and, beyond compari- son, surpassing those of any other Eng- lish dictionary, will be thoroughly revised and enriched, we are sure, from what we know of the zeal and diligence of the gentleman to whose care it is entrusted. It may not and will not be all that is to be desired, especially in etymology, but we are greatly mistaken if it will not be received with marked and increasing favor in this country and in England. MUSIC IN NEW YORK THE past month has been very fruitful of good singing, and, to some extent, of good music; and hence a little gossip respecting these matters may give piquan- cy to the more solid food we set before our readers in graver articles. But as it will not do to talk entirely at random, as Montaigne does, and Ralph Waldo Emer- son tries to do, we must take up some little thread or threads, and string our thoughts thereupon, keeping up also a relation among them of precession and succession. Why will not this very distinction, which we have just made, between sing- ing and music suffice? It seems a very plain one, but to listen to the conversa- tion of our musical and music-loving peo- ple, one would think it none too clear. Here, for example, we have just had a good opera company, twice a week or more, all winter ; Benedetti, Pico, Barili, Beneventano, Sanquirico, with a chorus, have sung ; a large orchestra have fiddled and blown--all has been very good in- deed. But the music they have given us has not been worth the pains, and many514 Music in New York. [May, give Donizetti, Coppola, and Verdi credit for what is due chiefly to the names of the singers and players. Many become en- thusiastic admirers of Italian music, and presume to have fixed opinions on a sub- ject they never studied; knowing music as the Prince Benbenin-bonbobbin knew books "without ever having read"--and because they have heard weak music well sung, and were pleased, fancy it was the music itself that pleased them. Now, that they should be pleased, and should wish to hear more of the same sort that has pleased them, is what no one can have the least disposition to find fault with. But when they affect to be of the dilletanti, and give out judgments, they go too far, and become like the "self-taught ;" i. e. those who get on by dint of ignorance, and resemble the street musicians whom lovers of comfort pay to be still ; who put themselves up by mak- ing all sensible educated persons desire to put them down. There is no royal road to learning, and one cannot, or should not, form con- clusions from too narrow an induction. It would be well if hundreds, who speak positively about music, would consider how much they opinions are really worth. They have not studied composi- tion, not read criticism, not played or sung much ; how can they tell, because they have heard Donizetti & Co. present- ed by a good company, and not heard much else, that there is no music in the world that comes up to theirs? They cannot. It is impossible. Therefore, when they presume to make the old comparison between German and Italian music, and to decide dogmatically that the modern Italian is the greatest ever written, and the only music worth hearing, their opinions are not entitled to much weight. And, as in all questions of art, and especially the musical art, the feelings are very strongly enlisted, and disputers, whether right or wrong, throw the whole force of their will into the matter, it ought not to have much influ- ence upon us when we hear these opin- ions uttered and adhered to with great prejudice, heat, and excitement. To one who looks to knowledge as the basis of opinion, and does not go by local autho- rity--who actually studies music, reads the best authors, and plays well enough to read great compositions for himself--it does not. His musical opinions are like his literary ones ; he has this great writ- ers whom he looks up to with reverence, and his minor ones whom he recurs to with pleasure ; his soul admits the vari- ous forms of genius through all peculiar- ities and nationalities. With him the great art of MUSIC stands behind all, and abstracted from all personal commixture ; he is not a member of any clique or par- ty ; he goes not easily into furores. He is overwhelmed by no particular style, but loves them all with differences-- Handel best of any, or Mozart, or Beet- hoven, (for who could ever decide which was the greatest in art, or in poetry ;) he has a wide range, from Bach to Bellini, and since it is his object to find out excel- lence, he can look scarcely anywhere all through, without discovering at least some degree of it. Suppose, for example, such a student (we are not personating ourself, but our ideal of a genuine musi- cal scholar) were to attempt to make the comparison between German and Italian music, let us endeavor to fancy how he would write. Might he not mke some- thing such a comparison as the follow-ing? The German music is the production of a nation whose chief characteristic is a deep enthusiasm, strong passion con- tending with a heavy temperament, and developing itself, not in physical vivaci- ty, but in mental, and hence tending to- wards mysticism. The brooding over sor- row till it becomes grief unutterable, the slow consuming fire, the morbid fancy, the reflective power that wanders away into the dim twilight of consciousness-- all that unwieldly vigor that wastes it- self in the mazes of metaphysics, or ac- cumulates unmanageable stores of learn- ing, that masters by its patient, inflexible perseverance, whole libraries, or acquires skill in the most difficult and minutely la- borious of the arts--these are the main quali- ties which distinguish the Almain above all other races. These qualities shine through his music and make it like him- self, profoundly learned, passionate, en- thusiastic, mystical. There is no ques- tion but that for strength, depth, hidden tenderness, and indeed for all that makes music great, the German school can pro- duce examples of the greatest music ever written ; at the same time, if we take the whole mass of their music, there can be as little question that a great deal of it is dry, hard, and frequently unintelligible. Handel was an old Italian German ; he studied in Italy and lived in England ; his music was touched with the flowing vocal Italian character, but he was one ofHOW DICTIONARIES ARE MADE. ------ The German "Worterbuch." ------ The Pall Mall Gazette says: The great "Worterbuch," or dictionary the German language, set on foot by the brothers Grimm, has now reached about the midway of its course towards completion. It is seventeen years since the first instalment appeared, and its progress has been carried on continuously and methodically ever since. The work itself forms an important era, not only in the history of German literature, but in that of other European nations also; and it is not uninteresting to glance back over some particulars of its origin and execution, as we find them stated in a recent number of the German periodical, the Gartenlaube. In 1837 seven professors of Gottingen University had to give up their chairs and quit the territories of Hanover on account of the part they took in upholding the constitution against the arbitrary measures of King Ernest. Among these were Jacob and William Grimm, both deeply skilled student in philological lore, whose researches had led them into much curious discovery concerning the antiquities of the German language. The leisure which was now thrust upon them found them happily provided with a subject of literary interest which their professional duties would never have left them time to prosecute. At the suggestion of the publishing firm of Wiedmann, they undertook the compilation of an exhaustive dictionary, which was to embrace the history of every word used in German literature since the time of Luther inclusive, giving its origin, its derivation, and its different applications and modifications as the individual mind of different writers or the changes of custom may have produced them; the terminus ad quem of the range of inquiry being fixed at the end of the third decade of the present century. Some years after their expulsion from Hanover the King of Prussia gave the brothers [??????????????] in the Academy of Sciences of Berlin; and the first instalment of their dictionary, which was published in 1852, had thus the advantage of appearing with more honor than if it had issued from their comparative retirement at Cassel. both these had given strong signs of recalcitration against the revolutionary excesses into which their party was driving them. One very notable sign of the degree to which disintegration has reached, and the temper in which the violent leaders, who have taken up the reins of power which the original chiefs threw up, is in the incessant attacks of which Chief Justice Chase, once the most popular of Radicals, contesting with Mr. Lincoln for supremacy within the party, when Lincoln was at the height of his influence, is made the object in Radical journals. The last onset is by an attack from various quarters in the East and West on the judicial opinion which the Judge lately gave in the Caesar Griffin case, at Richmond, Va. He decided that a sentence pronounced by Judge Sheffey on a negro criminal, convicted for murder, was not void because Judge Sheffey is liable to disqualification for acting as judge by the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution, and that the disqualifications of that amendment are not enforceable against any individual until legislation has been provided by Congress. Briefly, the amendment creates a liability to disqualification which can be applied only to facts, judicially determined, and Congress has not provided the "appropriate legislation," for which the amendment itself confers a specific power with that distinct purpose. The disqualification is an infliction for punishment, and every person liable to the accusation is entitled to the benefits of presumed innocence, unless the fact is established by proof. In the interim, all his acts in any office which he held by a good commission, are valid until the established disqualification works a disability. The Judge had other grounds for the support of his decisions; but these constitute his great offence in the eyes of the Radicals. They hold that, on the day of the promulgation of the first ratification of the amendment, every man who might be proved to be disqualified ceased to be legally in office, and all his acts in that capacity were null thereafter. On this ground they claimed that the negro murderer should go free, because Judge Sheffey could be shown to be liable to this disenabling punishment. And on this, when Judge Chase overruled this plea, they obtained from the Radical Governor Wells a pardon for the red-handed murderer. And for this they have been denouncing Judge Chase as a political renegade, who, from motives of disappointed ambition, has shown his willingness to defeat the wishes of the Republican party; and, as one of the assailants expresses it, to cheat them out of the fruits of their political victory. Some of them accuse him of a criminal design to suspend the constitution, on motives springing entirely out of rancorous personal piques! to such vindictive assaults the foremost man of brains in the Republican party of 1861 is exposed, by the transmuted Republicanism of [18??], for entertaining opinions which, to plain understandings, have in them such essential and undeniable equity, that any construction by legal subtleties, which would establish any other mode of view, must instantly be felt as a perversion which no honest legislature could have intended to countenance. The clamor against the Judge rises to a height of positive absurdity when it is noted that what he points out as a defect in the execatory application of the amendment springs from the neglect of those who passed it to perfect it by legislation. They could in any half hour have made a law for summarily trying the qualifications, under the amendment, of any person holding office. This would have shortened the period for which hungry expectants must now wait for the vacancies for which their longing eyes are being strained. The next Congress, stimulated to the action, can go a great way to expedite and simplify the process, and the victors may then enter into unobstructed possession of the spoils. There is nothing in Judge Chase's opinion which obstructs them in this, and all the constitutional amendment authorizes doing will be in full play. What it does not authorize them to do, and what other yet unrepealed parts of the Constitution prohibit them from doing, is the carrying out of the demands of these clamorous demagogues, that punishment for a political offence shall be inflicted before conviction, and that it shall reach, through the accused, to persons, classes, and communities, invalidating official acts towards those who have had no part in the fault of the offender or power to evade the consequences. The clamors against Judge Chase for these decisions are purely factitious and insincere. At the same time the doctrine is set up that the disfranchising section executes itself virtually without further legislation. The section about representation, in the same amendment, is allowed to pass over until legislation gives it effect. The new rule would exclude parts of the representation of Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland, in the proportion of the negroes therein who are not permitted to vote; but nobody asserts the power of reducing them until "appropriate legislation" has provided a census, and established the facts on which the exclusion is based. The principle is the same in both cases, while party rancor, quietly acquiescing in one, makes fierce assaults on the Judge in the other. It is the profligate inconsistency of angry partisanship, and mainly important as a sign of the disintegration going on in the Republican party, and of the predominance in it of a violent temper--the fruit of rage and fear--which presages its own overthrow by marking out for proscription the men who have given it character and are now shrinking from its excesses. ------- FOREIGN BONDHOLDERS IN TROUBLE. If we are to believe European journals, the recent eagerness abroad to invest in foreign securities may be followed by a panic. Several governments who have obtained good round sums in cash from English capitalists have repudiated their obligations altogether; others have temporarily suspended the payment of interest on debt; others have heavily taxed their bonds; and some, for example Russia, are borrowing at such a rate that a catastrophe may be confidently looked for. Austria has recently passed a law ordaining the compulsory conversion of the national debt into bonds of a uniform character-- that is, money which was borrowed at a high rate of interest shall be reduced to a denomination paying but a low rate. The foreign holders have vainly appealed for exemption from this measure. Lord Clarendeon has informed the Committee of Foreign Bondholders that the Austrian Government have declared their inability to depart, in favor of foreign holders of Austrian bonds, from the law imposing the compulsory conversion of the debt, "since it is imperative on the Government to utilize every source of revenue in order to bring the country through its pecuniary embarrassments." The unfortunate committee have resolved to try further agitation. pugnant to operators than the demand for increased pay. They characterize the proposition as a desire on the part of the miners to become partners in the shipping and sale of coal; sooner than which some operators declare their mines may remain unworked the entire year. We learn from various points in the coal regions that the miners are almost daily holding meetings, formal and informal, at which the manifestations are more and more decided to adhere to their demands on the operators. The feeling between the two interests, the miners and the operators, whatever they may have been at the beginning, are now antagonistic and steadily widening. Coal, in this city and at all the great centres, is becoming scarce, and some apprehension is arising with those largely engaged in manufacturing, and compelled to use anthracite coal, whether they will not have to stop their works. In evidence of this scarcity of fuel and difficulty of obtaining it in the coal regions, we hear of instances of coal being freighted back on the Reading Railroad from its shipping point on the Delaware, to maintain in operation works on its line. Those manufacturers who can use soft coal are supplying themselves from Baltimore, Georgetown, and elsewhere, with that article, and quite a shipping trade has sprung up in supplying it in the immediate vicinity of anthracite production. This is, indeed, "carrying coals to Newcastle." The demand for domestic use continues very slack. Were it otherwise, a material advance in prices could scarcely be avoided. Consumers are wisely, as is now thought, awaiting an early resumption of mining, which just now is not as promising as we could desire. The coal miners at Scranton and Hyde Park, which did not, for some weeks after the suspension, join in the movement, are now out with rest, and, in the language of the Scranton Republican, "have fairly locked horns with the companies on the question of basis, and the struggle is now one of endurance. The companies have in the most positive terms refused to agree to any basis--the men now unaimously pledge themselves to stay out until a basis is fixed." The whole production of anthracite coal last week was but 80,000 tons, and the surplus production for the year only 150,000 tons to same date last year. The Pennsylvania Coal Company and the Lykens' Valley only are at work. The papers published in the Schuylkill, the Lehigh, and Wyoming regions, and which are supposed to be in the interest of the miners as well as of the trade generally, are urging the miners to fix an early day for the resumption of labor, not later than next week. The coal operators in the Schuylkill region have submitted a proposition to the miners, which, the Pottsville Journal says, "if the Miners' Association now refuse to meet, will place them clearly in the wrong." The Hyde Park miners have, in public meeting, resolved "not to go to work until authorized by the General council of the Anthracite Coal Fields." While miners here are standing idle, the place of Pennsylvania coal is being supplied by the soft coal of Maryland, operators are forced to maintain heavy mining expenses without any return, and our carrying companies are wearing out faster, bu rust than by productive use, to the advantage of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, which is reported doing a larger coal trade than ever before. Thus the direct loss to those in the trade, miners, operators, and carrying companies, is seen to be large and ineffectual of any corresponding good, while to consumers the effect promises to be even more serious.-- Philadelphia Ledger. -------- TROUBLE IN MEXICO. -------- Mexico is still agitated by a host of questions, all of which bristle with dangers to the peace, order, and good government of the nation. In Congress an attempt has been made to impeach the judges of the Superior Court, which produced an angry and protracted debate. The friends of the judges claim that Congress has no such power as that assumed; that the judiciary is above and superior to the legislative branch of the Government; and proclaim that impeachment could not be enforced; that the judges would resist the decree and appeal to the people for protection. This is a complicated matter, and in all probability Congress will not push the affair to its furthermost point. Another cause of disturbance arises from the position occupied by General Corrabias on the foreign loan question. He maintains that all treaties made with England, Spain, and France were annulled by their intervention with Mexico, and that new arrangements are necessary before the payment of the foreign loan can be considered. This position alarms the holders of the loan, and they are pressing the consuls of the specified nations to demand an explanation of President Juarez as to the views of the Government upon this financial matter. Joined to these disturbing causes is the fact that many of the States have openly refused to enforce the law recently passed by Congress for the suppression of party demonstrations, holding that the people have an inalienable right to assemble and consider, discuss and determine their course in relation to public questions. As the States will not interfere in aid of the Congressional enactment, of course meetings will be held as usual, and the masses informed as to the acts, doings, and designs of their leaders. In addition to these troublesome manifestations, the annexation fever still rages with unabated fierceness in Northwestern Mexico. Sonora, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, and Lower California claim that they would be far better off in the American Republic than in the Mexican. They insist that their commerce would be increased, their rich minerals worked, their agriculture improved, their desert places made to blossom as the rose, and for these reasons are constantly tugging at the chain which binds them to the central government. Mexico is fearfully demoralized, and the worst has not yet come. --------- With the coming of the summer, grass and flowers, the untutored Lo has gone cheerfully to work on the war path again, scalping women and children and destroying property. Meanwhile, what has become of the Quakers who were to oil these troubled waters and talk him into peaceful submission? It is now two months since they started for their happy hunting grounds out West, and they should have been at the front long ago. Why does friend Broadbrim take it so leisurely? It cannot be from any lack of faith in his policy; if so, he will have to admit his entire religious system an error. Candidly, we do not like this delay. Since the Government has decided in favor of Broadbrim's policy, let us try Brodbrim as soon as possible, so that, in case of failure, we can relapse back to bullets before he gets through with his pleasant pastime. Quakers to the front.--N. O. Times. --------- Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.