yet, with these stimulants to learning, the Chinese are remarkable for their ignorance: civilisation among them has been stationary for thousands of years. This may be attributed as much to their written language, which, as just noticed, opposes considerable obstacles to the communication of ideas and to the operations of the mind, as to their stinted system of education, which calls into activity only the faculty of memory, and makes learning consist of very little more than repeating the writings of Confucius.

The want of correspondence between the spoken and the written languages of China makes them really two distinct idioms. The Chinese student who learns to read and write receives no assistance from his previous knowledge of the spoken words: a foreigner is completely on a par with him in this study. Moreover, as each word is a distinct character, there is necessarily great labour and perplexity in distinguishing and recollecting these numerous signs. No more than half a dozen of them are formed of a single line; and many are so complicated as to contain forty, fifty, and even more strokes. Such is the difficulty of the art of reading in the Chinese language, that not less than eight or nine years are required to learn to read and understand books which treat of the most familiar subjects. Double that time is hardly sufficient for gaining a mastery of the ten or twelve thousand characters supposed to be requisite for ordinary social intercourse. Another great disadvantage which results from the absence of a written language representing the spoken, is the variability to which the pronunciation is therefrom liable. The inhabitants of the different provinces of China do not always comprehend one another, in consequence of the changes which oral communication is constantly undergoing in each.

SECT. VII. DIFFERENT ALPHABETS AND MODES OF WRITING.

It is fortunate for the progress of civilisation, that ideographical symbols and characters have been almost universally discarded. The difficulty with which they are formed, and the considerable space occupied by them in expressing even the simplest idea, led men to seek for a simpler system of writing. This system was found in the phonographic letters of the alphabet. But it is probable that these analytical signs of speech were not invented at once, and that the pronunciation was but gradually decomposed into its primary elements, syllabic charac

ters having served as an intermediate stage. The Ethiopian and several Asiatic languages offer examples of the written syllabic signs. The Hebrew consonants, which are used separately from vowels, may be considered as syllabic characters. The Cherokee alphabet, invented thirty years ago by Sequoyah, a North American Indian, presents another example of this phonographic system. The written signs of this modern Cadmus amount to eighty-five, which are syllabic, with the exception of six, representing five vowel-sounds, and the simple articulation s. Let us here pay our tribute of admiration to this untutored genius, to this great benefactor of the Cherokees, whom he has raised to a position unattained by any other Indian tribe, and whom he has made a reading and intellectual nation.

The elementary sounds and articulations of all languages, do not, perhaps, amount to more than sixty, including the marked intonations of the same sounds, as in French, a and â, o and ô, and the different degrees of force of the same articulations, as b and p, d and t, &c. Sixty elementary phonographic characters may, therefore, variously combined, suffice to represent the articulate words of all languages, whereas 100,000 ideographical symbols are barely adequate to express the ideas of one nation. It would be a noble undertaking, and one worthy of a philanthropist familiarised with the articulate language of China, to adapt the Roman alphabetical characters and Greek accents to the representation of its vocal elements. Let the example of Sequoyah be profitable to the interesting inhabitants of that country.

This task presents no very great difficulty, as the principles on which it can be effected are now well understood. The various systems of stenography adopted in Europe, and, especially, the phonetic short-hand, lately introduced in this country by Mr. Pitman, prove the possibility of a new mode of writing being practised concurrently with one long established. The examples of the Coreans and Tibetians, who possess a phonographic alphabet, conjointly with the Chinese ideographic characters, are other striking precedents for the practicability of the change we suggest. The unbounded benefit which would accrue from the alphabetical representation of the Chinese articulate tongue, both to China and to the Western world, would probably induce the Chinese to receive it favourably, in spite of their attachment to old practices; whilst it would stimulate the Europeans, and, especially the Christian missionaries who reside in that country,

to use their utmost energy in propagating it among the Chinese population.

The Roman character, as now generally used in Europe, has been lately adopted by a few German writers in preference to the uncouth Gothic. If all Germans would follow this example, their language would perhaps be learned by foreigners more extensively than it now is. It is to be wished that the Roman alphabet were also applied to the writing of the Oriental languages; for their complicated characters are a great obstacle to their being generally studied. The advantages of such a change would not be confined to learners, missionaries, or travellers: it would afford inducements and facilities to the different nations of Asia to acquire each other's language, and to study our European literature and civilisation. The practicability of such an innovation is proved by precedents; and, in addition to those already noticed, we may mention the Egyptians, who passed from ideographic to phonographic characters. A change also took place in former times among the nations of Europe, who surrendered their original alphabet for that of Rome. The Assamese, in Hindostan, have but lately discarded their own alphabet for the Bengalese; and the introduction, some years since, of the Roman characters into India, has met with unexampled success. In Calcutta, Delhi, and other places, Europeans, as well as Hindoo and Mahomedan priests, are at the present day engaged in publishing elementary books in these characters. Their universal use would greatly tend to break down those barriers in language which perpetuate ignorance, prejudice, and disunion among nations.*

It is impossible to determine in a positive manner when and where the miraculous invention of the alphabet originated: the honour of its birth-place has been claimed by many nations. Among those which seem to have the greatest right to it, the learned diversely name Egypt, Phenicia, and India,—countries in which civilisation appears to have been of great antiquity. The most ancient alphabetical record of which we have as yet any knowledge, is the Pentateuch of Moses, written shortly after the departure from Egypt. This mode of writing, however, must have been in existence before the time of Moses; for he speaks of it as of a thing well known and in familiar use in his time. Most languages differ in the form and number of their letters;

* See, on this subject, C. F. Volney's L'Alphabet Européen appliqué aux Langues Asiatiques.

but, notwithstanding this difference, the order which generally prevails in their alphabetical arrangement, and the analogy perceivable in their form, power, or names, seem to prove that they had one common origin. The Roman alphabet, which has been adopted in Europe, has a close affinity to the Greek, and the names of the Greek letters are easily recognised in those of the Hebrew characters, which bear themselves a close resemblance to those of many Eastern languages.

The Greeks, about 1500 years before the Christian era, received from Cadmus only 16 characters; but they afterwards successively added 8 at different periods, forming thus 24 characters, of which the Greek alphabet has consisted ever since. In some languages the number of letters is greater: the English, French, German, and Spanish have 26;* the Arabic has 28; the Persian, 32; the Turkish, 33; the Russian, 35; the Sanskrit, 50. In others, it is less: the Latin before Ramus, who introduced j and v, had 23 letters; three of which, k, y, and z, were used only in words adopted from the Greek; the Hebrew has only 22; the Italian, 21; and the Irish but 17, which are precisely those of Cadmus, with the addition of the Æolic digamma.

The most remarkable dissimilarity between the various alphabets of Europe consists in the difference of pronunciation attached to the same letters by different nations. The vowels, especially, although the same characters in the principal idioms, of Europe, are almost in all of them differently pronounced.

The state of ignorance in which nations were, at the time they adopted the Roman alphabet, did not allow them to supply its deficiency relatively to their vocal elements, and to establish a strict conformity between the orthography and the pronunciation of their respective languages. Besides, the separate origin of each people, their international relations, and the filiation of idioms constantly affected the written form and greatly tended to destroy that conformity.

A complete alphabet should have as many letters as there are sounds and articulations in the language; but this is far from being the case in our European idioms. The French and the English, for example, have each, in common with many other languages, only five vowels, although they possess, the former 15, and the latter, 13 elementary vocal sounds.

The alphabetical representation of the elements of pronun

We give 26 letters to the French alphabet, because the w, entering now into the composition of many French proper names, may be considered as a French letter.

ciation may be effected in three ways:-1. By making each character the distinct and constant sign of one vocal element exclusively. 2. By combining two or more of the characters already in use. 3. By attaching to one letter or combination of letters different sounds or articulations.

The first method is the most systematical and the most rational; if it were strictly adhered to in a language, it would establish the perfection of its orthography; but, in the present state of the alphabetical systems, considerable irregularity prevails in the correspondence between the written and the spoken language. Of the European tongues, the Italian is the least imperfect in this respect. The third mode of written representation is the most inconsistent and irrational; it is liable to produce perplexity in learning the language, and confusion in the expression of thought. French, German, and Spanish resort mostly to the first two: it is only by exception that some of their alphabetical characters admit of two sounds: thus, for example, in French, đ, è, é, i, ô, u, ou, an, in, on, un, represent, each, one sound and only one whilst a, e, o, ai, au, ei, eu, oi, en, although generally expressive of one sound, each take, some a second, and others a third, in a few instances which may be easily specified. The English language, on the contrary, is extremely variable in its mode of representing the vocal element; it indulges with the most unbridled license in the third mode of representing the articulate words; and, consequently, the irregularity of its orthographical system is perhaps greater and more perplexing than that of any other idiom (5).

That the same letters, few as they are, should suffice to produce so many different syllables and words in so many different languages, may on a first consideration excite wonder; but closer examination will remove this feeling. Leibnitz has calculated that the alphabetical characters would give a quadrillion of combinations, a number which is more than a million times greater than the amount of the words used by all the nations of the earth together.

Written languages differ as to the direction in which their characters are traced. Some Asiatic people, at one period, wrote their lines from right to left, and from left to right, alternatelya mode of writing called by the Greeks boustrophedon (oxturning). Europeans have at all times written from left to right; the Greeks, placed between Europe and Asia, tried both systems, and about the time of Solon, fixed on the latter. The laws of this legislator were first written on the boustrophedon plan.