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, â, 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.

Persian, Sanscrit, and, with the exception of Ethiopian, the Semitic languages (Hebrew, Syriac, Chaldean, Phenician, and ancient Arabic,) preserved the direction from right to left. Different from these, some languages, among which may be mentioned the Chinese, Japanese, Mongolese, and Manchou-Tartaric, are written vertically, as was also the ancient Mexican. The alphabetical and horizontal writing from left to right is, at the present day, almost universally adopted.

CHAPTER II.

FOREIGN LANGUAGES (ANCIENT AND MODERN).

SECT. I.-BENEFITS ARISING FROM THE STUDY OF FOREIGN
LANGUAGES.

THE history of languages has established this remarkable fact, that, in the course of time, as civilisation advances among nations, their original idioms are gradually abandoned for others less inflected, more simple, and more elliptical, which serve as vehicles of communication in ordinary life; whilst these original idioms, as the depositories of national and religious traditions, become classical and sacred symbols for the exclusive use of the learned, and especially the clergy. The mental culture which is promoted by the act of learning to understand these dead languages, and to use them for the expression of thought, tends also to make them the basis of intellectual education, This happens to be the case with the ancient idioms of the Jews, Copts, Chinese, Mongolese, Hindoos, Persians, and other Asiatic nations, as well as with some of the ancient European languages, and more particularly with the Greek and Latin, which have assumed a very extensive field of action in the education of youth.

Ethnography, the classification of nations founded on a corresponding classification of languages, has disclosed the existence of nearly two thousand languages, and five thousand dialects,* the greater number of which do not become objects of study, except in rare cases. Of this prodigious number of idioms a few extend over the surface of the globe, and divide, with Latin and Greek, the attention of students. Of these few, ten belong to Europe, namely, the French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, and Russian; and nine to Asia, namely, the Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Turkish, Armenian, Persian, Chinese, Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, and Hindoostanee, one of its modern dialects.

The mode of acquiring language varies with the peculiar See Adrien Balbi, Atlas Ethnographique du Globe.