to represent to the eye the

little. It is probable that they were, originally already, used unconsciously or accidentally; and if there was a correspondence between the sign and the idea, it was a very general and indefinite analogy only. The Greeks may have chosen, as Nodier thinks, the form of their έ from a saw, the noise of which it somewhat recalls; the to imitate an arrow, whizzing away from its bow; or the breast as its sound resembles that of a sucking child. The Latin B may have been meant to suggest the two lips, the O, a round, open mouth; the T a hammer, and the S or Z a serpent, as the enunciation recalls the sound of a stroke or the hiss of a serpent. The invention of letters belongs, like that of languages, to ante-historical times; and whatever may have been the original motive for choosing such letters, and no others, to represent certain ideas, that meaning has long since been lost. We know not the original meaning of words in modern languages; the Spaniard says, "el alferes," with two articles; the English speak of" quandary,” and “kickshaw," for " qu'en dira,” and "quelque-chose," and the German forgets the sacred words, "Hoc est corpus (Christi)," in the slang term, "Hocus-pocus;" how then can the original meaning of letters be distinctly and consciously remembered after the lapse of thousands of years? As soon, finally, as these letters ceased to be either pictures or symbols, and were reduced to mere signs, their signification became also extinct; and to retrace it now might be diverting enough, and call into play all our ingenuity, but would hardly help the etymologist or the philologist to a better knowledge of language.

Even the often-cherished plan of having one common alpha

ARRANGEMENT OF LETTERS.

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bet for all the nations of the earth has not held out sufficient reward to engage the attention of more than one or two truly great men. Among these Leibnitz stands prominent. He ardently desired to obtain such a common series of letters, which, at least, the learned of all nations might understand. He felt himself, however, the force of the argument, that in writing, as in every art, variety is beauty, and, moreover, an evidence of truth as well as originality. Sensual objects may be capable of being always and every where represented by permanent signs. The Chinese accomplishes this to a certain extent; but our signs for spiritual things must necessarily change as our mind progresses, and our views are enlarged or corrected. Such an alphabet, read all over the world, exists in part already, in the signs for numbers, planets, metals, and similar substances. But experience has, even here, shown the necessity of change; and chemistry and mineralogy, for instance, have both introduced essential modifications in their letters or signs, as new views of the inner nature or outward relations of certain objects have required new expressions and new signs.

If letters are considered a truly subline invention of man, the alphabet, or the arrangement of these signs and these names, are an evidence of most shameful negligence. Perfection can, of course, not be expected in a scheme which often, no doubt, owed its existence to accident, and has been subject to a thousand arbitrary and varied influences. The letters of the best developed language are still vague, equivocal, and insufficient. And yet Leibnitz already said: Give me a good alphabet, and I will show you a good language; give me a good language, and I will show you high civilization." Not that a

large number of letters is desirable; the number of letters, as little as that of corresponding sounds, is a sign of perfection, or even richness of language. On the contrary, here also perfection consists in employing the least means for the greatest end. An idiom is almost invariably rich in letters in proportion as it is barbarous. The mind of man has a tendency to master the outward element by which his thoughts are apt to be clogged and encumbered; he tries to retrench the over-luxuriant growth of sounds, and conveys the loftiest thought in the briefest word.

For similar reasons it appears that the order in which letters are arranged among themselves, is arbitrary or accidental. Now and then, it is true, some principle may have been at work, indistinctly perhaps, but still perceptible even now. It is hardly probable that the curious but exact manner in which the five vowels are almost invariably distributed among the other letters should be the result of mere accident, whilst the letter A is found in all at the beginning, except the Æthiopian where it occupies the middle, and in Thibetan where it is in the last place. The Greeks, it is well known, ascribed to their A a peculiar degree of perfection-perhaps, however, only from the very fact that it stood first among the letters-and called Beta all that was not of the best quality, as the famous librarian Eratosthenes, who first designated himself apiλó λoyos and whom they laughed at as nothing better than a Beta.

The names of letters were, in the first instance, probably genuine names, not merely the sound they represented as at present, and taken from the object or the figure, from which they derived their form. The Egyptian A was called achan,

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an eagle, their C, Ca, a goat, whilst the Phoenician had their Aleph from their word for an ox, the Beth for horse, and Gimel for camel, because with them A, B, and G (our C) were at first rude pictures of these objects themselves, and from them obtained their name. It is surely a striking evidence of our own obligation to this primitive Oriental ingenuity, that wherever European languages are spoken on earth, there the Phoenician ox, and horse, and camel are found as a lasting memorial of most ancient times.

CHAPTER LX.

CONSONANTS AND VOWELS.

Variety of sound and value-Division into sentences-Into words and syllables -Accents-Difference between written and spoken value-Arrangement of lines in writing.

BOTH the number and the character of letters of letters vary, necessarily, in different languages. The Thibetan has 150, and marks with a different sign every combination of a vowel with consonants; in Japanese the letters are signs of syllables, in Chinese of words; the Oriental languages have marks for consonants only, those of the West for vowels also. This is the most important difference of alphabets. The East, moreover, has evidently the better part, for vowels are, in truth, inorganic and inarticulate. All nature produces vowels; the wind sighing in the branches of a forest, the so-called Æol's harp, our

musical instruments, and almost all the cries of animals are vowels. Therefore it is that young and undeveloped languages abound in vowels; the older an idiom is, the more consonants it has, or rather, the greater is the variety, the more delicate the difference between the vowel sounds. For nature makes, originally, no difference between consonant and vowel: to the ear vowel and consonant are one; a con-sonant becomes such only by the aid of a vowel. Hence the clearer and more direct perception of Asiatic nations led them to consider vowels not as separate letters but as mere modifications of consonants. They say justly, that no vowel can be sounded alone; the first beginning or the last breath are, necessarily, consonants. Hence the various so-called anomalies of languages which tried to avoid the necessity of pronouncing pure vowels; the Greeks employed a liquid guttural or aspirate, which we call "digamma;" the Cockney places an h wherever he can; the American says "year" for "ear;" and the Spaniard changes the Latin "ovis" and "os " into "huevo" and "hueso." Most Oriental languages mark the vowels by dots and similar signs only, as the French by accents, and to receive a letter, in which the vowels are written, is considered an insulting insinuation of ignorance. The Bohemian and Bosnian have, like most Slavonic idioms, many words without written vowels, as "smrt" death, "hrb" hunch, "prst" finger, and "hrst" hollow of the hand. The Karaimen go even so far as to reject vowels entirely, and to consider those who use them heretics! Even in the modern languages of Europe a certain feeling begins to prevail that consonants give, as it were, the body to an idiom, its character and general expression; they are employed, as the stouter,