for abode. This would be a sweeping change in our orthogra- "Her bosom heaved, she stepped aside- She fled to me and wept." "How much," he remarks, "the grace of these lines to the eye would be improved, if stepped were written, as the rhyme shows it must be pronounced, stept." Other reformers have proposed to lay aside all silent letters as useless or inconvenient; while others still, like Dr. Franklin, have proposed a reformed Alphabet. OPPOSITE VIEWS. § 227. Two views have been taken of the subject of reform in language. The one is in favor of innovation, the other of conservation. Pope ridiculed a love for the rust of antiquity. "Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old; It is the rust we value, not the gold." Shakspeare, on the other hand, in Love's Labor Lost, Act V., scene i., makes one of his characters ridicule innovation in language: "I abhor such fanatical phantasms, insociable and point-devise companions; such rackers of orthography, as to speak dout fine, when he should say doubt; det, when he should say debt-d-e-b-t, not d-e-t. He clepeth a calf, cauf; half, hauf; neighbor, vocatur nebour; neigh, abbreviated ne; this is abhominable, which he would call abominable." These views relate to orthography in particular, as well as to language in general. One class are attached to the external form of the language as they have been acquainted with it from their childhood, when they rejoiced in being good spellers; and they regard every change in the word, which they have associated with the great thoughts and noble sentiments produced by themselves or others, as a kind of profanation. The other class are inclined to dwell on the acknowledged defects and inconsistencies of English orthography, and to aver that we are bound to aim at their removal by salutary reform. We incline to the opinion of Mitford: "Unfortunately for the English language, custom, distracted between two widely dif ferent idioms, the Anglo-Saxon and the Norman-French, has not only neglected science, but has allowed capricious ignorance to riot. Hence it will be necessary, with stricter care, to survey the established representation of the sounds of English speech by written characters; to unfold its perplexities; to discover among its anomalies what may pass for rules; to fix upon a mode of pointing out to the reader, with certain precision, any sound in the language."-MITFORD on the Harmony of Language, p. 13. § 228. There are in the English language as many as four thousand words whose orthography is given in different forms by different modern dictionaries. The authors and editors of these dictionaries, or most of them, have felt that reform was necessary, and therefore have set up to be reformers; some of them leaning to usage, some to etymology, some to the analogies of the language, some to convenience, or other considerations. USAGE. § 229. It is often asserted that USAGE or CUSTOM is the sovereign arbiter in all matters pertaining to language. "But what is this custom to which we must so implicitly submit? Is it the multitude of speakers [spellers], whether good or bad? This has never been asserted by the most sanguine abettors of its authority. Is it the usage of the studious in schools and colleges, with those of the learned professions, or that of those who, from their elevated birth and station, give laws to the refinements and elegancies of a court? To confine propriety to the latter, which is too often the case, seems an injury to the former, who, from their very profession, appear to have a natural right to a share, at least, in the legislation of language, if not to an absolute sovereignty."-WALKER'S Preface to his Dictionary, p. 5. Usage is not uniform. There is ancient usage and present usage, general usage and local usage. Custom or usage, therefore, in given cases of doubtful orthography, must be an uncertain guide, because it is divided; and, even if it were undivided, it might be contrary to other important considerations. THE NORMAL USE OF THE LETTERS. § 230. The normal use of the letters in representing the elementary sounds in the language, and also the anomalous use in representing the same sounds. What the normal use of the letters is may be seen from the Table of Elementary Sounds, § 183. What is the anomalous use may be seen from § 209, on equivalent letters. The sound of a in ap is normal; it is the second elementary sound, represented by the letter a in its normal use. The sound of a in any is anomalous; it is the seventh elementary sound in the table, normally represented by e, and anomalously represented by a. Other things being equal, the normal use of the letters should, in orthography, be preferred to their anomalous use, as authorize in preference to authorise. The consonantal sound in the last is normally represented by z, but anomalously by s. § 231. In honour and favour, u is a silent, and therefore a useless letter so far as sound is concerned. But it has an etymological value. The u signifies that the words came to us through the French. Without the u, the words stand just as they were originally spelled in the Latin. So that the question is, whether we shall be at the trouble of retaining a letter that is useless as to sound, for the sake of the historical association, when the real origin of the words is to be sought in the Latin. The tendency of the language is to omit the u in words of this class. ETYMOLOGICAL FACTS AND REASONS. § 232. The question may arise whether rane-deer or reindeer is the true spelling. In favor of the first, it can be said that rane is the normal representative of the sound in the spoken language, whereas rein is an anomalous representative of that sound, and the ei might, by a foreigner, be confounded or identified with the ei in deceit and in either. The word is derived from the Saxon hrana or hranas. Its etymology thus settles its true spelling. The primary object of writing and spelling is to express the sounds of the language. But beyond this primary object there is, with the orthographical systems of many languages, a secondary one, namely, to combine with the representation of the sound of a given word the representation of its history and origin. The sound of c in city is the sound that we naturally spell with the letters; and if the expression of this sound were the only object of orthographists, the word would be spelled, accordingly, sity. The following facts traverse this simple view of the matter. The word is a derived word; it is transplanted into our language from the Latin, where it is spelled with a c (civitas), and to change this c into s conceals the origin and history of the word. In cases like this, the orthography is bent to a secondary end by the etymology. On the same ground, lodestone and lode-star are preferable to load-stone and load-star. Lode was the ancient form, and distinguished literati in England and America seem disposed to employ this form. THE ANALOGIES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. § 233. The question may arise whether, upon the addition of the formative er to the word travel, the I should be doubled; in other words, whether traveler or traveller is the correct spelling. It is a remark in the Cambridge Philological Museum, "that there is something extremely unpleasant in such a mass of letters as one finds accumulated in travelled, in an unaccented syllable." What, however, seems to settle the correct orthography of the word is the analogy of the language. It is a rule in the English language, "that verbs ending in a single consonant, but having the accent on the syllable preceding the last, ought not to double the final consonant." According, then, to the analogy of the language, er should be added, and nothing more. Between the two forms highth and height use is perhaps divided, the first having the authority of Milton and some eminent modern writers, like Walter Savage Landor. This form can be defended not so much on the ground of throwing out the useless letter e, as on that of its being in analogy with high, from which it is derived. So to clothe (not cloath) is in analogy with cloth; lofthe is in analogy with loth; cloke (rather than cloak) is in analogy with a large class of words, and is the ancient form. CHANGE OF PRONUNCIATION. § 234. Moreover, modes of spelling which at one time were correct, may, by a change of pronunciation, become incorrect, so that the orthography becomes obsolete whenever there takes place a change of speech without a corresponding change of spelling. If the letter y, in the first syllable of the word chymistry, represented the vowel sound generally given in pronunciation to that word at the time Johnson wrote his Dictionary, then he accomplished the true end of orthography by spelling it as it was pronounced; but if afterward there was a general change in the pronunciation of the word, so that the letter y no longer represented the sound heard in that syllable, then, on that ground, the change ought to be made from y to e, if the letter e represents that sound; but if the letter e does not represent the sound heard in speaking so well as y, or its equivalent, i, then y or i should be employed to represent that sound. If, in addition, the etymology of the word, derived from the Arabic kimia, points to i, if the analogy of some other languages points the same way, the French spelling it chimie, the Spanish chimia, the Italians chimica, there is strong reason for spelling it either with i or y in the first syllable. This statement is brought forward, not for the purpose of showing the true spelling of the word, about which nothing is asserted except conditionally, but for the sake of showing what kind of reasoning can be adopted by an orthographist in settling the spelling of a word. The word commandment was formerly pronounced in four |