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simplest words. Thus the little town of Woburn would seem to give small room for caprice in spelling, while yet the postmaster there has made, from the subscription of letters that have passed through his hands, a collection of no less than two hundred and forty-four varieties of ways in which the place has been spelt, it may be said that these were all or nearly all from the letters of the uneducated. True-but it is for their sakes, and to place them on a level with the educated, or rather to accelerate their education by the omission of a useless yet troublesome discipline, that the change is proposed. I wish to show you that after the change they would be just as much or almost as much at a loss in spelling as now.

And another reason which would make it just as necessary then to learn orthography as now, is the following. Pronunciation, as I have already noticed. is far too fine and subtle a thing to be more than approximated to, and indicated in the written letter. In a multitude of cases the d fficulties which pronunciation presented would be sought to be overcome in different ways, so that different spellings would arise; or if not so, one would have to be arbitrarily selected, and would have need to be learned, just as much as the spelling of a word now has need to be learned. I will only ask you in proof of this which I affirm, to turn to any Pronouncing dictionary. This greatest of all absurdities, a pronouncing dictionary, may be of some service to you in this matter; it will certainly be of no service to you in any other. When you mark the elaborate and yet ineffectual artifices by which it toils after the finer destinctions of articulation, seeks to reproduce in letters what exists and can only exist as the spoken tradition of pronunciation, acquired from lip to lip, capable of being learned, but incapable of being taught; or when you compare two of these dictionaries with one another, and mark the entirely different schemes and combinations of letters which they have for representing the same sound to the eye; you will then perceive how idle the attempt to make the written in language commensurate with the sounded; you will own that not merely out of human caprice, ignorance, or indolence, the former falls short of and differs from the latter; but that this lies in the necessity of things, in the fact that man's voice can effect a great deal more than ever his letter can. You will then perceive that there would be as much, or nearly as much of the arbitrary in spelling which calls itself phonetic as in our present, that spelling would have to be learned just as really then as now.

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The scheme would not then fulfil its promises. Its promised gains when we come to look closely at them, disappear. And now for its losses. There are in every language a vast number of words, which are indistinguishable to the ear, but are at once distinguishable to the eye by the spelling. I will only mention such as are the same parts of speech; thus 'sun' and 'son;' 'reign' rain,' and 'rein,;' hair,' and 'hare;' plate,' and 'plait;' moat,' and 'mote;" 'pear,' and 'pair;' air,' and 'heir;' ark, and are;' mite, and might:" 'pour,' and 'pore;' 'veil,' and 'vale;' 'knight,' and 'night;' knave,' and nave; 'pier,' and 'peer;' 'rite,' and right; site,' and sight; aisle,' and 'isle; concent,' 'consent; signet' and 'cygnet.' Now, of course, it is a reai disadvantage, and may be the cause of serious confusion, that there should be words in spoken language of entirely different origin and meaning, which yet are not in sound to be differenced from one another. The phonographers simply propose to extend this disadvantage already cleaving to our spoken lan

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guage, to the written language as well. It is fault enough in the French lanthat mere' a mother, mer,' the sea, maire,' a mayor of a town, guage, should have no perceptible difference between them in the spoken tongue; or again that the same should find place in respect of 'ver,' a worm, 'vert' green, verre' a glass, 'vers' a verse. Surely it is not very wise to propose gratuitously to extend the same fault to the written language as well.

This loss in so many cases of the power of discriminating between words which however liable to confusion now in our spoken language, are liable to none in our written, would be serious enough: but more serious than this would be the loss of so many cases of all which visibly connects a word with the past, which tells its history, and indicates the quarter from which it has been derived. In how many English words a letter which is silent to the ear, is yet most eloquent to the eye the 'g' for instance in deign,' 'feign,' 'reign,' 'impugn, telling as it does of dignor,' 'fingo,' 'regno,' and impugno;' as the 'b' in 'debt,'' doubt,' is not idle, while it tells of debitum,' and dubium.'

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At present all languages it is the written word which is the conservative element in them. It is the abiding witness against the mutilations or other capricious changes in their shape which affectation, folly, ignorance and half knowledge would introduce. It is not indeed always able to hinder the final adoption of these corrupter forms, but yet opposes a constant and very of ten a successful resistence to them. With the adoption of phonetic spelling, this witness would exist no longer; whatever was spoken would have also to be written, let it be never so barbarous, never so great a departure from the true form of the word.

Parental.

LITTLE CHILDREN.

"No

"No man can tell," wrote that good Bishop of Down, Connor, and Dromore, whose elevation to the mitre in an unbelieving and profligate age is at least one jewel of pure water in the besmirched children of Charles the Second, man can tell," wrote Jeremy Taylor, "but he who loves his children, how many delicious accents make a man's heart dance in the petty conversation of those dear pledges. Their childishness, their stammering, their little anger their innocence, their imperfections, their necessities, are so many little emanations of joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and society." With all due respect and reverence to my beloved author of the "Golden Grove," the "warbler of poetic prose," I must dissent from his first proposition. man who loves children can tell, without necessarily having any of his own, how delightful is their society, how delicious are their accents, their persons, their little ways. It may be I write these lines in a cheerless garret, my only

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friends my books, the only other thing beside me that has life, my lamp; ret do you not think that I can sympathise with, without envying, the merry par ty at the merry house over the way!

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Come! Though I am not bidden to the banquet!-though there be no cover laid for me at the table matrimonial-may I not feast (though in no ogre fashion) upon little children? Some day perhaps Hymen's table d'hote may lack guests; and messengers being sent out into the highways in quest of the lame, the halt, and the blind, I may have a chance.

I might speculate upon little children in a purely negative fashion for soms time. For instance: as regards the child being father to the man: of mea being but children of larger growth. These are both very easy things to say: and we get them by heart pat, and somewhat in the parrot manner, and we go on repeating our pet phrase, over and over, backwards and forwards, time after time, till we firmly believe it to be true; and, if any one presume to aromë pr dissent, we grow indignant, and cry "turn him out" as the member of the Peace Society did the other day, when an opinionated person happened to dissent from the whole hog proposition that the world was to be pacificated, ani universal fraternity established, by the lambs shearing the wool off their backs and taking it to the wolves in a neat parcel, with a speech about arbitration.

Now at the risk of being turned out myself, I must venture to dissent from the axiom that the child is father to the man. I say that he is not. Can you persist in telling me that this fair haired innocent; this little sportive, prattling, lovable child, with dimpled, dumpling hands that almost fold themselves spontaneously into the attitude of supplication and prayer; with cherry lip-some bee has stung it newly"-lisping thanksgiving and love; with arms that long to embrace; with eyes beaming confidence, joy, pity, tenderness:-am I to be told that this infant is father to yon hulking, sodden, sallow-faced, blue-gille !, crop-haired, leaden-eyed, livid-lipped, bow shouldered, shrunken-legged, swellen-handed convict in a hideous grey uniform branded with the broad arrow; with ribbed worsted hose and fetters at his ankels, sullenly skulking through his drudgery under the ratan of an overseer and the bayonet of a marine in Woolwich dockyard? Is the child whom I love and in whom I hope, father to yon wretch with a neck already half-dislocated with fear, with lips half-dead, with heart wholly so, who drops on his miserable pallet in Newg: te cell, lis chin on his breast, his hands between his knees, his legs shambling; the stony walls around him; the taciturn gaolers watching him, a bible by his side, in whose pages, when he tries to read, the letters slide and fall away from unl his eyes? Is this the father to--can this ever become that?

Not only in your world-verbiage must the child be father to the man, but the man is merely a child of a larger growth. I deny it. Some boys are tyrants, bullies, hypocrites, and liars for fear of punishment; thieves, alas, through ill example oftentimes. Some girls are tell-tales, jealous, spiteful, slandrous, vain and giddy, I grant. If you were to tell me that bad boys and girls often grow up to be bad men and women, I should agree with you. The evil example of yon bad men and women, begins to corrupt boys and girls early enough, Heaven knows; but do not brand the child-you know when infancy begins and childhood terminates-with being but your own wickedness seen through the small end of the glass. The man a child of larger growth! Did you ever know a man of smaller growth-a child-to discount bl

forty per cent., and offer you for the balance half cash, and the rest poison (put, down in the bill as "wine") and opera stalls? Did you ever know a child to pawn his sister's play-things, or rob his playmate of his pocket money to gamble, and to cheat while gambling, and to hang or drown himself when he had lost his winnings and his stolen capital? Could you ever discern a hankering in a child to accumulate dollars by trading in the flesh and blood of his fellowcreatures? Did you ever know a child to hoard half-pence in a rag or a teapot, to store rinds of mouldy cheese in secret, or to grow rich in rotten apple pairings? Did you ever hear a child express an opinion that his friend Tommy must eternally be burnt, for not holding exactly the same religious opinion as he, Billy did? Are children false swearers for hire, liars for gain, parasites for profit? Do they begin to throw mud with their earliest pothooks and hangers; do they libel their nurse and vilify the doctor? Men have their playthings, it is true, and somewhat resemble overgrown children in their puerile eagerness for a blue ribbon, an embroidered garter, a silver cross dangling to a morsel of red silk, or a gilt walking stick. But will the child crawl in the gutter for the blue ribbon, or walk barefoot over broken bottles for the garter, or wallow in the mire for the gilt walking stick? I think not. Give him a string of red beads, a penny trumpet, or a stick of barley sugar, and he will let the ribbons and garters go hang. Try to persuade, with your larger growth theory, one of your smaller men to walk backwards down a staircase before the King of Lilliput. Pursuade Colonel Fitz Tommy, aged four, to stand for five hours on one leg behind the King of Lilliput's chair in his box at the Marionette Theatre. Try to induce little Lady Totsey, aged three, to accede to the proposal of being maid of honor to her doll. Tommy and Totsey leave such tomfooleries to be monopolized by the larger children.

We have another school of axiomatic philosophers; who abandoning the theorem that manhood is but the enlarged identity of infancy, maintain that the child is an intellectual negation-nothing at all physically or mentally.-The enlightened M. Fourier has denied children the possession of sex, calling them Neuters; and numbers of philosophers, with their attendant schools of disciples, have pleased themselves by comparing the child's mind to a blank sheet of paper; innocent, but capable of receiving moral caligraphy good or bad. The mind of a child like a blank sheet of Bath post? The sheet is fair, hot pressed, undefiled by blot or erasure if you will, but it is not blank. In legible, ineffaceable characters thereupon you may read Faith and strong belief. The child believes without mental reservation; he does not require to be convinced; and if even now and then, some little struggling dawn of argumentative skepticism leads him to doubt faintly, and to ask how bogey can always manage to live in the cellar among the coals; how the black dog can be on his shoulder, when he sees no dog there; why little boys should not ask questions, and why the doctor should have brought baby with him under his cloak-he is easily silenced by the reply that good children always believe what is told them: and that he must believe; so he does believe. His faith was but shaken for a moment. Belief was written too strongly in his little heart to be eradicated by his little logic. Would that when he comes to be a child of larger growth, forsooth, no subtle powers of reasoning should prompt him to dissect and antomise his body of belief, till nothing but dry bones remain, and it fall into a pit of indifference and skepticism!

That child has a maimed child-mind who does not believe implicitly in ail VOL. II.-13

the fairy tales-in the existence of ogres, fairies, giants, and dwarfs. I dare say thousands will read this who have lain a-bed as children, awake, and quaking lest Hurleythrumbo, or the dread Giant Bloodybones, or the wolf that devoured little Red Riding Hood should enter unto them and devour them. How many do I address who have cherished one especial beanstalk in the back garden as the very identical beanstalk up which Jack clomb; and, in the slightness of their childish vision, deemed that the stalk grew up and up till it reached the wondrous land-who, also, have firmly believed that the huge pack the old Jew pedlar carried on his back was full of naughty children; that from parsley beds, by means of silver spades, marvellous fruits were procured. I remember having when a very little child, two strong levers of belief. One was a very bright fire-place with a very bright fender, very bright fire-irons, and a very bright colored rug before it. I can see them now, all polished steel, brass and gay worsted work-all of which I was strictly forbidden to touch. The other was a certain steel engraving in an album, a landscape with a lake, and swans and ladies with parasols. I know the fire-place now to have been a mere register stove with proper appurtenances, and the picture an engraving of the Parc of St. Cloud after Turner; I asseverate that I firmly, but heartily uncompromisingly believed then, that angels' trumpets were like those fireirons, and that the gay rug, and the pretty landscape was an accurate view, ifť not an actual peep into Fairyland itself. A little dead sister of mine used to draw what we called fairyland on our slate. Twas after all, I dare say, but a vile childish scrawl, done over a half smeared-out game of oughts and crosses with a morsel of slate pencil, two sticks a halpenny. Yet, I and she and all of us believed in the fairyland she drew. We could pluck the golden fruit on the boughs, and hear the silver-voiced birds, and see the fairy elves with their queen (drawn very possibly with a head like a deformed oyster) dancing beneath the big round moon upon the yellow sands. I am sure my sister believed her doll was alive and peculiarly susceptible to catching cold from draughts. I am certain I never questioned the animated nature of the eight day clock on the staircase that ticked so awfully in the hot, silent summer nights, and gnashed his teeth so frightfully when his weights were moved. My aunt promised every thing when her ship came home; and I believed in the ship that always was coming and never did come, without one spark of skepticism. I believed in, and shuddered at, all the stories about that famous juvenile (always held up to us as a warning and example, aud alluded to as "there was once a little boy who,") who was always doing the things he ought not to have done; and was in consequence, so perpetually being whipped caught in door jambs and suspended in the air by meat-hooks, eaten up alive by wild beasts, burned to death in consequence of playing "with Tommy at lighting straws," that I have often wondered, so many have been his perils, by flood and field, that there should be any of that little boy left. He is alive though nevertheless, and still implicitly believed in. I was under the necessity the other day, of relating a horrible misadventure of his to a little nephew, showing how the little boy reached over a dining table to put his digits into a sugar dish, and came to signal shame by knocking over a tumbler and cutting his fingers therewith; and I am happy to state that my anecdote was not only received as genuine, but met with the additional criticism from my small nephew (his own finger still sticky with the sugar) that it "served the little boy right." Faith and strong belief! When children play at King or Queen, or

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