tonic, although considerably corrupted by the intermixture of Latin and the Norman French. The Anglo-Saxons and the ancient Dutch are supposed to have been the same people. These and other German tribes successively landed in Britain, and dispossessed the Celts of the fairest portion of the island. Although their language was essentially the same, the dialects were different. That difference was continued by the subdivisions of the government during the Heptarchy, as yet appears in the pronunciation of the several counties of England; while the inveterate hostility between the northern and southern kingdoms separated, not only the spoken, but the written, language of Scotland from that of England. The Norman conquest changed the form of the English tongue, and the Saxon gradually became one of the dead languages. From the manuscripts that were preserved, Grammars and Dictionaries (far from perfect) have been constructed; and these, compared with the living dialects of the Teutonic, are valuable sources of etymology.

But the Saxon (and consequently the English) is materially illustrated by the discovery, in 1597, of the CODEX ARGENTEUS, a manuscript of the four Gospels, so called because it is written in silver letters. It is believed to have been translated from the Greek, at the close of the fourth century, by Ulphilas, the first bishop of the Visigoths (or Mosogoths), in a character invented by him, and is certainly the oldest specimen of the Gothic language in existence. Another fragment of this translation of the New Testament has been since found; and the whole, with a partial analysis of the language, has been published. We shall here insert the alphabet, in comparison with the Saxon. It is obviously formed from the Greek capitals, with a few alterations adapted to the Gothic sounds. The Saxon, with like exceptions, is similar to the Roman character.

To the Saxon characters may be added 1, and; p, that; and t, or.

We have copied the powers of the letters from Lye's Saxon and Gothic Grammar, without pretending to vouch for their accuracy; for the true pronunciation of a dead language is always uncertain. In the present case, we can only refer to the kindred Teutonic tongues; and these, unfortunately, differ from one another in their mode of utterance. The Saxon E, in the preceding alphabet, is said to have the power of k; but Ben Jonson, who lived two hundred years ago, says that "the English Saxons gave this letter the weaker force of chi, or the Italian c, as in capel, canc, cild, cyrce, which were pronounced, chapel, chance, child, church." Other grammarians do not hesitate to

say that the Saxon c was directly borrowed from the Italian; limiting, however, its peculiar sound of ch to its preceding e or i. But this is endeavouring partially to accommodate the Saxon sounds to the English pronunciation of the present day, without regard to the other sister dialects, or even to the differences among the Saxons themselves. The Scotch, for instance, call a church a kirk ; the Dutch say een kerk; the Danes, en kirke; the Swedes, en kyrka; and the Germans, eine kirche. When we speak of their pronunciation, we should always remember that the Saxons were different tribes, and that they had their different dialects, as we yet have at the present day. Neither were those consolidated, as now, into one general court language: for a long period they had seven courts and seven kingdoms. In the Dictionaries, which have been compiled from various manuscripts, the orthography is quite unsettled. The word which we have translated church, is written circ, circe, ciric, cýrc, cýrca, and cyric all, probably, from circul, a circle; which we certainly should not pronounce chirchul. The fact seems to be, that the Saxon c, like our c and ch, had different offices to perform, which we are left to distinguish as we please. In the Saxon small alphabet there are two characters ( and p) for the English th, which Jonson thinks were separately applied to its twofold power. "And in this," says he, " consists the greatest difficultie of our Alphabet and true writing; since wee have lost the Saxon Characters and þ, that distinguish the de, dou, dine, do, from pick, þin, pred, prive." This original distinction between and p was also noticed by Spelman; but he reverses the order of Jonson, and then adds, that they were confounded by the copyists: probably because the sounds themselves were so confounded, according with the residence of the writer. When that alphabet was superseded by the old English, or Black letter, p (y), as being the likest in form, was often substituted for the Saxon p (th); and hence, in early printed works, we see pe for the, pt for that, and other similar contractions. The Black-letter compound cp (a contraction for quoth, saith,) is made up of q and p.

The Gothic has no corresponding character in any other alphabet with which we are acquainted. The Saxons supplied its place with hw, which we have absurdly turned into wh. The Latin qu appears to have been a similar, if not the same, sound; for, in order to translate Latin words with this initial into English, we have, in many cases, only to change the qu into the softer sound wh, when the meaning will be apparent: thus, qui is who; quid is what; quando is when, &c. The old Scotch authors always wrote quh for wh, as quhen for when; quhairfor for wherefore, &c.

From these passing remarks, it plainly appears that there are differences of pronunciation of the same original sound which require a change in the alphabet; and that these changes are in some cases denoted by new letters, and in

с

others, by combining the powers of two, or more, of the characters already employed. Much of the difficulty in the study of kindred tongues proceeds from this cause alone; and we will, therefore, now endeavour to investigate the laws by which the organs of speech, and consequently the articulations of the human voice, deviate from one form into auother, until they cease to be recognised as having had the same origin. Previously, however, as we shall have occasion frequently to refer to the Greek throughout the whole course of the work; and as we have judged it better to print the words of that language in the Roman character, we insert the alphabet of the Greeks, with the powers of the letters, as far as is generally understood or believed.

According to the historians, Cadmus, about fifteen hundred years before the Christian era, established himself in Greece, with a colony of Phoenicians,

and gave to the ancient inhabitants the alphabet of his tribe. Whether or not that was the introduction of written language among the Pelasgi, is matter of dispute; but, if there ever existed a Pelasgian alphabet, it has not been transmitted to our times. The Greeks, being under separate governments, had different dialects, some of which required characters to denote sounds that were never heard in the other states. Of the twenty-four letters above written, the eight which are marked by asterisks were long peculiar to the Ionians. The Athenians had, then, only sixteen letters; nor was the alphabet, as it now stands, generally adopted in Greece until the time of Euripides. The Eta (H) was originally a guttural; and, when it came to represent the long e, its place, as a rough breathing, was supplied by a mark (), which is termed an ASPIRATE, from the Latin spiro, I breathe: thus, iços (a boundary) was pronounced horos; and psw (I flow) was rheo. The Latin and Gothic tongues baye preserved the H in their orthography, though some dialects of the latter have, in most cases, discarded its ASPIRATED sound.

CLASSIFICATION OF LETTERS.

Letters are usually divided into VOWELS (Latin vocales, from vor, a voice,) and CONSONANTS, (Latin con sonantes, sounding together,) because the former are vocal and have a continuous sound, while the latter are stops rather than sounds, and require the addition of vowels to render them audible. This last definition, however, is imperfect; because it excludes certain letters, such as l, r, s, &c. which are generally ranked among the consonants. The following distinction, drawn by Holder, in his "Elements of Speech," seems to be unexceptionable :

"All articulation is made within the mouth, from the throat to the lips inclusively, and is differenced partly by the organs and several parts of organs used in it; and partly by the manner and degree of articulating: which latter is either by appulse, i. e. when one of the moveable organs toucheth, and rests upon some of those that are immoveable; or else only by inclination of the moveable organ to the immoveable, without appulse, the passage through the mouth remaining free and open. If there be no appulse of one organ to another, the letters, by several other postures and inclinations of the organs, are vowels. But when there is an appulse of one organ to another, the letters which are so framed are consonants. Again, the appulse is either plenary and occluse, so as wholly to preclude all passage of breath or voice through the mouth; or else partial and pervious, so as to give them some passage out of the mouth and this latter affects the sounds divers ways, giving it a lisping,