1880.] 54J [ratt.'ll. 



people of the Colonies would have emerged from this double 

 and synchronous revolution a really free and independent 

 nation upon a sound political and orthographical basis! 



But I must not lose sight of the text you have given 

 me, which in connection with the quotation from Seneca 

 suggests more than the spelling reform. Those who are 

 familiar with this epistle of Seneca to his friend Lucilius, 

 cannot have failed to notice the reluctance with which he 

 admits that the Philosophers have become Philologists. 

 With him philology meant the love and pursuit of 

 science and literature. A noble aim. But the aim of 

 philosophy was higher; it was the love and pursuit of 

 wisdom, sapientise amor et adfectatio, as he defines it in 

 another epistle to the same friend, or as Cicero in his De 

 Officiis had already defined it, sapentire studium. This wis- 

 dom — the sapientia of the Latins, and the aowia of the 

 Greeks — was to ail these thoughtful men, what it was to 

 the inspired writer, "the principal thing;"' the mater 

 omnium rerum bonarum, says Cicero ; the ars vitse, adds 

 Seneca. To turn away from this high subject in any direc- 

 tion was a descent, and Seneca could not without sorrow 

 record the fact that what was formerly philosophy had now 

 become philology. But may not the modern Philologists 

 claim to have reascended these heights, where the Philoso- 

 phers are gathered to discuss their great questions ? Phil- 

 ology has long ceased to be regarded, even in the popular 

 mind, as merely a curious study of words by antiquarians 

 who delight in archaic or obsolete forms, the " Diversions of 

 Furley," in the search for impossible derivations, or a 

 learned and laborious discussion of the changes of vowels 

 and consonants in which, according to the gibe of Voltaire, 

 the vowels count for nothing;, and the consonants next to 



