206 rHo:\oGKAi'm. 



his readers the necessity of immediate action with a very commendable 

 zeal. His essay has evidently been prepared in haste, but it manifests 

 a considerable acquaintance with the difficulties of an attempt at a' re- 

 form of this kind, whilst at the same time it shows how the most of 

 them might be obviated. It suggests the holding of a meeting for the 

 purpose of bringing this subject fully before the public and proposing 

 measures for a thorough reform. 



In this essay some of the faults of our present system are pointed 

 out, viz. : 



" 1. We have in our written and printed words so many silent let- 

 ters. 



2. Our letters do not represent each a distinct element of words. 



3. The same letter is at one time gifted with one power, at another 

 time with a very different sound. 



4. There are elemental sounds of our language not represented by 

 our symbols. 



5. Our capital and small letters are often radically different in form. 



6. The names of the letters give no aid in learning their power. 



7. The diphthongs are not properly represented by the combina- 

 tions of vowels now employed to express them. 



8. Several of our letters two closely resemble each other." 

 These are some of the principal difliculties which present them- 

 selves to a learner who has been blessed with the use of all his senses, 

 and they are enough to give the child a settled hatred of books and to 

 make the foreigner, who attempts the mastery of our tongue, bitterly ex- 

 ecrate the load of useless encumbrances that envelop so completely tlie 

 object of his search. 



But if these are such formidable barriers in tlie Vv^ay of the man 

 whose ears are open and whose tongue is loose, how immensely is not 

 their insurmountability increased in the case of him, who is to supplant 

 the sense of hearing by those of sense and touch. When, with one 

 liand upon the larynx of his instructor, and tlie other upon his own he 

 begins with the deep guttural a, and rises through e to i, or through o 

 to u, with tliese vowel-signs successively laid before him as he succeeds 

 in enouncing them, he naturally concludes that he has mastered the 

 open sounds, and now knows their representatives. And so he has, in 

 the noble language of which our own is so degenerate a progeny. The 

 German vowel signs uniformly represent the same sounds and their 

 consonants are almost perfectly phonographic. But alas ! has the poor 

 mule the misfortune to be born among the conquerors of the Sikhs or 

 .the sticklers -for the whole of Oregon or none," he may give up iu des- 



