the eighth letter in our alphabet, 

 is derived from the Phoenician 

 letter cheth, which was obtained 

 from the Egyptian hieroglyphic 

 symbol which goes by the name 

 of the sieve (see ALPHABET). 

 The Semitic name, which means 

 a 'fence' or 'palisade,' is ex- 

 plained by the form of the letter 

 0, which resembles a three-barred stile. The. 

 sound was that of a strongly-marked continuous 

 guttural, produced at the back of the palate, which 

 does not exist in English, but is heard in the Scotch 

 loch and the German lacAen. When the Phoenician 

 alphabet was transmitted to the Greeks the name 

 cheth became eta. As early as the 7th century 

 B.C. this sign had two values among the Greeks; 

 it normally represented the long e, but was per- 

 missively used for the simple aspirate h. In the 

 alphabet of Italy it was used exclusively for the 

 aspirate ; but in the later alphabet of Greece the 

 two sounds came to be represented by a differen- 

 tiation of the symbol, the form H being used for 

 the vowel and the mutilated forms h, L, for the 

 aspirate. Hence we see how the symbol H stands 

 for h in the Latin alphabet and for e in the Greek. 

 In Old English h was a guttural, or throat sound, 

 but it gradually softened down to a spirant, and 

 has now become almost a vowel. No letter is more 

 misused, and this misuse is of very ancient date. 

 In Latin MSS. and inscriptions it is sometimes im- 

 properly inserted, as in the words harena, harundo, 

 hauctoritas, or improperly omitted, as in omini, 

 abitat, onustus spellings which prove the un- 

 certainty of the usage. In English as early as the 

 12th century we find ard written for hard, and hold 

 for old. Americans, as a rule, rarely misuse it, 

 and in England an untaught peasant is usually 

 more correct than a self-made man. It has long 

 disappeared from Italian, and is now rapidly vanish- 

 ing from French. The Spaniards substitute h for a 

 Latin f, the Spanish hijo representing the Latin 

 filius, just as the Latin horaeum represented the 

 Sabine fordeum. Not only f, but c and s are 

 frequently represented by h. Thus, hundred and 

 century, heartiness and cordiality, hall and cell 

 are true doublets, while the Latin can-is, centum, 

 and caput correspond to the English hound, hun- 

 dred, and head, and the first syllables of hexagon 

 and heptmrcliy, which are derived from the Greek, 

 correspond to the English numerals six and seven. 

 We get -hemi- sphere from the Greek and semi-circle 

 from the Latin, hyper-critic&l from the Greek and 

 sitper-ncial from the Latin. The Irish have re- 

 tained s, which in Welsh has faded down to h, 

 the Welsh ken, 'old,' being the Irish sen and 

 the Latin senex. In English h has been lost in the 

 words it, loaf, neck, ring, tear, fee, which were 

 formerly written hit, hlaf, hnecca, hring, taker, and 

 feoh, while in droht and genoh, now written draft 

 and enough, it has become f, and in the words 

 huge, wharf, whelk, and whelm it is intrusive. 

 In hwit and hweol, and many other words, the 

 decay of the aspirate caused them to be written 

 white and wheel, and except in the north of England 

 the h in these words is hardly heard. In the west 



and south of England, which are Saxon, the aspir- 

 ate as a rule is fainter and more liable to be lost 

 than in East Anglia, Yorkshire, and Scotland, 

 where we have the descendants of Angles and 

 Danes. 



The correct pronunciation of this difficult letter 

 is one of the most delicate tests of good breeding. 

 The quality of the sound depends partly on that 

 of the following vowel, and its intensity to some 

 extent on the accentuation. The aspiration is 

 stronger in humble than in humility, in hitman 

 than in humane, in history than in historical, in 

 hostile than in hostility, but it is the same in happy 

 and happiness, since the accent rests on the same 

 syllable. It is stronger in who than in when, in 

 hole than in whole. In honour it is very faint, in 

 honourable and honesty it is almost inaudible. It 

 is stronger in host than in hospital, while in hostler 

 it has so completely disappeared that the spelling 

 ostler has become usual. It is retained in harbour, 

 but has been lost in arbour. It is retained in hair 

 and hare, but is evanescent in heir and hour, 

 though retained in hereditary and horologe. No 

 general rule can be laid down for the pronuncia- 

 tion ; it depends on the usage of good society, 

 which changes from generation to generation. In 

 good French society the aspirate is disappearing ; 

 in England and America the reverse is probably the 

 case. The reasons why persons who omit h where 

 it should be inserted and commonly insert it where 

 it should be omitted are obscure, but have been 

 referred by Mr Douse in his book on Grimms Law 

 to what he designates as the Principle of Cross 

 Compensation. 



In German musical notation the letter H is used 

 to denote B natural, the letter B being applied to 

 our B flat. This anomalous distinction is derived 

 from the ancient notation by letters, before the in- 

 vention of the stave, in which B natural was written 

 in a square form ( B quadratum), like a small black- 

 letter b, while B flat was written as a Roman b 

 (B rotundum). The awkwardness of having two 

 B's led to the introduction of the H, which in 

 small black letter ( 1) ) resembles b closely. See ' Acci- 

 dentals ' in Grove's Dictionary. In the French and 

 Italian system the same note is denoted by the 

 syllable Si. See Music, SCALE, SOLFEGGIO. ' 



. CARL, German painter, born 20th April 

 1820, at Erlangen, studied at Munich (under Cor- 

 nelius) and at Kome. In 1847 he settled in Eng- 

 land, at the same time abandoning oil for water- 

 colours. His earlier pictures represented scenes 

 from Tyrol and Dalmatia, and from the life of the 

 English royal family in Scotland. His later works 

 have been mostly illustrative of oriental subjects, 

 such as the life of the Bedouin of the desert, the 

 ruins of Baalbek and Palmyra, and similar themes. 



Haarlem, a town of Holland, 10 miles W. of 

 Amsterdam, is intersected, like most Dutch towns, 

 with canals and avenues of trees. Of its churches 

 the principal is the Great or St Bavon's, a Late 

 Gothic basilica, built in the 15th century, one of 

 the largest churches in Holland, and specially 

 noted for its lofty tower and its organ ( 1738), long 

 esteemed the largest and finest ever constructed. 



