Now let us get round to the practical side of the question, and see how it looks from that stand-point. A compositor is paid so much for the thousand ems, -a meagre sum for which he is not only obliged to set up the type, but also to correct what is set up, until the proof-reader declares that it "conforms to the copy". Further corrections are time-work, and a compositor would be disgraced who should not take it very leisurely; so that these corrections become mighty expensive. They are commonly paid far by the publisher; but if, as not seldom happens, they triple or quadruple the cost of composition, it is the author who has to pay. I have said that the compositor has to make his matter "conform to the copy". But he could not,

Suppose, now under these circumstances, it were agreed that the spelling should be phonetic. Still, it would not represent the pronunciation of the author, but that of the proof-reader, -a very different kind of man, both socially and by training, an oil-chilled precision with a thin, transparent varnish of varied information.

If you lay before him, at the table where he sits, an open Greek book, his pencil will come automatically out of his pocket, and correct an accent, although he does not know the meaning of one word of that language. Nothing, probably could be more distasteful to the author than this man´s pronunciation; but to insist upon his own would eat up all the profits of his book. Besides, he would have to correct the proofs himself, which he has not time for, and which, being a trade he is not trained in, he would not do well. It is inevitable, therefore, that each printing-office would have its standard spelling, just as now; and though this might be tolerably phonetic at the outset, it would cease to be so in a generation or two, long before the volumes worn now out. These considerations are patent to all who are connected with

The Philological Association proposed their list of new spellings "for general adoption." I wonder what these sages mean by that. The general public has nothing to do with the "adoption" of any particular spelling in books, except that they buy what they like, and leave what they do not like. Authors have still less to say. The whole question is in the hand of the publishers and the proofreaders. If the reader's imagination is hardly enough, let us suppose a publisher seriously to consider whether he would print a given book phonetically, or not. A little ciphering would show him that it would triple the cost of the volume, while instead

Need more be said to show that the most they can ever be affected will be to reform the spellings of a very few words of a time? But pronunciation has in my day changed by the wholesale, both here and in England, and the evidence is conclusive that ever since Shakespeare's time it has been changing far more rapidly than the spelling (as it winged words naturally would be expected to do); so that the tendency is to increase the discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation. The only counter-acting force is the influence of new-comers to induce people to pronounce more as they spell.