Yet I dare say that some learned gentleman will come forward and argue to the satisfaction of a certain number of persons that the proposal of the linguists is highly feasible and likely to be carried out. Let us see, then, what would be the effect of the adoption of the principle that our spelling ought to be made phonetic.

At once, a dozen different systems for making it so would rush into the field to compete for election. There can be no doubt of this, since even at present, without the smallest prospect of any such revolution, the Philological Association's proposal, Mr. Ellis's "glossic", Mr. Melville Bell's "Visible Speech", Pitman's "phonotypy", together with several others, have appeared and found

But every class of society has its own pronunciation. The sailors, the stevedores, the longshoremen, the fishermen, the cowboys, the bravery-boys, the bagmen, the farmers in different districts, the factory hands, the shopkeepers, the broad-street brokers, the scientific men, the writers of light literature, the scholars, the printers, the actors, the phoneticists, all pronounce so differently that they sometimes misunderstand one another. Even within any one of such classes, pronunciation varies

[Here insert Copy A.]

A spelling were ever to become perfectly phonetic, books would be as various and as illegible as the above. Even if no such ultimate state of things were reached, there would, at any rate, be a very confusing variety both of pronunciations and of systems of representing them, reading would become slow work, and the cost of books would be enormously enhanced. English learning

Such would be the fate of this glorious dialect of literary English which has, in its time, done so much for the elevation of man, and will continue to do the same work, as long as it is allowed to stand on its own legs and follow its own genius. And what would happen to its gentle sister, the English vernacular, which adds to all the charm that foreigners find in their Platt Deutsch, their Flemish, their Welsh, their Basque, their Catalan, or their Neapolitan a dignity, a distinction, and a world-wide recognition peculiar to itself among non-literary tongues? It would still furnish a convenient Volapük for the commercial sollicitor [sic].

But all these considerations, I shall be told, are outweighed by this, that phonetic spelling would economize the valuable time of children, and prevent their attention from being drawn away from other matters by the necessity of studying the English of print.

Let us hai.sn two aknol'ej dhut dhis aa.rgyumunt br'ush'iz urvai' oul our ubjek'shunz leik r'ub'ish, und looz noa teim in udop.ting u foanet'ik spel'ing. Fu dhupoint iz dhut on dhu wum hand, dhi Ing'glish uv print iz not wúurth much aten'shun, wheil dhi Ing'glish uv tauk iz u dr'iy hooz peu'r'iti iz past przuu'rving