As to writing also, as well as printing--set half-a-dozen critics separately and apart to write a capital 'A,' and see how far the letters which they will produce agree in form and shape--I do not say with any in the printer's stock, for not one will do that, we may be certain, but with each other. One scribe will probably make something like an inverted cornucopia, or wiredrawn extinguisher; and one will cross it with a dash, and another with a loop; while another will make a letter wholly different--something that shall look like a pudding leaning against a trencher set on edge--something that is only a great 'A' by courtesy, being in fact nothing but an overgrown little 'a;' bearing the same proportion to a common 'a' as an alderman does to a common man, and looking as if it had been invented by some municipal scribe or official whose eye was familiar with the outline of recumbent obesity. But notwithstanding these and many other variations, you freely allow that each of your friends has made a capital 'A.' You do not dream of saying that one is right, and all the rest are wrong. The taste and the skill of their penmanship may be various, and the judgment of good and bad goes so far, but it knows better than to go further. Your toleration on this point is unbounded. If you can but make it out, you say, without the least emotion of resentment or contempt: 'Mr A. always makes _his_ Bs in this way;' and 'Mrs C. always makes her Ds in that way.' _Their_ Bs and Ds forsooth! Yes: 'every man his own alphabet-maker.' Why not, if you do but understand him? Right or wrong, the fact is that, come in what shape it may, you take what stands for 'A' to _be_ 'A,' with all the rights and qualities annexed to that letter. Except so far as taste is concerned, you do not think of rebuking the self-complacent type-founder, who prides himself on having produced a new form which all the world will admit to be a genuine 'A,' as soon as they make out that it was meant for one. I have thought it worth while to say all this about letters, because I believe that it will illustrate what was once upon a time nearly true as to words. The principle of those who had occasion to write in those early times was, so far as circumstances allowed, just opposite to that of the modern critics who find fault with their practice. They made that which, notwithstanding its fluctuations, we may call 'the constant quantity' to be the sound, exactly as we do with the multiform As and Bs just noticed. On the other hand, modern purists consider, not altogether incorrectly as to the fact, that the notation has somehow been settled and fixed, and they are disposed to force the sound into conformity. 'B, y, spells by,' said Lord Byron; and what he settled for himself, the spelling-book has settled for the rest of the world and all the words in it.