The circumstances of those who wrote English some centuries ago, may be considered as bearing some analogy to those of modern English authors who have occasion to write down Oriental words in English letters, and who are therefore obliged to make the characters which we use represent sounds which we do not utter. Of course there can only be an approximation. Writers feel that there is a discretion, and use it freely. It is easy for one after another to imagine that he has improved on the spelling of his predecessors. How many variegations and transmogrifications has the name of one unhappy Eastern tongue undergone since the days when Athanasius Kircher discoursed of the Hanscreet tongue of the Brahmins? I am almost afraid to write the name of Vishnoo, for I do not remember to have seen it in any book published within these five years; and what it may have come to by this time, I cannot guess. To a certain point, I think, this progressive purification of the mode of representing Eastern sounds has been acceptable to the world of letters; but the reading-public have shewn that there is a point at which they may lose patience. They not long ago decided that Haroun Alraschid, and Giafar, and Mesrour, and even the Princess Badroulboudour, and the fair slave Nouzhatoul-aouadat, had all 'proper names,' and refused to part with the friends of their youth for a more correctly named set of persons never before heard of. This by the way, however; for the main object of these remarks is to convey and impress the idea, that what naturally seems to us the strange and uncouth spelling of former times, was not a proof of the gross, untaught ignorance which it would now indicate. The purpose of the writer in those days was, not to spell accurately words which there was no strict rule for spelling, but to note down words in such a way as to enable those who had not heard them to reproduce them, and to impart their sense through the eye to those who should only see them. One of the finest proofs and specimens of this which we possess, is to be found in a sort of historical drama, now about three hundred years old, written by Bishop Bale, one of the most learned men of his time, and still existing, partly in his hand-writing, and partly in another hand, with his autograph corrections.[1] Certainly the prelate and the scribe between them did, as we should consider it, most atrociously murder the king and queen's English--for I suppose it would be hard to say how much of it belonged to Edward, and how much to Elizabeth; and there is something quite surprising in the prolific ingenuity with which they evade what we should consider the obvious and natural spelling. For instance, one of the _dramatis personae_, and a very important one, is an allegorical person called 'Civil Order;' but I believe that the word 'civil' thus spelled never occurs in the whole work, though seven other modes of spelling it are to be found there.