Among the more ancient nations of Europe, not only does the pronunciation of language maintain its inherent dialectic variety, and fluctuate through the prevalence of provincial speakers, but the whole body of a language changes, while yet the spelling, once adopted in public documents, and taught to children, remains for a long time the same. In early times, when literature was in its infancy, when copies of books could easily be counted, and when the _norma scribendi_ was in the hands of a few persons, the difficulty of adapting the writing to the ever-varying pronunciation of a language was comparatively small. We see it when we compare the Latin of early Roman inscriptions with the Latin of Cicero. We know from Cicero himself that when he settled among the patricians of Rome, he had on some small points to change both his pronunciation and his spelling of Latin. The reform of spelling was a favorite subject with Roman scholars, and even emperors were not too proud to dabble in inventing new letters and diacritical signs. The difficulty, however, never assumes serious proportions. The small minority of people who were able to read and write, pleased themselves as best they could; and, by timely concessions, prevented a complete estrangement between the written and the spoken language. Then came the time when Latin ceased to be Latin, and the vulgar dialects, such as Italian, French, and Spanish took its place. At that time the spelling was again phonetic, though here and there tinged by reminiscences of Latin spelling. There was much variety, but considering how limited the literary intercourse must have been between different parts of France, Spain, or Italy, it is surprising that on the whole there should have been so much uniformity in the spelling of these modern dialects. A certain local and individual freedom of spelling, however, was retained; and we can easily detect in mediæval MSS. the spelling of literate and illiterate writers, the hand of the learned cleric, the professional clerk, and the layman. [A style of spelling will now be introduced which has received the name of Semiphonotypy. It requires no new letter: “[D] [p]” for the vowel in _but_, _son_, are made from “D p” by a pen-knife. The short vowels, diphthongs, and consonants are all written phonetically, except an occasional “n” = “[n]” before _k_ and _g_, and “th” = both “[t]” and “[dh]” leaving only the long vowels in the old spelling. Six syllables out of seven are thus written as in full phonotypy. The italic and script forms of “[P [italic form] ]” are “[p [italic form] ]” (a turned italic “_a_”) and [P p [script form] ].]