In all these words which I have adduced last, the correct spelling has in the end resumed its sway. It is not so with ‘frontisp_ie_ce’, which ought to be spelt ‘frontisp_i_ce’ (it was so by Milton and others), being the low Latin ‘frontispicium’, from ‘frons’ and ‘aspicio’, the forefront of the building, that part which presents itself to the view. It was only the entirely ungrounded notion that the word ‘piece’ constitutes the last syllable, which has given rise to our present orthography{275}. {Sidenote: Wrong Spelling} You may, perhaps, wonder that I have dwelt so long on these details of spelling; that I have bestowed on them so much of my own attention, that I have claimed for them so much of yours; yet in truth I cannot regard them as unworthy of our very closest heed. For indeed of how much beyond itself is accurate or inaccurate spelling the certain indication. Thus when we meet ‘s_y_ren’, for ‘s_i_ren’, as so strangely often we do, almost always in newspapers, and often where we should hardly have expected (I met it lately in the _Quarterly Review_, and again in Gifford’s _Massinger_), how difficult it is not to be “judges of evil thoughts”, and to take this slovenly misspelling as the specimen and evidence of an inaccuracy and ignorance which reaches very far wider than the single word which is before us. But why is it that so much significance is ascribed to a wrong spelling? Because ignorance of a word’s spelling at once argues ignorance of its origin and derivation. I do not mean that one who spells rightly may not be ignorant of it too, but he who spells wrongly is certainly so. Thus, to recur to the example I have just adduced, he who for ‘s_i_ren’ writes ‘s_y_ren’, certainly knows nothing of the magic _cords_ (σειραί) of song, by which those fair enchantresses were supposed to draw those that heard them to their ruin{276}.