With regard to the form of printed letters, it is difficult to conceive any improvement in modern typography, as practised in Italy, France, and England. This is equally true of Roman and Greek characters. The Greek types introduced by Porson leave nothing to be desired. The Germans still to a great extent retain the old black-letter type for native works, which was universal over all the north of Europe in the early period of printing, and is not a _national_ type, as some persons seem to imagine. These letters being imitated from the manuscript characters of the fifteenth century, are essentially more indistinct than the Roman type, and have for that reason been disused by the rest of Europe, Holland and Denmark not excepted. In England this antiquated mode of printing was long retained for law-books, and, till a comparatively recent date, for the statutes. The Anglo-Saxon letters are in like manner nothing but a barbarous imitation of old manuscript characters, and have no real connexion with the Anglo-Saxon language. Their use ought to be wholly abandoned (with the exception of those which are wanting in modern English). Roman numerals, likewise, as being less clear and concise than Arabic numerals, especially for large numbers, ought to be discarded, except in cases where it is convenient to distinguish the volume from the page, and the book from the chapter. English lawyers, indeed, who in general have only occasion to cite the volume and page, invariably make their quotations with Arabic figures, by prefixing the number of the volume, and subjoining the number of the page. Thus, if it were wished to refer to the 100th page of the second volume of _Barnewall and Alderson's Reports_, they would write _2 B. & C. 100_. Roman numerals are still retained for the sections of the statutes. Akin to the retention of antiquated forms of letters is the retention of antiquated orthography. Editors of works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries sometimes retain the spelling of the period, of which Evelyn's _Diary_ is an example; but this practise is unpleasant to the modern reader, and sometimes, particularly in proper names, perplexes and misleads him. The modern editions of the classical writers of that period, such as Shakspeare, Bacon, Milton, Clarendon, &c., are very properly reduced to the modern standard of orthography, as is done by Italian editors with the works of Dante, Boccaccio, &c. The attempt to introduce the native orthography of foreign proper names naturalised in English, is likewise unsuccessful, and merely offends the eye of the reader, without giving any real information. Mr. Lane and other Orientalists will never succeed in banishing such forms as _vizier_, _caliph_, _cadi_, &c., nor will even Mr. Grote's authority alter the spelling of the well-known Greek names. Names of ancient persons and places which are enshrined in the verses of Milton and other great poets, cannot be altered.