Sixty-four open syllables in all, out of 105 possible ones, of which and their various agglutinations the whole language is made up. The vowels are pronounced as in Italian, _a_ being the accented _a_, _e_ and _o_ the open sounds. The vowel _u_ is English _u_ in _put_, never as in _rut_ or _lute_. The vowels _a_, _e_, _o_ are half-long, _i_ and _u_ are shorter, and _u_ shortest of all. Value is given to each syllable, subject as above, with scarcely any ictus (as in French), but the last syllable of a word, especially in _u_, is always weakest, and the penultimate rather the strongest. The consonants are pronounced as in English, _h_ well aspirated, but rather forward, even between vowels, _z_ as in _zany_, _zh_ as the _s_ in _pleasure_, _f_ may have descended from an original _p_, with _h_ and _w_. The scheme, according to that of the _Oxford Dictionary_, would be-- a a e e i i o o u u b b ch tʃ d d dz dz f f g g h h j dʒ k k m m n n r r s s sh ʃ t t ts ts w w y y z z zh ʒ The Chinese and Japanese languages differ from Aryan and Semitic forms of speech in the total absence of all concords dependent upon number, person, case, and gender, in the like default of relative words, and (from Aryan speech) in the absence of _narratio obliqua_. They further differ in the almost complete absence of any morphological moods or tenses. Chinese has, broadly speaking, no accidence at all; the grammar is a syntax teaching the right order and use of vocables (used as words), double vocables (constituting words), and the few form-words (empty words the Chinese call them) which serve as variously connective particles. In Japanese there is a very scanty accidence of the few adjectives the language possesses, and a more complete one of the verb; but the verbal forms are all (with an exception or two) resolvable into locutions, more or less agglutinated, scarcely constituting true inflexions. Hence, morphologically, even in Japanese there is neither mood nor tense, but there is an approach to both of the highest value to the language, giving it, in conjunction with a goodly number of particles, an articulation and plasticity wanting to Chinese. From the above considerations it will be readily understood that the power of expression even in Japanese is far inferior to that of Western speech. The imagery is, of necessity, extremely limited in range and flat in tone. It seems to me, however, of greater range and higher quality than in Chinese. But neither Chinese nor Japanese possesses a tithe of the capacity of Aryan and Semitic languages to express human thought and feeling, and describe the works of man or the appearances of nature. Ὦ δῖος αἰθήρ, &c., thought and words, are absolutely unintelligible to the whole Far East.