You would hardly believe it possible that there are so many alphabets in the world which seem to have nothing to do with one another--neither coming one from another by borrowing, nor descending, apparently, from the same alphabet thousands of years ago. The numbers of existing nations and of men to-day are as nothing compared with those that have perished. So the number of existing alphabets and syllabaries are but as a handful compared to those that have passed away and left no trace whatever. Writings on paper and bark can remain only as long as the paper and bark hold together; even in Egypt, where, owing to the dryness of the climate, paper lasts longer than elsewhere, it can last only a few thousand years. Nations that once for long periods possessed writings are now completely unknown, and with them their alphabets also have perished, because no record of their existence was left on rock, brick, or pottery. What looks, therefore, like an abundance of material by which to read the life of alphabets is really very little compared to what we ought to have. You remember how nations like the Phoenicians, when adopting a new series of letters, name these letters according to their own fancy, just as we sometimes teach children their alphabet by saying, "A was an Archer" (or we may prefer to have A stand for an Apple, or some other word beginning with A); and "B was a Butcher," or "a Bear," or some other word beginning with B. There is no doubt that both the Romans and the Greeks had lists of words useful to remind children of their letters. Now, our alphabet came directly to us from the Irish missionaries and professors of religion and wisdom, who taught Christianity to the heathen Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Goths, Germans, Danes, and Swedes, several centuries after the death of our Lord. They did not learn from the Phoenicians, although they have traditions that seem to point to settlers in Ireland bearing a similar name. Instead of using the Latin names for the letters taken from the Christian Romans, they gave them names of their own. Their wise and pious men had been members of, or were the pupils of, a class of learned heathens called the Druids. In ancient Ireland, a _drui_ was prophet, priest, doctor, and magician, and the name seems to be connected with our word tree. It was against the rule of the Druids to write things down. They were in the habit of retiring to the deepest woods for meditation and study, sometimes attended by pupils. That is probably the reason why the Irish, among whom the Druids retained their power the longest,--because Ireland was the hardest to reach of all the great islands thereabouts, and the last to feel the changes taking place elsewhere in Europe,--chose this pretty system of naming the letters of the Latin alphabet when it became common. Instead of calling A, _alpha_, as the Latins usually did, they said A, _ailm_, the word which stood in