Perhaps the word Sanskrit means nothing to you, but it is the name of an important old Oriental language. Sanskrit stands in very much the same relation to many Eastern languages as Latin does to the languages of Italy, Spain, and France. In the last century, William Jones, a Welshman of marked genius, went, like many young Britons, to India to advance his fortunes under the British mercantile government of that land. It was he who first called the attention of Europe to Sanskrit. Since his day much of its poetry and legends has been read, many of its fables and dramatic works have been translated. The word Sanskrit means polished and perfected; and polished and perfected its alphabet certainly is. It is the most complete and most carefully devised alphabet of all those that we know. Sanskrit writing is very solid and handsome in appearance,--a stately script worthy of holding the decrees which mighty monarchs issued from courts magnificent with all the splendors of the Orient. There are not twenty-two letters as in the Ph[oe]nician alphabet, nor twenty-six as in ours--there are forty-seven! Instead of beginning with A, the Sanskrit alphabet begins with K. Why? Because K is a letter spoken from the throat. Indian grammarians carefully noted in what parts of the throat and mouth the different sounds of their language were made, and, for convenience, they systematized their ample alphabet on this admirable plan. They put their fourteen vowels by themselves as broad, open sounds which were shorter or longer; and, taking the consonants, they placed first on the list those which are spoken from the throat, then those spoken from the palate, then those spoken from the roof of the mouth nearest the brain, then those spoken from the teeth, and finally those spoken from the lips. The list of consonants starts with those uttered low down in the throat and ends with those uttered from the lips; added to these are the soft and flowing consonants called semi-vowels--Y, R, L, and V; and after these come the sibilants, or hissed letters, and the letter H,--forty-seven in all.