Is the poetry of the Greeks and Romans ever read as they themselves read it? Have we not altered the very metre of the pentameter by our manner of reading it? Is it not at this day doubtful whether Cæsar was called Kæsar, Chæsar, or as we pronounce his name? And whether Cicero ought not to be called Chichero[1] or Kikero? Have I not therefore cause to apprehend that there may come a time when the true pronunciation of Dove may be lost or doubtful? Major Jardine has justly observed that in the great and complicated art of alphabetical writing, which is rendered so easy and familiar by habit, we are not always aware of the limits of its powers. [Footnote 1: The well known verses of Catullus would be against C_h_ic_h_ero, at least. _Chommoda dicebat, si quando commoda vellet Dicere, et_ h_insidias Arrius insidias: Et tum mirificè sperabat se esse locutum, Cum quantum poterat, dixerat_ h_insidias, &c._ CARM. lxxxiv. The _h_ appears to have been an old Shibboleth, and not restricted either to Shropshire or Warwickshire. Mr. Evans' verses will occur to many readers of “The Doctor, &c.”] “Alphabetical writing,” says that always speculative writer, “was doubtless a wonderful and important discovery. Its greatest merit, I think, was that of distinguishing sounds from articulations, a degree of perfection to which the eastern languages have not yet arrived; and that defect may be, with those nations, one of the chief causes of their limited progress in many other things. You know they have no vowels, except some that have the _a_, but always joined to some articulation: their attempt to supply that defect by points give them but very imperfect and indistinct ideas of vocal and articulate sounds, and of their important distinction. But even languages most alphabetical, if the expression may be allowed, could not probably transmit by writing a compleat idea of their own sounds and pronunciation from any one age or people to another. Sounds are to us infinite and variable, and we cannot transmit by one sense the ideas and objects of another. We shall be convinced of this when we recollect the innumerable qualities of tone in human voices, so as to enable us to distinguish all our acquaintances, though the number should amount to many hundreds, or perhaps thousands. With attention we might discover a different quality of tone in every instrument; for all these there never can be a sufficient number of adequate terms in any written language; and when that variety comes to be compounded with a like variety of articulations, it becomes infinite to us. The varieties only upon the seven notes in music, varied only as to pitch and modulation throughout the audible scale, combined with those of time, are not yet probably half exhausted by the constant labour of so many ages. So that the idea of Mr. Steel and others, of representing to the eye the tune and time only of the sounds in any language, will