s. 256. The preceding chapter has exhibited the theory of a full and perfect alphabet; it has shown how far the English alphabet falls short of such a standard; and, above all, it has exhibited the various conventional modes of spelling which the insufficiency of alphabets, combined with other causes, has engendered. The present chapter gives a _history_ of our alphabet, whereby many of its defects are _accounted for_. These defects, it may be said, once for all, the English alphabet shares with those of the rest of the world; although, with the doubtful exception of the French, it possesses them in a higher degree than any. With few, if any, exceptions, all the modes of writing in the world originate, directly or indirectly, from the Phoenician, Hebrew, or Semitic alphabet. This is easily accounted for when we call to mind,--1. The fact that the Greek, the Latin, and the Arabian alphabets, are all founded upon this; and, 2. The great influence of the nations speaking those three languages. The present sketch, however, is given only for the sake of accounting for defects. s. 257. _Phoenician, Hebrew, or Semitic Period._--At a certain period the alphabet of Palestine, Phoenicia, and the neighbouring languages of the Semitic tribes, consisted of twenty-two separate and distinct letters. For these see the Hebrew Grammars and the Phoenicia of Gesenius. The chances are, that, let a language possess as few elementary articulate sounds as possible, an alphabet of only twenty-two letters will be insufficient. Now, in the particular case of the languages in point, the number of elementary sounds, as we infer from the present Arabic, was above the average. {201} It may safely be asserted, that the original Semitic alphabet was _insufficient_ for even the Semitic languages. It was, moreover, _inconsistent_: since sounds as like as those of _teth_ and _tau_ (mere variations of each other) were expressed by signs as unlike as [Hebrew: T`] and [Hebrew: T]; whilst sounds as unlike as those of _beth_ with a point, and _beth_ without a point (_b_ and _v_), were expressed (if expressed at all) by signs as like as [Hebrew: B] and [Hebrew: B]. In this state it was imported into Greece. Now, as it rarely happens that any two languages have precisely the same elementary articulate sounds, so it rarely happens that an alphabet can be transplanted from one tongue to another, and be found, at once, to coincide. The Greeks had, in all probability, sounds which were wanting in Palestine and Phoenicia. In Palestine and Phoenicia it is certain that there were sounds wanting in Greece. Of the twenty-two Phoenician letters the Greeks took but twenty-one. The eighteenth letter, _tsadi_, [Hebrew: TS], was never imported into Europe. s. 258. _Greek Period._--Compared with the Semitic, the _Old_ Greek alphabet ran thus:--