Naturally, it fills one with contempt for these 'Derby' purists to find that their own object, the very purpose they are blindly and unconsciously aiming at, has been so little studied or steadily contemplated by them in anything approaching to its whole extent. Why, upon the principle which they silently and virtually set up, though carrying it out so contradictorily (driving out an _a_ on the plea that it is not an _e_, only to end by substituting, _and without being aware_, the still remoter letter _u_), the consequence must be that the whole language would go to wreck. Nine names out of every ten would need tinkering. 'London,' for instance, no more receives the normal sound of the _o_ in either of its syllables than does the _e_ in 'Derby.' The normal sound of the _o_ is that heard in 'song,' 'romp,' 'homage,' 'drop.' Nevertheless, the sound given to the _o_ in 'London,' 'Cromwell,' etc., which strictly is the short sound of _u_ in 'lubber,' 'butter,' etc., is a secondary sound of _o_ in particular combinations, though not emphatically its proper sound. The very same defence applies to the _e_ in 'Berkeley,' etc. It is the legitimate sound of the English _e_ in that particular combination, viz., when preceding an _r_, though not its normal sound. But think of the wild havoc that would be made of other more complex anomalies, if these purists looked an inch in advance. Glocester or Gloucester, Worcester, Cirencester, Pontefract, etc. What elaborate and monstrous pronunciations would they affix to these names? The whole land would cease to recognise itself. And that the purists should never have contemplated these veritable results, this it is which seals and rivets one's contempt for them. Now, if such harmony were at all desirable (whereas, on the contrary, we should thus be carrying ruin into the traditions and obliteration into the ethnological links of languages, industriously, in fact, throwing up insuperable obstacles in the path of historical researches), it would be far better, instead of adjusting the pronunciation to the imaginary value of the spelling, inversely to adjust the spelling to the known and established pronunciation, as a certain class of lunatics amongst ourselves, viz., the _phonetic gang_, have for some time been doing systematically. Here, therefore, I hope is one fixed point. Here there is anchorage. The usage is the rule, at any rate; and the law of analogy takes effect only where _that_ cannot be decisively ascertained.