erature. To the
philologist an alphabet is not a thing in itself, but only a medium, and
he knows many alphabets of all degrees of excellence. Among the latest
formed is that which we use and call the Roman, but which, though it was
taken from Italy, made its way back after a course of form development
that carried it through Ireland, England, and Germany. This alphabet was
originally designed for writing Latin, and, as English has more sounds
than Latin, some of the symbols when applied to English have to do
multiple duty; though this is the least of the complaints against our
current spelling. In fact any inventive student of phonetics could in
half an hour devise a better alphabet for English, and scores have been
devised. But the Roman has the field, and no one dreams of advocating a
new alphabet for popular use. Meanwhile, though the earliest English may
have been written in Runic, and the Bibles which our Pilgrim fathers
brought over were printed in Black-letter, still to the great
English-reading public the alphabet of current books and papers is the
only alphabet. Even this is a double alphabet, consisting as it does of
capitals and small letters; and we have besides Italic, Black-letter,
and Script, all in common use, all with double forms, and all differing
greatly from one another. At best the Roman alphabet, though beautiful
and practical, is not so beautiful as the Greek nor nearly so efficient
for representing English sounds as the Cherokee syllabary invented by
the half-breed, Sequoyah, is for representing the sounds of his mother
tongue.

Let us now turn from the alphabet, which is the foundation of spelling,
to spelling itself. Given a scientific alphabet, spelling, as a problem,
vanishes; for there is only one possible spelling for any spoken word,
and only one possible pronunciation for any written word. Both are
perfectly easy, for there is no choice, and no one who knows the
alphabet can make a mistake in either. But given a traditional alphabet
encumbered with outgrown or impracticable or blundering associations,
and spelling may become so difficult as to serve for a test or hallmark
of scholarship. In French, for instance, the alphabet has drifted so far
from its moorings that no one on hearing a new word spoken, if it
contains certain sounds, can be sure of its spelling; though every one
on seeing a new word written knows how to pronounce it. But in English
our alphabet has actually parted the ca