custom to the contrary, I think everything
should be written as it is sounded; for the use of letters is to
preserve sounds, and render them, as things which they have been
holding in trust, to the reader.' In short, the people of England, in
these old times, had a law of their own, though it did not manifest
itself in a fixed mode of spelling, but differed from ours, and,
indeed, was based on a very different principle. Perhaps I might say,
that they were brought up, not to the Spelling-book, but the
Horn-book.

By this, I mean that the critic of modern times has been no doubt well
drilled in the spelling-book, soundly rated if he was guilty of a
misspelling, and made to understand that it was next to impossible
for him to commit a more disgusting barbarism; while his
many-times-great-grandfather (the scholar of Lily, perhaps we might
almost say of Busby) went through no such discipline. He was, as I
have said, brought up on the horn-book.

Now, I grant that, generally, the major includes the minor; and a
man's being able to read is _prima facie_ evidence that he knows his
letters; yet it is possible that the modern many-times-great-grandson
may indulge in as much laxity respecting _letters_, as his ancestor
did with regard to _words_. Just try the experiment. Go round to
half-a-dozen printers, and ask them to print for you the first letter
of the alphabet. They will understand you, and you will understand me,
without my puzzling the workman who is to print this--if it is
printed--by naming the letter here. Apply to them, I say, successively
to print this letter for you. It is not likely that any one of them
will ask you: 'What shape will you have it?' because that is not a
technical mode of expression among printers; but if any one should do
so, you would perhaps answer with some surprise: 'Why, the right shape
to be sure. Do not you know your letters, and are not your first,
second, and third letters, and all through the alphabet, of the right
shape? Only take care that you do not make this first one in the shape
of the second, or third, or any of those which follow, for the whole
set are distinguished from one another simply and purely by their
_shape_.'

As I have said, however, if you applied to a practical man, he would
not put the question in this form. At the same time, he certainly
would put it in another. He would perhaps say: 'What type will you
have? Shall it be Roman, Italic, Black-letter, Script, or