wine-thick success as _piktcher, portraitcher_.

"On earth's green _cinkcher_ fell a heavy _Jew_!"

That the _u_ had formerly, in many cases, the sound attributed to it by
Mr. White, we have no question; that it had that sound when Shakspeare
wrote "Midsummer Night's Dream," and in such words as _luck_, is not so
clear to us. We suspect that form of it was already retreating into the
provincial dialects, where it still survives.

Another of Mr. White's theories is that _moon_ was pronounced _mown_.
Perhaps it was; but, if so, it is singular that this pronunciation
is not found in any dialect of our language where almost every other
archaism is caught skulking. And why was it spelt _moon_? When did
_soon_ and _spoon_ take their present form and sound? That _oo_ was not
sounded like _o_ long is certain from Webbe's saying, that, to make
_poore_ and _doore_ rhyme with _more_, they must be written _pore_ and
_dore_. Mr. White says also that _shrew_ was pronounced _shrow_, and
cites as parallel cases _sew_ and _shew_. If New England authority be
worth anything, we have the old sound here in the pronunciation _soo_,
once universal, and according both with Saxon and Latin analogy.
Moreover, Bishop Hall rhymes _shew_ with _mew_ and _sue_; so that it
will not do to be positive.

We come now to the theory on which Mr. White lays the greatest stress,
and for being the first to broach which he even claims credit. That
credit we frankly concede him, and we shall discuss the point more fully
because there is definite and positive evidence about it, and because
we think we shall be able to convince even Mr. White himself that he is
wrong. This theory is, that the _th_ was sounded like _t_ in the
word _nothing_, and in various other words, at the beginning of the
seventeenth century. This certainly seems an unaccountable anomaly at
very first sight; for we know that two sounds of _th_ existed before
that period, and exist now. What singular frost was it that froze the
sound in a few words for a few years and left it fluent in all others?

Schoolmaster Gill, in his "Logonomia," already referred to, gives an
interesting and curious reason for the loss from our alphabet of the
Anglo-Saxon signs for the grave and acute _th_. He attributes it to the
fact, that, when Henry VII. invited Wynken de Word over from Germany
to print for the first time in English, the foreign fount of types was
necessarily wanting in signs to express those S