parable shows the duty of humble reliance on God's mercy, and not on man's merit? Which petition in the Lord's Prayer expresses it? Which declares our submission to God? How did Jesus exemplify this, and where, and under what trying circumstances? How did our Lord set us an example of keeping the Fifth Commandment, and what are the words in which his obedience to his earthly parents is stated? Which Commandment forbids covetousness? What does it mean? Distinguish this sin from simply wishing for a thing? What other Commandment does a breach of the Tenth Commandment tempt us to commit? How may we break the Sixth Commandment without killing and without a blow? How can we lessen the power of temptation? What is the meaning of the parable of the Importunate Widow? What does the Prodigal Son teach us? Give an example of remorse which was not repentance? What do the miracles prove? Explain the words, " inheritor of the kingdom of heaven?" What are pomps and vanities? Which Commandment forbids the sinful lusts of the flesh? Which are

the two Sacraments? Why are they needful to salvation?! When was each appointed? What is the inward part in each? What is meant by grace? What by faith? Distinguish nominal and saving faith? What Commandments did Judas Iscariot break? How did he break each, and give the proofs of each breach of them? Mention ways in which the First, Ninth, and Tenth Commandments might be broken?

These, and hosts more of such questions, should be applied, worded as simply as possible, to test the comprehension, by the children, of what they have learnt. If skilfully done, these, and such-like, will rapidly and easily disclose the exact state of their knowledge. The judicious examiner will follow any new course of inquiry suggested by the child's answer, so as to do full justice to all he knows, and to copiousness of information on particular subjects; for, though these are not to be cultivated, they are always to be accredited as so much in the stock of knowledge acquired.

Again, let us suggest that the silent system of holding out hands by all who think they can answer, is the only effectual way of testing a class, the teacher invariably selecting of these the least-instructed child to answer first. If that answer be deemed right by the others, they are to drop their hands; if wrong, they keep them up, and the question proceeds upwards till it is disposed of. To allow immediate viva voce answers is to insure deception as to the real knowledge of a class; for the herd will always echo the answer of the bell-wether; and the daws thus pass muster under the feathers of the peacocks of the school.

A cheerful manner is essential even on sacred subjects. Great care should be taken to avoid clothing religion in mourning. Surely, glad tidings should not be dolefully taught! The sepulchral voice and funereal manner, with which some good people moan and sigh over them, awe children, and deter religious affections very mischievously. Verb. sap.

(To be continued.)

A CHAPTER ON A B C.

(Continued from p. 184.)

2. Names.-The general identity of the names of the letters in the Greek and Hebrew alphabets is unquestionable. It requires very little acquaintance with the latter language to recognize Aleph and Alpha as forms of the same word; the addition of the final a is familiar to us from several instances in the New Testament (e. g. Abb-a, Tabith-a), and the omission of the intermediate e after this addition is common. These mutations will explain the difference in the majority of the names; the variations most noticeable are the following:-Gimel= Gamma; Zain=Zeta; Ayin=0; Resh=Rho; and Shin-Sigma. Of these five, three occur in cases where the Hebrew name terminates in in (will any of our readers suggest an explanation of this termination?), and there seem, on this account, primâ facie grounds for supposing that these were not the original names of the letters, but that there were names more nearly corresponding with the Greek; such as Zeth, Ay, and Sigel. Gimel and Gamma are evidently the same; in the case of Rho, the Greeks apparently derived the designation from the sound of the letter, which resembled a dog's snarl, and which obtained for it the title, littera canina.

Had these names any signification? Some of them certainly, and all of them probably, indicated the objects from which the forms were borrowed. We shall assume, for the present, that all letters were originally of a hieroglyphic character, i. e., they were pictures of the objects which men wished to describe. What more natural than that the names of those objects should be transferred to the signs of them? At the present time, indeed, we are not able to expound all these names —at least the writer of these pages is not able to do so; but the meaning of some is well known. Aleph, for instance, means an ox; beth, a house; gimel, a camel (?); daleth, a door; ayin, an eye; mem, water, &c. The appropriateness of these names will appear when we come to discuss the forms. Meanwhile, the question suggests itself,How is it that these names have not been preserved in the Latin language, and so handed down to us? We venture to suggest that the maintenance of the names among the Greeks is due to their frequent intercourse with the Phoenicians and other Eastern nations; that this intercourse had a considerable influence upon the alphabets is plain from the universally credited story, that Cadmus was the first to introduce letters into Greece. Without receiving this statement in its crude form, it must be allowed, at all events, that the Greeks derived something from the Phoenicians at the era referred to, and it is by no means unlikely that the names were then introduced. But no such communication existed between Italy and Phoenicia; the forms were introduced; but the forms, having lost their hieroglyphic meaning to the minds of the Latins, lost also the names which commemorated their connection with the objects whence they were derived.

3. Forms.-The origin of letters has been referred to in the foregoing section; the forms were suggested by the ordinary objects of nature; they were used, in the first case, as monograms, and thence were transferred to represent the simple sounds, which were most characteristic of those objects. It is not easy to establish the connection between the

forms as they at present exist, and the objects whence they were borrowed, partly from the great changes that have taken place in the forms themselves, and partly from our ignorance of the prototypes of the forms. Yet there is sufficient for the purpose of illustration. The name ayin, would seem to indicate the eye as the object pictured in the letter; and surely the corresponding letter in our alphabet (O) is no bad representation of an eye. The name mem indicates water; and the character of the object is not inaptly shadowed forth in the wavy form which the letter M has retained in our own and other languages. Daleth means a door; and the form of delta is an exact picture of a tent-door, the entrance with which the Easterns were first acquainted. And so, no doubt, all the letters would have been pictures or symbols of certain outward objects with which man was most familiar in a rude state of society.

The variations in these forms are due to various causes; among which we may specify, as most important, the substance and the instrument used in writing, the direction in which the writing was carried on, and the all-important question of convenience. Letters that were incised with the chisel on stone were necessarily angular; while those written on linen or any other yielding substance would be curved. The thickness of the strokes would depend on the instrument used: a pen or split reed makes the strokes alternately thick and thin, a hard point or chisel preserves throughout the same thickness. There were various modes of writing: Hebrew and Etruscan ran from right to left; Latin, with a few exceptions, from left to right; Greek in various directions, sometimes columnwise, i. e. in perpendicular lines, sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right, and sometimes alternately from left to right and from right to left, described by the term Govorρopndov, i. e. ploughing-fashion; the usual manner, however, was from left to right. We cannot but suppose that the shapes of the letters were very much modified by the direction in which they were written. Lastly, how much convenience and the necessity of rapidity has influenced the forms of letters will appear from a comparison of our capital letters and the same letters as used in our running hand.

The similarities between the forms of the Latin and Greek letters did not escape the observation of the Ancients. Pliny remarks, "Veteres Græcas fuisse easdem pæne quæ nunc sunt Latinæ, indicio erit Delphica tabula antiqua æris quæ est hodie in Palatio." Dionysius also describes the pillar of Servius Tullius as γραμμάτων ἔχουσα χαρακτῆρας Ἑλληνικῶν, οἷς τὸ παλαιὸν ἡ Ἑλλὰς ἐχρῶτο. The variations in the forms of the Greek and Latin letters are for the most part easily explained; and if we could have presented our readers with the more ancient and obsolete forms of the Greek, the various stages of change would have been clearly discernible. For instance, gamma (T) appears in some of the alphabets with its two lines inclined at an obtuse instead of a right angle, very much like the double stroke in our K, and then the angle gradually lapsed into the curve of the C, as was natural on a soft material. The same explanation can be given of delta (A) as compared with D; let the position of the letter be altered so as to stand on one of its angles instead of one of its sides, and then it will present to the eye a perpendicular, with lines starting from each extremity and converging to an angle: the angle, as before, degenerates into a curve, and the letter

:

becomes D. The Latin F, we need hardly observe, exactly corresponds with the form of digamma. G is only another form of C: it was introduced into the Latin alphabet to express the soft C, after this letter had been reserved exclusively for the hard sound of K. Lambda (A) and L appear at first sight to have little in common; but compare the small form of the Greek, and it will become the connecting link between the two in this case, as in delta, the position of the angle has been subject to great variation. Xi (E) has no representative in the Latin alphabet, X being allied both in form and, as we have already observed, in original power to Chi. Pi (11) and P are easily identified; in many, indeed in most, of the Greek alphabets the right-hand stroke in this letter is not brought down to the line, but stops midway; in the Latin a curve inwards was given to the short leg, though not usually so far as to meet the perpendicular. Q is similar to the antiquated koppa. With regard to R, the only observation that we need make, is that the lower part of it, which distinguishes it from Rho (P) is not peculiar to the Latin alphabet, but appears in some of the old Greek inscriptions. Sigma (2) and S afford another exemplification of the tendency of angles to become curves. U, V, and Y owe their parentage to upsilon (Y): of the three, Y is the most exact representation; the difference being, that the Latin has preserved the angular instead of the rounded form. is needless to add that our own W has the same origin. In conclusion, Z is not properly a member of the Latin alphabet; its form as well as its sound was derived from the Greek. W. L. B.

(To be continued.)

It

A OR AN USAGE ACT.

AN ACT

To fix and determine the practice in the use of the Indefinite Article A or AN, and for no other purpose.

Preamble.

WHEREAS there exists considerable diversity of practice in the use of the indefinite article a or AN, and it is right and expedient that the use of each form of the said article should be definitely and accurately fixed and determined;

And whereas the original form of the said article was AN, the same being the Saxon word for the numeral one, and the said original form was subsequently abbreviated and curtailed to A, for the sake of euphony, before all the letters termed consonants, except mute h;

And whereas the letters y and w, when initial, are, for all practical intents and purposes, taken to be and considered as consonants, and therefore require and constantly receive the aforesaid abbreviated form A of the article before them;

And whereas a certain letter commonly called a vowel, that is to say, u as enunciated in union, and certain combinations of letters usually designated as diphthongs, composed of the letter e in conjunction with the letter u or w, have and include within themselves the sound of initial y as aforesaid;

And whereas the words one and once are enunciated exactly as if they

commenced with the letter w, though the same is not employed in their orthography;

And whereas it is not customary or elegant to pronounce an initial h, and it is scarcely possible to do so effectively, in words accented on the second syllable, such as historian, heroic, heraldic:

Be it therefore Enacted by the Reader's Most Eminent Sagacity, according to the advice and intent of the Words Logical and Rational and Common-sense in this present Parody assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows (that is to say):

Short Title.

I. That it shall be sufficient for all purposes to cite this Act as A or AN Usage Act, 1856."

Use of the Form A.

"The

II. That the form A of the indefinite article shall be and continue to be used before words commencing with any consonant whatever, except mute h, and also before words commencing with the letters y and w, which, in so far as the purpose of this Act is concerned, shall be taken to be and accounted consonants; and further, that the said form a shall ́ also be used before such words as commence with the sound of y or w, notwithstanding such letter may not be employed in the orthography thereof; and that Schedule A hereinafter contained shall be considered as exemplifying the intent of this clause.

Use of the Form AN.

III. That the form AN of the indefinite article shall continue to be used, as it hath heretofore been, before all vowels, excepting and excluding such vowels as involve and contain the sounds of initial y and w, referred to in the second clause of this Act; and the said form shall likewise continue to be used before mute h, and before h at the beginning of all words accented on the second syllable, as hath hitherto been customary with the most correct and elegant writers and speakers; and, moreover, that Schedule AN shall be taken as exemplifying the meaning of this clause.

1. Consonants

SCHEDULE A, hereinbefore referred to.

2. Aspirated h.

The form A to be used before

A man, a table, a room, a tree; A hair, a horse, a house, a hero; yew, a youth, a wire, a wonder; 4. The sounds of y and w. A ewe, a eulogy, a union, such a one.

3. The letters y and w

A

SCHEDULE AN, hereinbefore referred to.

The form AN is to be used before

1. Vowels not con

taining the sound of

initial y or w

2. Mute h

3. The letter h in

An air, an onion, an ear, an ell ;

An heir, an hour, an hospital;

words accented on the An historian, an heresiarch, an heroic deed.