OBS. 4.—­Should it happen to be asked a hundred lustrums hence, what were the names of the letters in “the Augustan age of English literature,” or in the days of William the Fourth and Andrew Jackson, I fear the learned of that day will be as much at a loss for an answer, as would most of our college tutors now, were they asked, by what series of names the Roman youth were taught to spell.  Might not Quintilian or Varro have obliged many, by recording these?  As it is, we are indebted to Priscian, a grammarian of the sixth century, for almost all we know about them.  But even the information which may be had, on this point, has been strangely overlooked by our common Latin grammarians.[89] What, but the greater care of earlier writers, has made the Greek names better known or more important than the Latin?  In every nation that is not totally illiterate, custom must have established for the letters a certain set of names, which are the only true ones, and which are of course to be preferred to such as are local or unauthorized.  In this, however, as in other things, use may sometimes vary, and possibly improve; but when its decisions are clear, no feeble reason should be allowed to disturb them.  Every parent, therefore, who would have his children instructed to read and write the English language, should see that in the first place they learn to name the letters as they are commonly named in English.  A Scotch gentleman of good education informs me, that the names of the letters, as he first learned them in a school in his own country, were these:  “A, Ib, Ec, Id, E, Iff, Ig, Ich, I, Ij, Ik, Ill, Im, In, O, Ip, Kue, Ir, Iss, It, U, Iv, Double-u, Ix, Wy, Iz;” but that in the same school the English names are now used.  It is to be hoped, that all teachers will in time abandon every such local usage, and name the letters as they ought to be named; and that the day will come, in which the regular English orthography of these terms, shall be steadily preferred, ignorance of it be thought a disgrace, and the makers of school-books feel no longer at liberty to alter names that are a thousand times better known than their own.

OBS. 5.—­It is not in respect to their orthography alone, that these first words in literature demand inquiry and reflection:  the pronunciation of some of them has often been taught erroneously, and, with respect to three or four of them, some writers have attempted to make an entire change from the customary forms which I have recorded.  Whether the name of the first letter should be pronounced “Aye,” as it is in England, “Ah,” as it is in Ireland, or “Aw,” as it is in Scotland, is a question which Walker has largely discussed, and clearly decided in favour of the first sound; and this decision accords with the universal practice of the schools in America.  It is remarkable that this able critic, though he treated minutely of the letters, naming them all in the outset of his