read would doubtless be greatly facilitated.  And yet any attempt toward such a reformation, any change short of the introduction of some entirely new mode of writing, would be both unwise and impracticable.  It would involve our laws and literature in utter confusion, because pronunciation is the least permanent part of language; and if the orthography of words were conformed entirely to this standard, their origin and meaning would, in many instances, be soon lost.  We must therefore content ourselves to learn languages as they are, and to make the best use we can of our present imperfect system of alphabetic characters; and we may be the better satisfied to do this, because the deficiencies and redundancies of this alphabet are not yet so well ascertained, as to make it certain what a perfect one would be.

OBS. 2.—­In order to have a right understanding of the letters, it is necessary to enumerate, as accurately as we can, the elementary sounds of the language; and to attend carefully to the manner in which these sounds are enunciated, as well as to the characters by which they are represented.  The most unconcerned observer cannot but perceive that there are certain differences in the sounds, as well as in the shapes, of the letters; and yet under what heads they ought severally to be classed, or how many of them will fall under some particular name, it may occasionally puzzle a philosopher to tell.  The student must consider what is proposed or asked, use his own senses, and judge for himself.  With our lower-case alphabet before him, he can tell by his own eye, which are the long letters, and which the short ones; so let him learn by his own ear, which are the vowels, and which, the consonants.  The processes are alike simple; and, if he be neither blind nor deaf, he can do both about equally well.  Thus he may know for a certainty, that a is a short letter, and b a long one; the former a vowel, the latter a consonant:  and so of others.  Yet as he may doubt whether t is a long letter or a short one, so he may be puzzled to say whether w and y, as heard in we and ye, are vowels or consonants:  but neither of these difficulties should impair his confidence in any of his other decisions.  If he attain by observation and practice a clear and perfect pronunciation of the letters, he will be able to class them for himself with as much accuracy as he will find in books.

OBS. 3.—­Grammarians have generally agreed that every letter is either a vowel or a consonant; and also that there are among the latter some semivowels, some mutes, some aspirates, some liquids, some sharps, some flats, some labials, some dentals, some nasals, some palatals, and perhaps yet other species; but in enumerating the letters which belong to these several classes, they disagree so much as to make it no easy matter to ascertain what particular classification is best supported by their authority.  I have