from his Excellency the Commander-in-Chief; but that it emanates from superior civil authority, no man, with the feelings of a soldier, will doubt. Now, mark the difference of the reward to merit and interest, both in substance and mode! A gentleman with a civil appointment, who may make himself a proficient in one of those two languages which Captain Pace has thoroughly acquired, becomes entitled to a gratuity of 3,500 rupees, before bringing that proficiency into use; and if, in addition to this language, he further obtain a good knowledge of one out of many provincial languages offered to his choice, his gratuity is doubled. Fur ther, he is placed in a wider and shorter road to power and riches than is proposed to the more capable soldier.

Pains are taken by the Government, as we have seen, to re-echo throughout the Peninsula its twopenny rewards to merit. On the other hand, it, with bashful modesty, in silence bestows situations of emolument upon interest.

Merit receives

A noisy nothing, and an empty wind;

whilst to Interest our Indian rulers, like the good Man of Ross,

Do good by stealth, aud blush to find it fame.

In proof of this, I must state what service Captain Pace performed. He acted as interpreter, in the Persian and Hindostanee languages, during a negotiation by the Collector of Bellary with the Nabob of Kurnool; that is to say, he did what is, or ought to be, the duty of the Persian Inter preter to his Excellency the Commander-in-Chief, who receives for that (as things are) nearly sinecure appointment, a monthly salary of 350 rupees. Now, it does so happen, that the Persian Interpreter to his Excellency the Commander-in-Chief, who is also Deputy Judge Advo cate-General, married a lady with the auspicious name of CAMPBELL; that his predecessor, reported to be a first-rate Persian scholar, but whose interest had worn out during above fifteen years' service as Persian Interpreter, was removed from the situation to make way for Benedict, on the ground of his unwillingness to quit the Presidency when the duties of that situation might call him. What are those duties ?-Certainly amongst them is not included personal attendance upon his Excellency the Commander-in-Chief: for Benedict resides eighty-seven miles distant from the Presidency ;-is he not, then, bound to render his services available whenever and wherever they may be required?

Why should the Government be put to additional expense for services which the Persian Interpreter ought to be the best able to execute? It is no answer, that a Deputy Judge Advocate's presence is always required within his division: because, if the holder of two staff situations cannot always perform the duties of both, he ought to resign one.

Thus we see the man of merit, who does more than his duty, and renders" essential aid," receives a wipe-off of 500 rupees, from noisy gratitude; the man of interest, who does less than his duty, and renders us no aid at all, continues silently to pocket a monthly salary, nearly equal in amount to the totality of the wipe-off.

The contrast I have exemplified is unfortunately not singular. A General Order by Government, dated 14th March 1823, requires, as an indispensable qualification for eligibility to regimental staff situations, the previous performance of two years' regimental duty with a corps; for

eligibibility of the general staff the same service for three years: and in both cases, the General Order, dated 6th Feb. 1824, (quoting directions to the same effect from the Court of Directors, in a letter dated 17th June 1810,) states a "competent knowledge of the Hindoostanee language to be also of absolute necessity." This competency is explained by the Commander-in-Chief, in General Orders, dated 17th March 1824, to me an "such proficiency as will enable the candidate to undergo an examination, which extends to his powers of reading, writing, translating, and composing." The General Order, dated 4th June 1824, declares all staff appointments to be "temporary," until such an examination shall have been gone through. Nothing can be better than those Orders in appearance; but in practice they operate as very convenient bars to merit without interest; while they oppose no check whatever to interest without merit. I have no intention of unnecessarily wounding the feelings of any one; I therefore refrain from publishing the names of these gentlemen who have been appointed to the staff in barefaced contradiction to the Orders abovementioned; but I send a list for your private inspection, to be made use of by you if occasion requires it.

I have heard that an officer of high military rank on the Madras establishment compared the Honourable the Court of Directors reprimanding their Indian authorities, to dogs barking at the moon. If this simile be just, (and no man who has been long in India will doubt it is so, more. especially where English orders clash with Indian patronage, however unjustly exerted, I am not vain enough to suppose that an anonymous letter will effect what has been vainly attempted by supreme authority -or that my strictures will induce the heads of Government to act rightly, in opposition to their interest; but they may perhaps induce them not to act wrong without a motive-not wantonly to offer a petty insult to their army-to profit by the moral of a story in the spelling-book, and not themselves proclaim their praise to be nearly as valueless as the priest's blessing.

AN OLD INDIAN.

HINTS TOWARDS THE FORMATION OF A PERFECT ALPHABET.

To the Editor of the Oriental Herald.

SIR. The present you have lately made to the lovers of literature, in laying before your readers Dr. Gilchrist's scheme of a universal alphabet, will, I have no doubt, be duly appreciated by all those who have fallen into a similar course of study with the author. My temporary residence in the East having led me, like many others, to follow (haud passibus æquis) the steps of the learned Doctor, to whom all Oriental students are so deeply indebted, I have perused with great interest the plan he has now laid before the world, and would fain hope that public attention has not been called to this important subject in vain. The great defectiveness of our present system of orthography, even as regards the English language, must be apparent to all, (but particularly to your Oriental readers,) who will give the subject a moment's consideration. None, however, feel it so much as those who may attempt to apply our alphabetical symbols to a foreign tongue. They imme

diately find thousands of words which no possible combinations of our letters, as we use them, will correctly represent. Hence the eternal irregularity found in the spelling of foreign names, especially in India; and the Babel-confusion among those, who, from the orthography, attempt their pronunciation. How many centuries did it remain doubtful, whether the title of one of the greatest of Asiatic Princes should be written the " Cham," the "Kan," or the "Han;" and still, to this day, how are we to convey in writing to an English reader, a just idea of the pronunciation of the " Khan of Tartary"? Even the name of the whole people, as well as that of their prince and of their country, is grossly corrupted ; "Tartar" being the nearest approach made to the sound of Taatar. In like manner, after we have been hundreds of years in possession of the dominions of the Great Mogul, the true sound of his name and that of his tribe or nation, is hardly known to one in a thousand among the reading public of England.

But what is much worse than this, the labour of acquiring our own language is vastly increased by the difficulty its orthography presents, which retards our youth for several years on the very threshold of learning. Owing to the time thus unprofitably wasted they are kept back from useful knowledge, and their education is, at the close, much more imperfect than it would otherwise have been. Many, notwithstanding years of study, never attain the facility of reading and writing their mother tongue with its just pronunciation and orthography; whereas, were a better system introduced, this might be accomplished with ease in a few weeks. But the misfortune is, that persons who have themselves got over the difficulty, usually in their very early years, forget its magnitude, and therefore feel little sympathy for others who have yet to encounter it. They find it more convenient to use that system of writing to which they are now habituated, than to learn a new one, however much superior. It is this which makes so many (like Dr. Johnson) the adherents and partizans of whatever is established; regardless of its injurious consequences to the rising generation and to posterity, and even to the general welfare at the present day. On the same principle, the Chinese literati cling to their impracticable alphabet, which is a sort of great wall" or insurmountable barrier, shutting out the great body of the people from sharing with them the empire of learning.

To foreigners, who cannot make the study of English the business of life, it is rendered almost inaccessible by its irregular orthography. Thus, instead of a facility of communicating with all nations, which the greatest trading country on earth ought to possess in an eminent degree, the instrument we use for conveying our thoughts is clogged with superfluous difficulties, by the absurd use we make of sixand-twenty letters. By our obstinacy in adhering to the practice which is established, we give the French and other nations a very great advantage over us; since we are obliged to acquire their languages as a medium of communication; whereas, by simplifying our own, a knowledge of it might be rapidly spread in other countries, where people would then be able to pay us the compliment of talking with us in our own tongue. The benefits to be derived from such an improved orthography are so great and obvious, that when such practical men as Franklin and Gilchrist recommend it, we cannot but he surprised that "the most

thinking people of Europe" should have hitherto consented to remain in this respect so much behind their neighbours. The only consolation I can feel for our backwardness in this particular, is in the hope that when something is at last attempted, we shall eclipse them all.

The first thing to be done with this view is a systematic classification of the alphabetical sounds, according to the relation they bear each other, and the organs of the human voice by which they are formed. The most philosophical arrangement I have seen adopted, is that of the Devanaguree or sacred character of the Brahmuns, in which the Sanscrit is written; but either that was originally very imperfect, or has been since corrupted in the lapse of ages. In the subjoined scheme, I suggest a different order, on the principle of beginning with the sounds most simple and easy of articulation, which are the labials; and proceeding gradually to those which are more difficult. The object proposed by it is, to classify every simple sound which the human voice seems capable of distinctly articulating. In the following observations, I beg to refer the reader to the first part of the accompanying table.

The vocal sounds appear to me to fall naturally into four great classes, as there exhibited, according to the organs of speech chiefly employed in forming them. In each class there are first three simple consonants, which we may call "primitives," distinguished from one another only by the different degree of vocality; secondly, three aspirated sounds, one corresponding with each of these primitives; thirdly, a set of vowels having a near relation to those consonants, in being pronounced by the stress of the voice falling chiefly on the same organs. The vowels, in all known alphabets, lie scattered about in great confusion, and are less easily reduced to rule, from the organs of voice being kept in a much more loose and undefined position in forming them.

I. The first class is perfect, having six consonants and six vowels (three short and three long), all distinctly recognised in the French and English languages, and all unquestionably labials.

II. Of the second class, the two first consonants (t d) do not occur in English, being the soft dentals of the French, Persians, &c. Again, the th and dh, or corresponding aspirates, are used by us, and not by them. The last is the soft r, found in “card,' card," "horse," often so delicately pronounced, that some believe it to be dropped altogether, who are accustomed only to the harsher pronunciation of the strong r. The n and I are the soft liquids found in the French and Italian.

III. The third class is very nearly allied to the second, both being formed by a similar agency of the tongue, which, however, is applied in the former case to the teeth; in this to the palate. All the consonants of this class are strictly English, the last being the strong r found in "rob,” borough," &c. We have here a double set of aspirates; the second set may be termed compound, being an additional aspiration of the former. The second of the latter species, written zh, is intended to represent the sound of the French j; the last is the ambiguous consonant y, which approaches very near to a perfect vowel. Of the vowels of this class, two having a middle sound between ee and a in day, are not perceptible in English, but are found in the Scotch dialect, and, I believe, in the French. Then and I are English.

IV. The two first aspirates of this class (represented by kh and gh) are very familiar in Oriental languages, but abhorrent to pure English

ears. The vowels, with one exception, the long sound of u in "but," seem completely fixed. However, something like the long sound of u in "but" is heard in the Cockney pronunciation of the word "burn." _The n of this class is the French nasal, as in non; the ng the common English sound in “ song. I add two letters to this class, under the title of anomalous, which are the Arabic qaf, (incorrectly written g, in the Plate, instead of g,) and the Hebrew, or Arabic ain, which some suppose to be inarticulable by a European voice.

Again, taking the consonants in their vocal orders, a very close analogy seems to pervade the manner of their modulation, or transformation, from mute to semivocal, liquid, &c., and the list of ambiguous letters evidently forms the link of transition between the consonants and vowels. These mongrels consequently partake largely of the uncertain character of the latter, the organs of speech being kept too loose and open to impress any very definite character upon them.

The liquids are again divided into two classes: some, as n, being sounded through the nose; others, as l, through the mouth only; and others, as m and ng, through both jointly. Most of these, as well as of the corresponding column of ambigui, are capable of receiving stronger aspiration; of which the Greek rh, the English wh, and the Spanish double 17, are examples.

When a mode of classification is once agreed upon, the only thing remaining to be done is, to devise or select symbols, which may be combined together so as to form a set of characters having a similar relation to each other in form as in power. The simple elements of the letters may consequently be very few; since, with regard to the consonants, we have only first to find four symbols, one for each of the classes, and then three discriminating marks to be superadded to each, in order to note the different species of vocality represented. These seven elementary signs combined in this manner, give (four multiplied by three, or) twelve letters. These again may be multiplied into twenty-four, by adding to each one symbol of aspiration. I present a table of characters in which the letters are so formed, as an example of the manner in which it might be doue, rather than as possessing any merit in itself. The symbols given in the second table, are meant to correspond to the vocal sounds as classified in the first.

Explanation of the Universal Characters.

1. Two curved and two straight lines, distinguished from each other by one of each pair ascending and the other descending from the body of the letter, are fixed upon as the most simple signs that can be found to distinguish the four fundamental organic characters of letters, as divided into labials, dentals, palatals, and gutturals. They are further discriminated by the one ascendant line receiving additions from the right hand, and the other from the left; the same rule being observed with regard to the descendant lines.

2. These primitive symbols are combined in the first place with one common sign, in which state they represent the mutes, as p, t, tt, and k. Secondly, with a sign of semivocality which converts them into b, d, dd, g; thirdly, with the mark which represents the full liquid sound.

3. By the addition of a hook as the symbol of aspiration to the characteristic lines, the twelve letters already formed are multiplied into twenty-four.