trade has on the morals or happiness of those who follow it? and secondly, what share the personal character of actors has, in producing the effects that flow from theatrical exhibitions? Plays are performed to numerous auditories, under a roof, at certain hours of the day, for a stated price to each auditor, and with certain appendages and decorations. None of these circumstances are to be overlooked in a candid discussion of this subject, because they accompany every dramatic performance, and because none of them are neutral or indifferent with regard to the effects produced by this species of amusement on the morals and happiness of mankind. To examine all these points with suitable accuracy; to furnish an impartial mind with just conceptions of the usefulness or hurtfulness of these establishments; to enable him to judge whether it be his duty to discountenance or encourage them; and to apprize him of the means most suitable to that end which shall appear to be the best, would be conferring no small benefit on mankind. For the Literary Magazine. REMARKS ON SHORT-HAND WRITING. E. SHORT-HAND has grown considerably into use of late years. In some schools in Great Britain it has been adopted as a part of ordinary education, and the authors of schemes of short-hand writing are never tired of dwelling on its excellencies and advantages. It may, therefore, be worth while to reflect a moment upon the possibility and limits of this accomplishment. Penmanship is an art of the highest value, and, in the instruction of youth, the utmost stress should be laid upon it. No pains should be spared, at an age when the muscles are pliant and the joints flexible, to create the habits of a skilful penman. This skill, it is obvious to remark, comprehends two things, legibility and swiftness. It may seem superfluous to dwell upon the importance of legibility. No argument seems necessary to prove, that one of the most essential qualities of good writing is, that it may easily be read; and yet, nothing is more rare than to find writing that possesses this quality, even in a small degree. The power of comparing and inferring, in the hu man mind, is so great, and this power, in relation to written characters, is so much improved by exercise, that most penmen place an excessive and unreasonable confidence init, and neglect almost every rule by which writing is made easily and accurately legible. This negligence arises from the desire of expedition. In transcribing our own words, or those of others, the movements of the hand are necessarily much more tardy than those of the imagination or the tongue. Having thoughts and words in possession, we are impatient of that dilatory progress which the hand is obliged to make in rendering them permanent and visible. Thus we hasten to the end, at the cost of elegance and perspicuity, and omit, or distort, syllables and letters, so that none but those accustomed to our pen, or those versed in the business of decyphering, can make out our meaning; and he, indeed, must transcend his fellows by a wonderous distance, whose characters not only can be read, but read with absolute facility. How far may these excellencies be attained? In what degree may swift penmanship be united with legible, is a question which every student should be at great pains to decide. There are many whose sole trade is penmanship, and many more whose professions require the very frequent use of it. To such, it is not easy to overrate the importance of this inquiry. But few questions are harder to decide than this. We see, in num berless instances, the astonishing swiftness and accuracy to which the movements of the hand and fingers can be brought. In managing the bow of a violin, or touching the keys of a harpsichord, the quickness and exactness of motions are such as to wear, to an unpractised observer, the appearance of something preternatural. There are limits, no doubt, to our powers in all these respects; but these limits are scarcely definable, and certain it is, that no length of practice, though every hour bring us nearer, will ever, in the longest life, enable us to reach these limits. In discussing this subject with a friend of mine, who has been long used to the pen, he proposed to reduce the question, in some degree, to the test of experiment, and to try, not what is possible for one, by long practice, to do, but what he or I, by fully or intensely exerting the moderate skill which each possessed, was already qualified to do. Our first experiment was to ascertain the time in which a given quantity of words could be read. For which end we took, as a book to which most readers have access, the Dublin edition of Gibbon's History. A full page, that is, a page without notes, was found to contain 43 lines, and, on an average, 390 words, and 650 syllables. This page we found could be read by the eye, without moving the lips, and with the utmost swiftness consistent with the comprehension of its meaning, in one minute. It was then read aloud, with a distinct but very rapid articulation, in two minutes and a half. It was then read déliberately and emphatically, with the due intervals and pauses, in five minutes. We then proceeded to compare the eye and the tongue with the pen My friend took paper and transcribed the page which had just been read, first, in his swiftest hand, and next, with deliberation and exactness. The first copy was far from being illegible. It was much better than the hand which thousands of merchants, lawyers, and authors habitually employ. Still, however, it was somewhat indistinct, and could not be read so easily as the printed page. This copy was finished in a very little less than ten minutes, and was executed in what I will call a current hand. (Festinatè.) The second copy was extremely regular and fair. All words were separate, and all the letters complete and distinct, and no one could wish to peruse characters more legible. This second copy was finished in a little less than twenty minutes, and was done in what may be called a deliberate hand. (Lentè.) Allowances must always be made for casual intermissions and diversions of the eye and hand, both in reading and writing, but these allowances cannot be computed in general. Every reader must calculate them for himself. Meanwhile I state, with all its circumstances, what has actually been done. All cannot do this; but all, with slight efforts, may do this; and many there undoubtedly are who can effect much more than this. Now what are the inferences? tily, but silently read in one minute, It appears that what may be haswill require a period ten times longer to write it hastily, and twenty times longer to write it at leisure. A rapid articulation appears to exceed the current pen by threefourths; and the deliberate articulation exceeds the pen in haste only by one half, and the pen at leisure by three fourths. Till this experiment was made, I had been far from thinking the pen so dispatchful a tool. I had no previous conception that what was properly spoken or read in twenty minutes, could be adequately transcribed in forty. Before extraordinary modes of abbreviating writing be sought, we should investigate the powers of the methods already in use: and it is far more wise to carry known modes to higher perfection, than to invent new ones. An obvious method of contraction consists in omission. For the sake of speed, we may omit letters, syllables, or words. It is manifest that a word may be easily read, notwithstanding the omission of some of its letters or syllables, and that sentences may be intelligible, in which one or more words are omitted. It is difficult to say to what extent these various kinds of omission may be carried without producing difficulty or obscurity. But certainly every hour's practice wili lessen the difficulty which at first existed. The bones and sinews of every language, but especially of our's, are its consonants. Suppose our scheme of writing should entirely drop the use of vowels; or, at least, in all the cases in which, as observation and experience may teach us, the disuse of them will not occasion ambiguity. We have been told that an English student, who had occasion to make numerous memorandums and copies for his own use, and to maintain an exclusive but voluminous correspondence, adopted the vowel-dropping scheme to very great advantage; but, to judge of this, it will be requisite to consider the proportion of vowels and consonants in the English language. Without stopping to explain the grounds on which I build my inferences, it will be sufficient to observe, that our consonants are double the number of our vowels, two consonants to one vowel being found to be the usual distribution. If we take away one third of our characters, we shall lessen the toil of penmanship by one third, and the speech or rehearsal of ten minutes, may then be recorded, not in twenty minutes, but in fourteen. In truth, however, the deduction of one third of our letters is not a diminution of the quantity of writing by one third, our consonants being doubly or trebly more complicated than our vowels. By dropping vowels, therefore, we should not lessen the actual quantity of writing by more than a fifth; the proportions, therefore, even on the vowel-drop ping scheme, between reading and writing, would not much vary from that already stated. The end of short-hand is to enable the writer to keep pace with the reader or speaker, or, at least, to approach more nearly to the speed of utterance than is done by the common methods. In what degree is this practicable? Our written characters are far more complex than is necessary to the purposes of writing. Not one of our letters is the single modification of a line, yet all our alphabet might be exhibited by distinct and single modifications of the line. Few of our alphabetical characters represent elementary sounds, and none of them are elementary lines. By adopting more simple characters, we might surely greatly expedite the business of writing. I will not mention the use of arbitrary forms, by which, indeed, we may carry abbreviation to an inconceivable extent, but I should adhere merely to the use of characters different from the English ones. Most stenographical schemes denote the vowels merely by the relative position of a single dot, so that, to exhibit any vowel, a mere touch of the pen is necessary, such as at present is placed above the vowel i. The benefits to dispatch of this mode are manifest. But how shall we measure the advantages of the simple, over the complex alphabet? Suppose the eye as easily peruses, and the hand as readily delineates the new letter as the old one (and this faculty will inevitably flow from practice): how many simple forms may be traced in the time requisite to trace the single English letter? The simple forms are, in this respect, equal to each other; but the complex, having different degrees of complexity, are, of course, unequal to each other. According to the foregoing experiments, it appears that we can rapidly articulate 650 syllables in two minutes and an half, which is four syllables in a second. A syllable ge nerally contains three characters. Can any stenographical hand trace twelve distinct characters in a second? I am afraid it is impossible. It has likewise appeared that, by the current hand, one syllable, or three characters, will demand at least a second. To be equal to the speed of rapid utterance, stenography then must be four times as rapid as the current hand, a disproportion that cannot be conceived practicable without the abundant use of arbitrary signs. If we will try the experiment, we shall ascertain this matter clearly, and shall find that a stenographical sign can be traced in the time that a syllable can be uttered; consequently, to keep pace with speech, either the three characters of which every syllable, on an average, consists, must be represented by one new, but simple character, or one only of the three must be retained, and the other two be inferred from the context. But one of every three is a vowel, and may prudently be dropped; the difference, therefore, from a third rises to an half, and, conse quently, it appears that the abvocal stenography is only twice as rapid as the current hand, and that rapid speech is, in like manner, only twice as rapid as the abvocal stenography. But though stenography appears thus unequal to rapid speech, it follows that it is equal to deliberate speaking, since, according to experiment, we find that the hasty utterer is twice as rapid as the leisurely. The deliberate and hasty utterers, if their utterance be distinct, differ not in the time employed in enouncing a syllable, but merely in the intervals admitted between their sylIables, words, and sentences. For stenography to keep pace with any just elocution, the pen must take advantage of the pauses of the tongue; and must, therefore, be unceasingly busy; but this unceasing activity is sufficient for the end. The deliberate speaker is a being midway between the precipitate, on the one band, and the dilatory on the other; but men oftener fall into the last excess than into the former, and thus facilitate the task of the shorthand writer. From all these observations, it appears that there is a mode of writing by which the common utterance of men can be equalled in speed, a truth which few persons are able to understand and believe. They are, indeed, far from gathering it from the practice or the precepts of shorthand writers, for there is seldom any one among them who attempts to keep pace with speaking, or who has practised sufficiently to confer on him the power, or who is not negligent and prone to rely upon his memory. The great source of improvement in this art is the doctrine of arbitrary signs. It would be impossible to talk intelligibly on this subject, without exemplifying figures; but it is not necessary, since, in proportion to the use of arbitrary signs, must we reinstate the vowels and omitted characters; and refinements, the adoption of which is consistent with the just use of time, can do no more than make an active pen keep pace with a deliberate speaker. THERE are few subjects in which a man may find more room for speculation than an almanac. I lately experienced the truth of this remark in a very forcible manner. Travelling some time ago in the wilds of New Jersey, I was overtaken by a storm, and obliged to seek shelter in the hovel of a fisherman. Look. ing about for something to employ my thoughts and beguile the hour, I spied, hanging by a piece of packthread from a nail, an almanac. I took it down, opened it, and turned over the pages in search of some information or amusement. The receipts for curing several diseases in men and horses, the moral pre cepts, and the quotations from Joe Miller scattered through it, were all read with much gravity and deliberation. At length I closed the book, and turning to the good woman who sat near me, and who was busy in darning a worsted stocking, Pray, said I, what use do you make of this thing? Why, said she, with a good deal of hesitation, why-I don't know it's an almanac. True, said I, and what use do you find for an almanac ? Why, she answered with an air of increased perplexity, we look at it now and then to-to-to tell us the day of the month. And what need have you to discover the day of the month? Why-I don't know, I am sure.One likes to know what day of the month it is sometimes. One must pay one's rent quarter day, and one doesn't know when it comes round without an olminic. That said I, happens four times a year; so that once in three months you have occasion to look into this book: but there is much besides the days of the week and month. I see, continued I, taking up the book again and showing her the page, I see there are eight columns. One of these shows the day of the week; but here the letter G occurs on every Sunday; what does that mean? Lord love your soul, cried she, how should I know? The next space is filled with various particulars. First there are the names of saints. I suppose Nicholas, and Stephen, and Matthias, and Sylvester, and Benedict, and Swithen, are saints: what use do you make of them? Why none, to be sure. What are these folks to me? Here are likewise sundry hard words such as Quinquagesima, Epiphany, Ascension : what do they mean? La! suz, don't ask me. And what are these uncouth characters, squares, and circles, and crosses; and the words, elongation, southing, apogee, Sirius, and Arcturus, and Bull's eye, and Crab's foot? What did the almanac maker mean by giving us all that? I can't tell, not I. I looks for nothing but the day of the month, and the times that the sun rises. Here I thought proper to put an end to the dialogue. I could not help reflecting on the abundance of useless and unintelligible learning which an almanac contains. There is scarcely a family, however ignorant and indigent, without one copy hanging constantly in sight, and yet there is no production which fewer understand. The sense it contains is not only abstruse and remote from vulgar apprehension, but it is exhibited in the most scientific and concise form. Figures, initials, symbolical characters, and half-words every where abound. A stranger who should meet, in every hovel, with a book, in which the relative positions of the planets, the diurnal progress of the sun in the zodiac, the lunar and solar eclipses, the wanderings of Sirius, Arcturus, and the Pleiades; of Occulus, Tauri, and Spica-Virginis were described in a way the most technical imaginable, would be apt to regard us as a very astronomical and learned nation. That the volume should be bought annually by every family, should be considered as an indispensable piece of household furniture, be so placed as to be always at hand, are facts that would make his inference extremely plausible. He would be not a little surprised to discover, that the book is bought for the sake of that which the memory and skill of children would suffice to find out, of that which costs the compiler nothing more than the survey of a former almanac, and a few strokes of his pen; and that these celebrated computations, these mystic symbols, this adjustment of certain days to certain holy names, are neither attended to nor understood, by one in ten thousand. The eye roves over them, but the question, what do they mean? never |