id="page_030"/> "can be said to be in itself better or worse than the other. Each usage is the better in the land in which it has grown up of itself." An unprejudiced critic, if such a one could haply be found, would probably discover an equality of blemish on either side of the ocean—more precision and pedantry on the one side, and a more daring carelessness on the other. To declare a single standard of speech is impossible.

That there will ever be any broad divergence between the English language and American speech, such, for example, as differentiates the Portuguese from the Spanish, is now altogether unlikely. A divergence as wide as this has been impossible since the invention of printing, and it is even less possible since the school-master has been abroad teaching the same A B C in London, New York, Sydney, and Calcutta. Although it has ceased absolutely to be British, the chief literature of North America is still English, and must remain so, just as the chief literature of South America is still Spanish. Señor Juan Valera, declaring this truth in the preface to his delightful Pepita Ximenez, reminds us that "the literature of Syracuse, of Antioch, and of Alexandria was as much Greek literature as was the literature of Athens." In like manner we may recall the fact that Lucan, Seneca, Martial, and Quintilian were all of them Spaniards by birth.

That any one country shall remain or become at once the political, financial, and literary centre of the wide series of Anglo-Saxon States which now encircles the globe is almost equally unlikely. But we may be sure that that branch of our Anglo-Saxon stock will use the best English, and will perhaps see its standards of speech accepted by the other branches, which is most vigorous physically, mentally, and morally, which has the most intelligence, and which knows its duty best and does it most fearlessly.

1891

AS TO "AMERICAN SPELLING"

HEN the author of "The Cathedral" was accosted by the wandering Englishmen within the lofty aisles of Chartres, he cracked a joke,

In this common speech other Englishmen are not always ready to acknowledge the full rights of Lowell's countryman. They would put us off with but a younger brother's portion of the mother-tongue, seeming somehow to think that they are more closely related to the common parent than we are. But Orlando, the younger son of Sir Rowland du Bois, was no villain; and though we have broken with the father-land, the mother-tongue is none the less our heritage. Indeed we need not care whether the division per stirpes or per capita, our share is not the less in either case.

Beneath the impotent protests which certain British newspapers are prone to make every now and again against the "American language" as a whole, and against the stray Americanism which has happened last to invade England, there is a tacit assumption that we Americans are outer barbarians, mere strangers, wickedly tampering with something which belongs to the British exclusively. And the outcry against the "American language" is not as shrill nor as piteous as the shriek of horror with which certain of the journals of London greet "American spelling," a hideous monster, which they feared was ready to devour them as soon as the international copyright bill should become law. In the midst of every discussion of the effect of the copyright act in Great Britain, the bugbear of "American spelling" reared its grisly head. The London Times declared that English publishers would never put any books into type in the United States because the people of England would never tolerate the peculiarities of orthography which prevailed in American printing-offices. The St. James's Gazette promptly retorted that "already newspapers in London are habitually using the ugliest forms of American spelling, and those silly eccentricities do not make the slightest difference in their circulation." The Times and the St. James's Gazette might differ as to the effect of the copyright act on the profits of the printers of England, but they agreed heartily as to the total depravity of "American spelling." I think that any disinterested foreigner who might chance to hear these violent outcries would suppose that English orthography was as the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not; he would be justified in believing that the system of spelling now in use in Great Britain was hallowed by the Established Church, and in some way mysteriously connected with the State religion. Indeed, no other explanation would suffice to account for the vigor, the violence, and the persistency of the protests.

Just what the British newspapers are afraid of it is not easy to say and it is difficult to declare just what they mean when they talk of "American spelling." Probably they do not refer to the improvements in orthography suggested by the first great American—Benjamin Franklin. Possibly they do refer to the modifications in the accepted spelling proposed by another American, Noah Webster—not so great, and yet not to be named slightingly by any one who knows how fertile his labors have been for the good of the whole country. Noah Webster, so his biographer, Mr. Scudder, tells us, "was one of the first to carry a spirit of democracy into letters.... Throughout his work one may detect a confidence in the common-sense of the people which was as firm as Franklin's." But the innovations of Webster were hesitating and often inconsistent; and the most of them have been abandoned by later editors of Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language.

What, then, do British writers mean when they animadvert upon "American spelling?" So far as I have been able to discover, the British journalists object to certain minor labor-saving improvements of American orthography, such as the dropping of the k from almanack, the omission of one g from waggon, and the like; and they protest with double force, with all the strength that in them lies, against the substitution of a single l for a double l in such words as traveller, against the omission of the u from such words as honour, against the substitution of an s for a c in such words as defence, and against the transposing of the final two letters of such words as theatre. The objection to "American spelling" may lie deeper than I have here suggested, and it may have a wider application; but I have done my best to state it fully and fairly as I have deduced it from a painful perusal of many columns of exacerbated British writing.

Now if I have succeeded in stating honestly the extent of the British journalistic objections to "American spelling," the unprejudiced reader may be moved to ask: "Is this all? Are these few and slight and unimportant changes the cause of this mighty commotion?" One may agree with Sainte-Beuve in thinking that "orthography is the beginning of literature," without discovering in these modifications from the Johnsonian canon any cause for extreme disgust. And since I have quoted Sainte-Beuve once, I venture to cite him again, and to take from the same letter of March 15, 1867, his