referring to the asphalte: surely in our language the word is either asphaltum or asphalt.

Here, if the excursus may be permitted, I should like to note also that the American willingness to acknowledge the English language as good enough for the ordinary purposes of speech shows itself in our acceptance of certain words of foreign origin as now fully naturalized, and therefore so to be treated. The Americans are inclined to consider that formula, for example, and criterion and memorandum and cherub and bureau are now good English words, forming their plurals by the addition of an s. Our first cousins, once removed, across the Atlantic seem to be still in doubt; and therefore we find them making the plurals of these words in accordance with the rules of the various languages from which the several words were derived. So in British books we meet the Latin plurals, formulæ and memoranda; the Greek plural, criteria; the Hebrew plural, cherubim; and the French plural, bureaux. Oddly enough, the writers who use these foreign plurals are unwilling to admit that the word thus modified is a foreign word, for more often than not they print it without italics, although frankly foreign words are carefully italicized. Possibly it is idle to look for any logic in anything which has to do with modern English orthography on either side of the ocean.

Perhaps, however, there is less even than ordinary logic in the British journalist's objection to the so-called "American spelling" of meter; for why should any one insist on metre while unhesitatingly accepting its compound diameter? Mr. John Bellows, in the preface to his inestimable French-English and English-French pocket dictionary, one of the very best books of reference ever published, informs us that "the Act of Parliament legalizing the use of the metric system in this country [England] gives the words meter, liter, gram, etc., spelled on the American plan." Perhaps now that the sanction of law has been given to this spelling, the final er will drive out the re which has usurped its place. In one of the last papers that he wrote, Lowell declared that "center is no Americanism; it entered the language in that shape, and kept it at least as late as Defoe." "In the sixteenth and in the first half of the seventeenth century," says Professor Lounsbury, "while both ways of writing these words existed side by side, the termination er is far more common than that in re. The first complete edition of Shakespeare's plays was published in 1623. In that work sepulcher occurs thirteen times; it is spelled eleven times with er. Scepter occurs thirty-seven times; it is not once spelled with re, but always with er. Center occurs twelve times, and in nine instances out of the twelve it ends in er." So we see that this so-called "American spelling" is fully warranted by the history of the English language. It is amusing to note how often a wider and a deeper study of English will reveal that what is suddenly denounced in Great Britain as the very latest Americanism, whether this be a variation in speech or in spelling, is shown to be really a survival of a previous usage of our language, and authorized by a host of precedents.

Of course it is idle to kick against the pricks of progress, and no doubt in due season Great Britain and her colonial dependencies will be content again to spell words that end in er as Shakespeare and Ben Jonson and Spenser spelled them. But when we get so far towards the orthographic millennium that we all spell sepulcher, the ghost of Thomas Campbell will groan within the grave at the havoc then wrought in the final line of "Hohenlinden," which will cease to end with even the outward semblance of a rhyme to the eye. We all know that

and those of us who have persevered may remember that with one exception every fourth line of Campbell's poem ends with a y—the words are rapidly, scenery, revelry, artillery, canopy, and chivalry—not rhymes of surpassing distinction, any of them, but perhaps passable to a reader who will humor the final syllable. The one exception is the final line of the poem—

"Shall be a soldier's sepulchre."
 

To no man's ear did sepulchre ever rhyme justly with chivalry and canopy and artillery, although Campbell may have so contorted his vision that he evoked the dim spook of a rhyme in his mind's eye. A rhyme to the eye is a sorry thing at best, and it is sorriest when it depends on an inaccurate and evanescent orthography.

Dr. Johnson was as illogical in his keeping in and leaving out of the u in words like honor and governor as he was in many other things; and the makers of later dictionaries have departed widely from his practice, those in Great Britain still halting half-way, while those in the United States have gone on to the bitter end. The illogic of the great lexicographer is shown in his omission of the u from exterior and posterior, and his retention of it in the kindred words interiour and anteriour; this, indeed, seems like wilful perversity, and justifies flood's merry jest about "Dr. Johnson's Contradictionary." The half-way measures of later British lexicographers are shown in their omission of the u from words which Dr. Johnson spelled emperour, governour, oratour, horrour, and dolour, while still retaining it in favour and honour and a few others.

The reason for his disgust generally given by the London man of letters who is annoyed by the "American spelling" of honor and favor is that these words are not derived directly from the Latin, but indirectly through the French; this is the plea put forward by the late Archbishop Trench. Even if this plea were pertinent, the application of this theory is not consistent in current British orthography, which prescribes the omission of the u from error and emperor, and its retention in colour and honour—although all four words are alike derived from the Latin through the French. And this plea fails absolutely to account for the u which the British insist on preserving in harbour and in neighbour, words not derived from the Latin at all, whether directly or indirectly through the French. An American may well ask, "If the u in honour teaches etymology, what does the u in harbour teach?" There is no doubt that the u in harbour teaches a false etymology; and there is no doubt also that the u in honour has been made to teach a false etymology, for Trench's derivation of this final our from the French eur is absurd, as the old French was our, and sometimes ur, sometimes even or. Pseudo-philology of this sort is no new thing. Professor Max Müller tells us that the Roman prigs used to spell cena (to show their knowledge of Greek), coena, as if the word were somehow connected with κοινἡ.

Thus we see that the u in honour suggests a false etymology; so does the ue in tongue, and the g in sovereign, and the