'king' is a familiar title; and it is as pedantic to insist on archaic forms of the name as it would be to insist on the Saxon form of the office. Since Edward was not called by his contemporaries either 'King' or 'The Elder,' what do we gain by such a hybrid phrase as King Eadweard the Elder'? We might just as well write'Agamemnon, the anax andron of Greece,' or 'Alexandros, the famous king of Μακεδονία.

It is only a half-hearted realism which writes, Eadweard was now King of all England.' It should run, Eadweard was now Cyning of all Engla-land. It is quite correct to write in modern English, King Edward marched from London to York.' Here, the proper names are all alike adapted to our vernacular. It is an anachronism, or an anarchaism, to write, King Eadweard marched from London to York.' It ought to run, if we are bent on writing pure Old English, Eadweard Cyning marched from Lundenbyryg to Eoforwic.' That is the real couleur locale; but the general reader could hardly stand many pages of this. It is not true in fact that' Æthelberht lived at Canterbury.' He lived at Cant-warabyryg: Ethelbert, however, may properly be said to have lived at Canterbury. For thirteen centuries Canterbury and York have been famous centres of our English life. Except in a parenthesis, or in a monograph, it would be a nuisance to mention them under the cumbrous disguises of Eoforwic' and 'Cant-wara-byryg;' and for precisely the same reason it is a nuisance to read, Ælfred, Ecgberht, and Eadweard.

Where is it going to stop? Ours is an age of archæology, revival, and research; and in no field is research more active than in Biblical and other Oriental history. The grand familiar names, which have had a charm for us from childhood, which have kindled the veneration of a long roll of centuries, are all being restored' to satisfy an antiquarian purism. We shall soon be invited to call Moses Môsheh, as his contemporaries did. Judah should be written Yehûdu; Jacob will be Ya'aqób. Our old friend Job will appear, clothed and in his right mind, as Iyob. The prophet Elijah is Eliyahu; and the prophet Isaiah is now metamorphosed into Yeshayahu. Imagine how our descendants will have to re-write the lines:

O thou my voice inspire,

Who touch'd Yeshayahu's hallow'd lips with fire.

And the teacher will have to explain to our grandchildren that 'Isaiah' is an old vulgarism for Yeshayahu. Jerusalem the Golden will appear in the children's hymns as Yerushalaïm; and when we speak of the walls of Jericho we must sneeze and say J'recho. We must say the Proverbs of Shelômôh. But this is not the end of it. The very names in men's prayers and devotions must be reformed.

Catholics must learn to say their Aves to Mariúm'; and the Protestant must meditate on the Blood of Jehoshua.'

The historical mind will so have it. It has laid down a rigid canon that proper names should be spelt in the form in which their contemporaries wrote them. And if Alfred, a name which for so many centuries has been a watchword to the English race, is to be ' restored' into Elfred, because he and his so spoke it and wrote it, by the same rule must we speak and write of Jehoshua of Nazareth, using the same letters in which the Scribes and Pharisees of his day recorded the name in official Hebrew. The historical mind has said it; and English literature, custom, the vernacular speech, poetry, patriotism, and devotion, must all give way.

The historical mind has an almost unlimited field; and all the names it records will have to be restored' in turn. When Môsheh led forth the people of Yehuda to the promised Yerushalaïm, he really led them out of Chemi or Kebt-hor, not out of Egypt,' which is a Greek corruption. And Pi-Re and all his host were drowned in the Yâm-Súph; for of course Red Sea is a mere translation of a late Hellenic term. About the central Asian monarchies we fortunately have an imperishable and infallible record; for the great king himself inscribed on the eternal rock the names of his ancestors and his contemporaries. It is therefore inexcusable in us if we continue to write the names of Oriental sovereigns in the clumsy corruptions of ignorant Greeks.

6

All history contains no record more authentic than the sculptured rock of Behistun, whereon the names of the great kings stand graven in characters as unalterable as the laws of the Medes and the Persians. 'Darius,' we used to write in our ignorant way, became King of Persia, Susiana, Babylonia, Assyria, Arabia, and Egypt.' Not so was it said by them of old time; not Darius, but Dárayavush; not king, but Khshayathiya. So, then, the geography lessons of our grandsons will run, Dárayavush was the Khsháyathiya of Pársa, of 'Uvaja, of Bábirush, of Athurá, of Arabáya, of Mudraya.' The entire orthography of the Median and Persian Dynasties is now complete and exact. It was not Cyrus' who founded the Persian Empire, as we used to be told: it was Kuraush. The famous king who perished in the desert was Kabujiya, the son of Kuraush. And both, beside their own ancestral dominion of Pársa, ruled over the mighty worldfamous city of Bábirum, and the country which lay between the rivers Tigrúm and Ufrútauvá. Oriental history is at last as simple as an infant's ABC.

And we are now able to record the immortal tale of the war between Hellas and Pársa with some regard for orthographic accuracy. It was Khshayárshá who mustered the millions of Asia in the great struggle which ended in the glorious battles of the Hot Gates and of Psyttaleia. His great generals, Ariyabhaja and Munduniya, met

the Hellenic hoplites only to court defeat; and Khshayárshá, the son of Dáryavush, at length withdrew from a land which seemed fatal to the entire race of Hakhámanish, and sought rest in his luxurious palace of 'Uvaja. So will run the Hellenic histories of the future, in an orthography not quite so cacophonous and hieroglyphic as many a page in the Making of England.

Oriental literature is making vast strides, and the authentic books of the East are daily brought closer and clearer to our firesides. And under the influence of this learning our very children are coming to be familiar with the new dress of the old names. We have grown

out of Mahomet,' 'Moslem,' 'Koran,' and 'Hegira,' and we are careful to write Muhammad, Muslim, Qur'ân, and Hejra. For our old friend Mahomet and his Koran various professors contend. Mohammed, Muhammad, Mahmoud, and Mehemet have had their day; and now they are contending whether Qur'ân or Qorân best represents the exact cacophony of the native Arabic. And so on through the whole series of famous Oriental names: the Zend-Avesta, or Avesta, the Upanishads, K'ung Foo-tsze, Tsze-Kung, and TszeSze. Scholars, of course, have to tell us all about the SukhâvatîVyúha and the Pragñâ-Pâramitâ-Hridaya-Sûtra; but the question is, if the rising generation will ever be familiarised with these elaborate names.

It may be doubted if, after all, the exact equivalent of these foreign sounds can ever be presented to the English reader by any system of phonetic spelling; all the more when this spelling has to call to its aid an elaborate system of circumflex, diphthong, comma, italic, breathing, Sh'va and Dâghesh, most alien to the genius of our language. Can a man, unlearned in the respective tongues, pronounce K'ung-Foo-tsze, Kurfürst of Köln, Qur'ân, with any real correctness ? And, if he cannot, is it worth while to upset the practice of Europe for centuries, and so vast a concurrence of literature, for the sake of a phonetic orthography which is almost picture-writing in its lavish use of symbols: and all in pursuit of an accuracy which can never be consistently adopted? It may look very learned, but is it common sense?

It so happens that almost all of the founders of religions in the East are known to us by certain familiar names, which are obviously not the actual names they bore in their lifetime; but which for centuries have passed current in the literary speech of Europe. Confucius, Mencius, Bouddha, Zoroaster, Mahomet, Moses, and Jesus are popular adaptations of names which the European languages could not easily assimilate. As such those names are embedded in a thousand works of poetry, history, and criticism, and have gathered round them an imposing mass of interest and tradition. Is it not almost an outrage to discard these old associations and to rebaptize these hoary elders with the newfangled literalism of phonetic

pedantry? Kung-Foo-tsze, Măng-tsze, Sâkyamouni, or Siddhartha, Zarathustra or Zerdusht, Muhammad, Môsheh, and Jehoshua, may be attempts to imitate the sounds emitted by their contemporaries in Asia, but they are an offence in Europe in the nineteenth century, which has long known these mighty teachers under names that association has hallowed to our ears. If scholarship requires us to sacrifice these old familiar names, the necessity applies to all alike. If we are henceforth to talk of the Qur'ân of Muhammad, we had better give out the first lesson in church from the Torath of the law-giver Môsheh.

6

And, of course, our Roman history will have to be restored.' 'Romans,' 'Etruscans,' Tarquin,' Appius Claudius,' and the rest are now the Ramnes, the Ras-enna, Tarchnaf, and Attus Clauzus. What is to be the final issue of that bottomless pit of Roman embryology Dr. Mommsen only knows. Whether, when he has at last leapt into it, like Curtius in the Forum, that awful chasm will close, men know not yet. All that we now behold is a weltering gulf of Ramnes, Tities, Sabelli, Ras, Curites, where archaic and ethnologic fumes roll upwards incessantly, as from an unfathomable crater. Some day we shall know what was the true, unpronounced, and undivulged name of Rome; and what is the true phonetic equivalent of Romulus' and 'Numa,' of Tarquin' and 'Brutus.' We are even now in a position to speak with accuracy of the later history. When they come to the Punic wars, our boys and girls in the Board-schools of the twentieth century will learn to sayThe great contest now begins between the Ramnes and the Chna-ites of the mighty city of Kereth-Hadeshoth; 'An-nee-baal, the son of 'Am-Melech-Kirjath, proved himself the greatest general of antiquity; but, when he was overwhelmed in the final defeat of Naraggara, the city of Queen Jedidiah fell before the irresistible valour of the worshippers of Diovispater.' And when the young scholars get down to the Kym-ry and the Gâltachd, the Vergo-breiths, Ver-kenn-kedo-righ, Or-kedo-righ, Cara-dawg, and Heer-fürst, may mercy keep their poor little souls! There are Gâltachd-ic, and Kym-ric, and Duitisch enthusiasts, as well as those of Wessex and Gwent. I understand there are people even now who want us to call Paris-Loukh-teith.

A very large proportion of famous men have been known in history and commemorated in literature under names other than those given to them by their godfathers and their godmothers in their baptism, or those that were entered in the parish register. Under those names we love them, think of them, and feel akin to them. Their names are household words: a part of European literature, and fill us with kindly and filial feelings. These good old names are being steadily supplanted by the alphabetic martinets who recall us to the register with all the formalism of a parish clerk or a herald from the College. Not Molière, but Poquelin; not Voltaire,

but Arouet; not George Sand, but the Baroness Dudevant; not Madame de Sévigné, but Marie de Rabutin-Chantal. It will soon be a sign of ignorance to speak of Tom Jones and Becky Sharp. It will be Thomas Summer, Esq., Junior, J. P., and Mrs. Joseph Sedley. We shall soon have the Essays of Viscount St. Albans' and the 'Letters of the Earl of Orford.'

Every reader is familiar with the consummate perfection of the Library of the British Museum, the glory of British, the envy of foreign scholars. And it gives one an awful sense of the growth of this form of purism to watch it invading our noble library. Go to the Catalogue and turn to Voltaire, and you will read Voltaire, see Arouet; and you will have to trudge to the other end of the enormous alphabet. Why Arouet? What has his legal name to do with a writer who put his name, Voltaire, on the title-page of thousands of editions, and never on one, Arouet? And Molière ?—is not Molière, as a name, a part of modern literature? Mr. Andrew Lang tells a most delightful story of a printer, who found in his 'copy' some reference to the Scapin of Poquelin.' This hopelessly puzzled him, till a bright idea struck his inventive mind, and he printed it— the Scapin of M. Coquelin.'

Turn, in the Reference Catalogue of the Museum, to Madame de Sévigné, and we read:-'Sévigné, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marchioness de:-see Rabutin-Chantal. Why should we 'see' Rabutin-Chantal? That was her maiden-name; and since she married at eighteen, and her works are letters to her daughter, it seems a little odd to dub an elderly mamma of rank by her maiden-name. And what in the name of precision is Marchioness de'? It is like saying "Mister Von Goethe,' Once attempt a minute heraldic accuracy, and endless confusion results. Why need Mrs. Nicholls' appear in the catalogue of the works of Currer Bell? And why need George Eliot be entered as Marian Evans—a name which the great novelist did not bear either in literature or in private life?

If we apply the baptismal theory strictly to history, universal confusion will result. Law students will have to study the Digest of Uprauda. His great general will be Beli-Tzar. And, by the same rule, the heroic Saladin becomes Salah-ed-deen, or rather, MalekNasser-Yousouf; Dante becomes Durante Alighieri; Joan of Arc, Jeanne Darc; Copernicus is Kopernik; and Columbus becomes Cristóbal Colon. If baptismal registers are decisive, we must turn • Erasmus' into Gerhardt Praet; Melanchthon' into Schwarzerd; and Scaliger' into Bordoni. There is no more reason to change Alfred into Elfred and Frederick' into Friedrich than there would be to transform the great sailor into Cristóbal Colon, and to talk about the Code of Uprauda.

And the dear old painters, almost every one of whom has a familiar cognomen which has made the tour of the civilised world. What a