Stockbridge, he would construct an argument for example to show these untaught savages that the Bible was the book of God given to them for their instruction and guidance, his arguments all the while so simple that little children could follow him through every step of the way, and yet so strong and conclusive that learned philosophers could hardly desire any larger or better style of reasoning to prove the inspiration of the Scriptures.

This was one feature of his mental action. On the other hand we have from time to time those outbursts of poetry in prose, of which we have already given an example, as when he says: "This I know not how to express otherwise than by a calm, sweet abstraction of soul from all the concerns of this world, and sometimes a kind of vision, or fixed ideas and imagination of being alone in the mountains, or some solitary wilderness far from all mankind sweetly conversing with Christ, and rapt and swallowed up in God. The sense I had of divine things would often, of a sudden, kindle up, as it were, a sweet burning in my heart, an ardor of soul that I know not how to express." Illustrations like these, which abound especially in Edwards' earlier writings serve to show that the masculine and feminine qualities were as truly conjoined in his mind as in his face.

Hon. Gideon H. Hollister, in his History of Connecticut, has a striking passage in which he speaks of these feminine influences surrounding and encompassing the early life of Edwards.

"He enjoyed," says Mr. Hollister, "the rare advantage, never understood and felt except by those who have been fortunate enough to experience it, of all the softening and hallowed influences which refined female society sheds like an atmosphere of light around the mind and soul of boyhood. Had that fond mother and those loving sisters been fully aware of the glorious gifts that were even then beginning to glow in the eyes of their darling; had they been able to see in its full blaze the immortal beauty borrowed from the regions of spiritualized thought and hallowed affections, that was one day to encircle that forehead as with a wreath from the bowers of paradise, they could hardly have unfolded his moral and intellectual character with more discreet care."

These words of Mr. Hollister look only to those soft, gentle, formative influences coming in upon him from his immediate surroundings, but the suggestion of President Woolsey looks

to something far more deep and subtle. When we remember how queenly a woman his mother, Esther Stoddard, was, physically, mentally, spiritually; when we remember that Jonathan Edwards stood, as an only son, nearly midway among his ten sisters, it is not unnatural for us to conclude that his superlative greatness was due, in some measure, to the fact that he wonderfully combined in himself the masculine and feminine elements.

In concluding these remarks there is one consideration that should not escape our notice. Edwards was really cut off at last in the midst of his years. He died at the He died at the age of fifty-four, and for such intellectual work as that which opened naturally to his intellect and taste, the next fifteen or twenty years would have been the golden period of his life. In healthy manhood the mind does not reach the full measure of its power when the physical strength is at its highest.

Socrates was seventy years old and in the full tide of his great influence when he was compelled to drink the fatal hemlock. Plato was still surrounded by his pupils in the quiet walks of the Academy when his death occurred at the age of seventy-eight.

Remarkable as were the intellectual developments of Edwards in his early life there was nothing sickly or premature about them. The greatness of his youth was only proportionate to the greatness of his manhood. His paper on the Habits of Spiders, written before he was thirteen years old, was a very remarkable production for a boy, but no more remarkable than those which were issuing from his pen at the age of fifty. He came of a sturdy and long-lived race, and except for that fatal experiment of inoculation for the small-pox, in March, 1758, he would naturally have continued till a ripe old age. His father died at 89, his mother at 99. His grandfather Stoddard died at 85, and his grandmother Stoddard at 92. Of his sisters, Esther lived to be 72; Mary, 75; Martha, 77; Eunice, 83; Ann, 91.

It was during the years just preceding his death that his great works, those that secured him his world-wide fame, had been produced, and it is certainly natural to believe, if life and health had been continued, that other works, in the same gen

eral ranges of thought but with still higher ranges of power, would have been forthcoming. One might as well have undertaken to chain the ocean as to stop the activities of his mind. He who had already written the "History of Redemption," "Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will," "Nature of True Virtue," and "God's last end in His Creation," was not likely to lay down his pen at fifty-four and retire into state of mental idleness. His removal to the college at Princeton, while it would have made his hours for quiet writing less, would have brought him more into connection with the world of thought and of letters, and in this way have furnished a new stimulus to his mind. It is idle, however, to conjecture what Edwards might have done had he lived to the age which from his ancestral associations seemed naturally appointed unto him. died in March, 1758, in his fifty-fifth year. His venerable father died two months before him, and his beloved wife followed him the same year, in the month of September.

He

ARTICLE III-CONDITIONS OF SUCCESS IN SPELLING REFORM.

NOTHING Could so demonstrate the vastness and difficulty of the work of reforming the existing English orthography as the fact that with the enlistment of so much intellectual force, learning, zeal, and authoritative leadership, such little apparent advance has been made. Everything, however, it should be remembered, of value to man costs-costs sacrifice, labor, time. If the grand goal can be assuredly reached at last-if an orthography can be brought to the ideal standard of a single character for every articulate element-the cost must be reckoned as trivial, whatever it is likely to be. We propose to set forth in brief phrase the leading conditions of success, not merely to indicate in some degree the present stage of the movement with the probabilities of the final results, but rather to turn. more distinct attention on several portions of the work still remaining to be done, which, while indispensable to the consummation of the undertaking, have as yet failed to receive the needful consideration. Even although it should appear to any that the points to be presented have been, one or other of them, more or less thoroughly elaborated, our labor may not prove altogether in vain or impertinent. For there are two more general and fundamental conditions of success in such a movement as this which proposes to revolutionize the life-work of a people now vast and widely scattered, that of themselves sufficiently justify our effort;-the necessity of union, and, in order to this, the necessity of wide and continuous discussion. These two conditions, it may be observed, underlie the several more specific conditions which we propose to consider.

I. A SETTLED PHONOLOGY.

A prime fundamental condition of success in the proposed reform is of course the satisfactory determination of the alphabetic sounds in the English language. The magnitude of this work appears at once when it is considered that the people

speaking the language are scattered throughout all parts of the globe, being found on every continent and on the islands of every sea; that their articulation has been subject to all the diversified manifold influences of climate, pursuit, and condition, that can modify human speech; that even the same elemental sounds in their different combinations strike different ears so differently that it is often difficult if not impossible to identify the element in question; that, moreover, the methods and standards to be adopted and applied in the determination of the character of the particular elements, whether through the ear or the eye, or the articulating organ itself, have been a matter of discussion and disagreement. Yet it is precisely here, in reaching a very satisfactory result in the determination of our phonology, although, as we shall see, not a final result, that the movement towards a reform has effected its greatest work and given its best encouragement to expect final success. A glance at the history of the science of English phonology will justify this remark, and a trace of this history just now seems on other grounds most opportune.

The first treatise on English phonology deserving consideration as having any scientific value, is the great work of Dr. James Rush-the Philosophy of the Human Voice-the first edition of which appeared in 1827. His enumeration of the alphabetic elements embraced twelve tonic sounds, fourteen subtonics, and nine atonics, aggregating thirty-five. His tonic or vowel system included two diphthongal sounds ou and è in pine, and reckoned as distinct the sounds represented by e in fete and in met, and those represented by the i in pit and in pique. The use of the single character to represent the long i might perhaps justify enumerating it as a distinct alphabetic element; but there seems no warrant for enumerating ou more than on. It is undoubtedly true that a slight difference is made in enunciating the long e in fete and the short e in met, as also in enunciating the long i in pique and the short i in pin; but phoneticians have wisely settled into the rejection of such slight degrees of variations in the proposed spelling reform. Dr. Rush's vowel system is thus reduced to eight. His subtonic or phthongal consonant enumeration embraces the initial w and y; and the atonic or aphthongal consonants include h 42

VOL. VII.