gating minute dialectical differences of pronunciation, for comparing the speech sounds of different nations, for missionary purposes, for researches in comparative philology, such alphabets as Ellis' (Glossic), Pitman's, Sweet's, Melville Bell's, are each in their own way excellent. But from the schoolmaster's point of view they are worthless. What I want is a spelling that can be taught easily and yet serve as an efficient introduction to existing books. This I believe my scheme accomplishes in its lately revised form, for since I read this paper I have given up my new letter h (turned y) and adopted dh zh for th sh in teaching books, dropping dh afterwards for literary purposes. This, as well as my giving up â, ê, î, ô, û, I gladly acknowledge to be the result of Mr. Ellis' arguments.

But on the one important point which is, in fact, the only serious objection to my scheme, I cannot give way. It seems impossible to make a perfectly phonetic scheme which shall serve as an efficient introduction to our present spelling, for learning to spell is a matter of eye memory and not of ear. What we really recollect is the picture and not the separate letters of a word. If we do give children a spelling in which the look of the words is very different from that in present orthography, we must either unnecessarily increase the labour they have to go through to a great extent, or we must confine them to books in the new spelling. This unnecessary labour I maintain to be greater than that involved in learning the additional spellings involved in the few alternative signs which I propose : Mr. Ellis maintains the contrary, and nothing but

experiment can decide between us. Let us, however, examine the scheme proposed by Mr. Ellis in opposition to mine, viz.: his "Dimidiun" system.

The following letters are used alike in Mr. Ellis' Dimidiun and my Victorian schemes :-r, l, m, n, p, t, b, d, g, wh, f, th, sh, w, r, dh, zh, z, y (as a consonant); a, e, i (y), o, u, aa, au (aw), oi (oy). The difference between the schemes for other sounds will be evident from the following table of examples:

For 27 sounds, then, these schemes coincide, and the only important differences in the other 13 sounds

are

1. My use of a', e, i, o, u', oo' for teaching purposes, which enables me to retain a very large amount of present spelling in printed books, and to get a good sign oo for Mr. Ellis' uu in guud.

2. My temporary retention of ea, which on Mr. Ellis' own showing occurs oftener than ee.

3. That I allow a mute e final to be used in place of my accent in words accented on the ultima, as mate, mete, mite, mote, mute, moote, abate, delete, incite, devote, dispute, uproote. Whether these differences are things desirable or not, I beg to suggest that they do not justify the proposer of such spellings as cqw in acquies (acquiesce), uu in stuud (stood), oa in Oathoa (Otho), in his sweeping condemnation of a scheme which is in three-quarters of its extent identical with the present version of his own Dimidian. There is really but one point of difference where Mr. Ellis allows two symbols for one sound he does so in accordance with fixed phonetic rules; where I allow them I do so in accordance with the historical etymology of the word as indicated in the existing orthography.

ON THE ROLL CONTAINING ILLUSTRAOF THE LIFE OF SAINT

TIONS

GUTHLAC IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

BY WALTER DE GRAY BIRCH, F.S.A., F.R.S.L., HON. LIBRARIAN.

(Read December 22, 1880)

SOME notes on the principal details of the remarkable and well-known roll in the Harley Collection of MSS. in the British Museum, containing pictures in the life of St. Guthlac, will probably be of interest to the Royal Society of Literature. The manuscript is of vellum, and measures nine feet in length by six inches and a half in width, containing eighteen circular panels filled with drawings in brown or faded black ink,' heightened with tints and transparent colours lightly sketched in with a hair pencil, in the prevailing style of the twelfth century. The left hand side of the first vignette is, unfortunately, lost; and I am inclined to think that one picture at least, if not more than one, as well, is wanting at the beginning of the series.

This roll, the work of a monk of Crowland, perhaps of the celebrated Ingulph, the ingenious literary abbot of that monastery, stands unique in its place as

1 The pictures of this roll have been reproduced by steel or copperplate, very badly executed, in J. Gough's" History of Crowland," 1783 ; in "The Antiquaries' Museum," by Jacob Schnebbelie, Draughtsman to the Society of Antiquaries, London, 4to., 1791 ; and in J. Nichol's "History of the County of Leicester," vol. iv, part i, 1807, pp. 1-7.

an example of the finest Early English style of freehand drawing of the period to which I have assigned it. From the boldness and precision of the lines, which are in a dark bistre, and thicker than those mostly used in drawings of that age, there is a general belief that the illustrations were originally intended as designs for the preparation of painted glass windows. The roll form somewhat confirms this idea. The history of Crowland records extensive building and alterations of the abbey fabric during the twelfth century, and it is quite within probability that the pictures form the design for the glass of that part of the abbey church in which the body of the patron saint was deposited. Curiously enough, another manuscript in the British Museum (Reg. 2 A. xxii), of a date not much later than the Harley Roll, contains, towards the end, an insertion of five drawings, tinted in the same way, and drawn with thick lines in such a manner that few will doubt their use as designs for painted glass. Other examples may be known, but I have not as yet met with any notices of them. The details of architecture, scenery, armour, costume, furniture, domestic implements, ecclesiastical vestments, and miscellaneous accessories, are naturally of the highest value to the archæologist, the historian, and the student of medieval forms of art; while the fanciful portraiture of supernatural beings, saints and good and evil angels, with which several of the panels have been replenished, testify in no insignificant way to the excellent state of the pictorial conceptions of our ancestors, who, as we may readily perceive from these illustrations, had as acute a sense of proportion in art, and subtle humour