principle that requires special attention and practice is marked with figures on the left hand, and the same figures in the Exercises point to examples which should be practised with a view to the more perfect understanding of the principle.]

1.] A second difficulty arises from the immediate suecession of the same or similar sounds. The poet who understood the principles of euphony in language better than any other English writer, has exemplified this in translating a line of Homer respecting the stone of Sisyphus, where the recurrence of the aspirates and vowels is designed to represent difficulty.

Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone.

In another case he purposely produces a heavy movement, by the collision of open vowels;

Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire.

Every scholar knows that the Greeks adopted many changes in the combination of syllables to render their language euphonic, by avoiding such collisions.*

But a greater difficulty still is occasioned by the immediate recurrence of the same consonant sound, without the intervention of a vowel or a pause. The following are examples; "For Christ's sake." "The hosts still

stood."

"The battle lasts still." The illustration will be more intelligible from examples in which bad articulation affects the sense.

Wastes and deserts;-Waste sand deserts.

To obtain either;-To obtain neither.

* On this account they wrote πάντ' ἔλεγον for πάντα ἔλεγον ; ἀφ' οὗ for ἀπὸ οὗ ; κἀγὼ for καὶ ἐγω; δέδωκεν αὐτῷ for δέδωκε αὐτῷ, &c.

His cry moved me ;-His crime moved me.

He could pay nobody;-He could pain nobody.

Two successive sounds are to be formed here, with the organs in the same position; so that, without a pause between, only one of the single sounds is spoken; and the difficulty is much increased when sense or grammatical relation forbids such a pause; as between the simple nominative and the verb, the verb and its object, the adjective and its substantive. In the last example, "he could pain nobody,"-grammar forbids a pause between pain and nobody, while orthöepy demands one. But change the structure so as to render a pause proper after pain, and the difficulty vanishes; thus, "Though he endured great pain, nobody pitied him."

2.] A third difficulty arises from the influence of accent. The importance which this stress attaches to syllables on which it falls requires them to be spoken in a more full and deliberate manner than others. Hence, if the recurrence of this stress is too close, it occasions heaviness in utterance; if too remote, indistinctness. An example of the former kind, we have from the poet before mentioned;

And ten low words oft creep in one dull line.

This too is an additional reason for the difficult utterance of the line lately quoted from the same writer; Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone.

The poet compels us, in spite of metrical harmony, to lay an accent on each syllable.

But the remoteness of accent in others cases involves a greater difficulty still; because the intervening syllables

are liable to be spoken with a rapidity inconsistent with distinctness, especially if they abound with jarring consonants. When such close and harsh consonants come together in immediate succession, and without accent, the trial of the organs is severe. Combinations of this kind we have in the words communicatively, authoritatively, terrestrial, reasonableness, disinterestedness. And the ⚫case is worse still where we preposterously throw back the accent so as to be followed by four or five syllables, as Walker directs in these words receptacle, pèremptorily, acceptableness. While these combinations almost defy the best organs of speech, no one finds any difficulty in uttering words combined with a due proportion of liquids, and a happy arrangement of vowels and accents.

Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,

Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main.

The euphony of the Italian, in which it is distinguished from all other languages, consists chiefly in its freedom from harsh consonants.*

3.] A fourth difficulty arises from a tendency of the organs to slide over unaccented vowels. Walker says, "Where vowels are under the accent, the prince and the lowest of the people, with very few exceptions, pronounce them in the same manner: but the unaccented vowels, in the mouth of the former, have a distinct, open sound; while the latter often totally sink them, or change them into some other sound." There is a large class of words beginning with pre and pro, in which this, distinction sel

* Even the flowing Greek has such unseemly junction of consonants as to make προσφθεγκτικὸς κακομηχανάομαι, κακκείειν.

dom fails to appear. In prevent, prevail, predict, a bad articulation sinks e of the first syllable so as to make prvent, pr-vail, pr-dict. The case is the same with o in proceed, profane, promote ; spoken pr-ceed, &c. So e is confounded with short u in event, omit, &c. spoken uvvent, ummit. In the same manner u is transformed into e, as in populous, regular, singular, educate, &c. spoken pop-elous, reg-e-lar, ed-e-cate. A smart percussion of the tongue, with a little rest on the consonant before u, so as to make it quite distinct, would remove the difficulty.

t

The same sort of defect, it may be added, often appears in the indistinct utterance of consonants ending syllables; thus in at-tempt, at-tention, ef-fect, of-fence, the consonant of the first syllable is suppressed.

To the foregoing remarks, it may be proper to add three cautions.

The first is, in aiming to acquire a distinct articulation, take care not to form one that is measured and mechanical. Something of preciseness is very apt to appear at first, when we attempt to correct the above faults; but practice and perseverance will enable us to combine ease and fluency with clearness of utterance. The child in passing from his spelling manner, is ambitious to become a swift reader, and thus falls into a confusion of organs that is to be cured only by retracing the steps which produced it. The remedy, however, is no better than the fault, if it runs into a scan-ning, pe-dan-tic for-mal-i-ty, giving undue stress to particles and unaccented syllables; thus, "He is the man of all the world whom I rejoice to meet. Perhaps there is something in the technical formalities of language attached to the bar, which inclines

some speakers of that profession, to this fault. In the pulpit, there is sometimes an artificial solemnity, which produces a drawling, measured articulation, of a still more exceptionable kind.

In some parts of our country, inhabited by descendants of foreigners, especially the Dutch, there is a prevalent habit of sinking the sound of e or i in words where English usage preserves it, as in rebel, chapel, Latin,—— spoken reb'l, chap'l, Lat'n. In other cases, where English usage suppresses the vowel, the same persons speak it with marked distinctness, or turn it into u ; as ev'n, op'n, heav'n, pronounced ev-un, op-un, heav-un.

The second caution is,--let the close of sentences be spoken clearly; with sufficient strength, and on the proper pitch, to bring out the meaning completely. No part of a sentence is so important as the close, both in respect to sense and harmony.

The third caution is,-ascertain your own defects of articulation, by the aid of some friend, and then devote a short time statedly and daily, to correct them. It is impossible, without a resolute experiment, to know how much the habit of reading aloud, besides all its other advantages, may do for a public speaker in giving distinctness to his delivery.* At first, this exercise should be in the hearing of a second person, who may stop the reader, and

*

A friend of mine, a respectable lawyer, informed me that, in a court which he usually attended, there was often much difficulty to hear what was spoken at the bar, and from the bench. One of the judges, however, a man of slender health, and somewhat advanced in age, was heard with perfect ease in every part of the court room, whenever he spoke. So observable was the difference between him and others, that the fact was mentioned to him as a