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compilation of the work, the general good judgment which it displays, and its fairness and freedom from blinding prejudice, are all worthy of the fullest recognition; and it has interested us so much that we propose to offer here as full an exposition of its contents and character, and criticism of its methods, as our limits will allow.

As regards, in the first place, the fairness of the work, it is matter for surprise as well as approval that a book prepared by Boston authors, and issuing from a Boston press, should treat so courteously and candidly that heresiarch in English orthography, Dr. WEBSTER. Of the exaggerated purismwhereof our eastern capital is one of the chief seats in America-which regards that eminent lexicographer and venturesome orthographer as guilty of sacrilege in laying his impious hand on the sacred fabric of our English modes of spelling, and holds him up as a veritable raw-head-and-bloody-bones before the eyes of children and simples, we discover no trace in this Manual. Dr. WEBSTER and his not less eminent editor, Dr. GOODRICH, are everywhere spoken of with entire respect, as standing in the foremost rank of orthographical authorities; their labors in the cause of orthographical reform are fairly stated and candidly judged, (see especially Note E, page 70), and their opinions are continually cited. That most of the peculiar Websterian orthographies are bracketed in the Vocabulary, as less supported by authority, or less to be commended to use, than other modes of spelling, cannot, of course, be made a subject of complaint. Many of Dr. WEBSTER's proposed changes were rather well-meant than well-judged, and have been retracted either by himself or by his successors and representatives. Others, however desirable in themselves, have been overborne and put down by the storm of opposition and obloquy raised against them and their author, of which the echoes are still kept reverberating in the Battle of the Dictionaries. It is not a little strange that the people which has the very worst orthography known among languages ancient and modern, the most irregular, the most unreasonable, the most cumbersome, should be also the most tenacious of this precious possession, and the most jealous of

any alteration attempted upon it. For our own part, we confess ourselves destitute of all sympathy with the feeling which regards a customary mode of spelling as a thing established for all time, and we are distinctly conscious of a growing inclination to adopt and maintain even the most extreme and least defensible of Dr. WEBSTER'S changes, out of pure antipathy to those who reject and decry them, and for the sake of asserting our freedom, of signifying our acknowledgment that English orthography is desperately bad and admits and requires reformation, and of encouraging endeavors to bring it into a better condition. In the present temper of the English-speaking public, however, there is unfortunately small room to hope for any noteworthy improvement.

But to return to our Manual. The first pages of its Introduction are occupied by a full demonstration of the anatomy of the organs of speech, clearly drawn out, and illustrated by numerous wood-cuts, with an explanation of the manner of producing the raw material of speech, if we may call it sothe unintonated or intonated breath which the organs of the mouth manipulate and fashion into the greatly varied forms of articulate language. This is for the pleasure and advantage of those whose enlightened curiosity may lead them to look more deeply into the interesting subject of human speech: it has no immediate bearing upon the principal objects of the book.

The second part of the Introduction consists of a list, followed by an analysis and definition, of the elementary sounds of the language: a description, in short, of the English spoken alphabet, and an exposition of its relations to the written alphabet. This is a difficult and delicate task, and hardly any two of those who have undertaken it will be found to accord throughout in the results at which they have arrived. Our authors have carefully studied the writers of most repute in this department, and have selected from among the various and discordant views put forth, those which they regard as best supported, and most nearly in accordance with truth; at the same time stating and criticising those which they have had to choose among, or have felt compelled to reject. Their

exposition is thus a valuable and instructive one, nor will the views which they sustain be in general dissented from. As we cannot, however, in all cases agree with them, we shall take the liberty of offering here some criticisms, general and particular, upon this portion of their work.

In the first place, we are surprised and disappointed that our authors have not made a more systematic presentation of their subject, and that, in discussing it, they have altogether left out of sight the historical element. The deficiency is espe cially noticeable and regrettable in their treatment of the vowels, because the vowels are the portion of our alphabet where the greatest disorder reigns, and where the genetical and historical relations are most hidden from view in a chaos of all that is arbitrary, irregular, and inconsistent. We have altered and expanded our vowel-system more than almost any other modern nation, possessing some fifteen distinct and well-defined shades of vowel sound, and only five characters for their representation. In the confusion naturally incident to this extensive development, we have nearly lost the consciousness of the true relation of sound to sound, and of sound to sign. What we call long and short of the same vowel-as long and short a, or i, or u-are no more related to one another as long and short, than horse and cow, dog and cat, sun and moon are related to one another as male and female. It seems natural to us that a vowel-sign should have from three to eight different modes of pronunciation; we rather look with wonder and pity upon those tongues where it is restricted to but one. We hardly realize at all that each sign was originally created to have only one of the values we give to it, and few of us, if informed that it is so, and asked to designate which value belongs most properly to each sign, could in half the cases point out the right one. We call the sound of a in far "Italian a," as if the Italians, by a national idiosyncrasy, had chosen to give that particular utterance to the letter, instead of recognizing it as the own proper sound of the sign a, in virtue of its possession of which that sign was placed where it stands, at the head of our own and of so many other alphabets. There was room for our authors to blend with their

exposition of the scheme of spoken sounds a great deal of enlightenment upon such points as these: it would have taken no more space, and would have been far more strictly pertinent to the purpose of their book, than the anatomy of the vocal organs but they have not availed themselves of the opportunity. They treat of long, short, and broad vowels, of Italian, German, and natural vowels, quite as if a vowel has as good a natural right to be one thing as another; and they follow the artificial English designations and English order, as if there were no genetic or physical order. They do, indeed, at the end of the chapter on vowels, set up the vowel-pyramid or triangle, so often resorted to as a means of exhibiting the genetic relations of the vowel-system; and after finishing the treatment of the consonants, they offer also a tabular scheme of the consonant-system; but even if in themselves perfect, these tables would not make up for the want of a systematic classification underlying the whole presentation of the subject. And both tables are, in our opinion, open to serious criticism, the former as incomplete and erroneously constructed, the latter as unclear in itself, and inconsistent with the other. Why should the alphabet, which is one entire system, be thus separated into the two classes of vowels and consonants-which, after all, are only the two opposite poles of a single series, and have between them a middle and debatable territory-and the two classes treated in disconnection and discordantly? To our mind, there is no other mode of presentation of our English spoken alphabet half so full of interest and of instruction as that which constructs it in its entirety between the two extremes of the open vowel a (as in far) on the one hand, and the three close and mute consonants, k, t, p, on the other, showing in their historical sequence and organic connections the other constituent elements of the system, developing themselves along the lines that join.

these two extremes.

As regards the a in the considerable class of monosyllables of which staff, glass, dance are instances, we are sorry to see our authors giving the sanction of their authority to the flattened pronunciation of staff (as in fat), instead of the full

open utterance stäff (as in fär). They do, indeed, following the lead of certain orthoepists, whose opinion they cite, claim that the sound is not that of flat a, but one intermediate between it and open a. But there is hardly room in the vowel scheme for an intermediate sound here, and we do not at all believe that the language has struck one out, or is tending to do so. Those who flatten the sound may persuade themselves that they can stop short of the absolute ǎ of făt, but it is a delusion. The question is, in fact, whether we shall suffer another large body of words to be added to the number of those which have already fallen from the noble openness of the primitive ä to the duller ă, one of the very youngest members of our vowel system. And where the authorities are so evenly balanced as our authors show them to be here, we should not long hesitate which side to favor; our open ä is too rare now that we should not strive to retain what is left us of it, with at least the moiety of good usage on our side.

Of what quality is the vowel sound in there, care, fair? Is it a prolongation of the ă in fat, or of the è in met? Our authors say the latter, and they stigmatize the former as an unauthorized mode of utterance, though frequent in certain parts of the United States. We must confess that we have never been able to travel out of those parts where the rejected pronunciation prevails; neither in this country nor in England have we ever been successful in hearing an utterance which we could distinguish from our own, which certainly approximates as closely as possible to a protraction of the flat ă. May net the difference, as regards this vowel, be one of apprehension and description, rather than of actual pronunciation ?

The difference in quality as well as quantity between our short (in ill) and what we call the long è (in me), is very properly insisted on in the Manual; the latter is incontestably the closer in position of the two. But our authors fail to note that the same difference also exists between the long and short of other organic pairs of vowel sounds: as between the long 00 of food and the short oo of book; between the long u of burn, and the short u of but. Throughout our vowel system, there is no instance of a long and short vowel precisely according in

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