scarcity of school-books insured a more thorough knowledge of some of the elementary branches.

I have sometimes found, to my surprise, a young lady, quick to comprehend mathematical truths, who knew something of Latin, and was, perhaps, a proficient in French, yet puzzled to tell the difference between accent and emphasis, to give a rule for pronouncing g soft in giant, and hard in go, or for giving c the sound of s in cedar, and of k in cable.

There is, in the study of articulate sounds, and the powers of letters, much deep philosophy; and whoever thinks it beneath attention, little understands its importance or difficulties. It is easy to tell the difference between a vowel and consonant, a mute and a semivowel ; but to understand, fully, the nature of articulation, we must study the various modifications of which the air, sent out by the lungs, is capable, in order to produce the wonderful variety of sounds, within the compass of the hu

man voice.

Dr. Paley observes, "the lungs are to animal utterance, what the bellows are to the organ; they are airvessels, which become inflated and then collapsed, as the air is inspired or expired." You can perceive, that, in respiration, the chest alternately expands and contracts. This motion is caused by the action of the lungs, which are two spongy lobes, suspended in the chest, being connected with the trachea, or windpipe, at the upper part. The air, which enters the lungs, is received into the minute cavities of which they are composed; these are called air cells. This air passes back through the windpipe, or the tube that we can feel externally, and which is composed of cartilaginous rings. The top of the windpipe is called the larynx; at the upper part of this, and behind the tongue, is the glottis, a very small opening, through which the breath and voice are conveyed. It is in the passage of the air, through this minute aperture, that articulate sounds are formed. By means of various muscles, or threads, which draw in different directions, the glottis is susceptible of many degrees of expansion; and it is by varying the size of this cavity, that the differ

ent vowels are sounded. ity, produces a low, flat sound; through a small cavity, a high, or sharp sound. This may be seen in the vowels, a, e, i, o, u, which proceed, in regular order, from low and flat, to high and sharp sounds.

The air, in passing a large cav

Oral language, or speech, consists of articulate sounds; brutes utter various inarticulate sounds, expressive of their peculiar feelings. The cat, when quietly reposing by the parlor fire, expresses her satisfaction by a gentle purring; when her capricious little mistress amuses herself by tormenting her, she vents her sorrows in piteous mewing; and, when roused to anger by the cruelty of the dog, she growls her indignation. Mankind, also, have means of expressing violent emotions, by inarticulate sounds, as by laughing, crying, or screaming. But it is only by articulate sounds and their representatives, that intercourse can be satisfactorily carried on, between rational minds; these are the links, which bind together our spirits ;they are wings, by whose means the soul is borne from its corporeal prison, to unite in the interchange of thought and feeling with kindred souls.

May this gift of a bountiful Creator never be perverted by you, my young friends, to unworthy purposes; may your words be a true index of your hearts, pure, gentle, and kind. A deceitful world may tell you, that falsehood and dissimulation are necessary; but believe it not. True politeness is consistent with sincerity, or singleness of heart; and if you once lose this, and commence a system of duplicity, your whole lives may become a tissue of artifice and hypocrisy. Let your hearts be pure, and you need not fear to have their true image reflected to the world, He, who gave you the power of language, adapting your bodily organs, in so wonderful and complicated a manner, to this object, requires, that you order your speech, in sincerity and wisdom.

8*

CHAPTER XI.

READING.

IF God had formed us for solitude, he would not have given us the wish to converse with other minds; or if, like brutes, we had been irrational, we should not have needed language. Speech peculiarly distinguishes man from the other living beings on earth.

The

The word language is derived from the Latin, lingua, tongue, and originally signified only the communication of ideas by articulate sounds. Its signification is now not only extended to the communication of ideas, by writing ; but we speak of the language of the passions, as expressed by various natural signs. The division, which is generally made of language, is into oral and written. sciences, which have an especial relation to language, considered as an instrument of conveying those thoughts, are, grammar, rhetoric, logic, and criticism. Grammar teaches us to arrange words, according to certain rules of agreement and government; rhetoric teaches the use of figurative language, and gives directions for attaining clearness and precision in style; logic teaches the method of arranging words in a certain manner, in order to establish the truth or falsehood of propositions; criticism teaches on what principles of the mind depend our tastes for various kinds of style, and brings to the test of those principles, the writings of various authors. All other sciences are communicated by means of language, but these have for their object, language itself; or, in other words, in these sciences, language is not only the instrument with which the operation is carried on, but the object, upon which it is performed.

Before proceeding to consider the principles on which language is founded, we will make some remarks upon

* From os, oris, the mouth.

reading, which is the next step to spelling, in the scale of literary knowledge; indeed, modern education usually proceeds with both at the same time, not waiting for a child to be able to spell words of several syllables, before he is allowed to experience the new emotions, connected with an exercise which brings the thoughts of others to him when he is alone, and opens to him a new and delightful source of enjoyment. As soon as a child knows its alphabet, it can be taught, that my spell my, and that cat spell cat; he can then put the words together, and read, my cat. In a short time, he can be taught to read little stories, composed of words of one syllable, and from this, the transition is easy, to words of more than one syllable.

It is but a few years, since teaching a child to read was a very different process from this. The little martyr, in commencing his education, was sent to school, to be confined upon a hard seat, for many long hours in the day, with only the occasional change of being called up, for a few minutes, to say his letters. The alphabet presented was often in a small, obscure type, and printed on bad paper. The teacher, pointing to the letters, pronounced their names, requiring the child to repeat them after him. This becoming an exercise wholly mechanical, day after day passed, bringing the poor child apparently no nearer the completion of the formidable task of learning his letters. He at length became able to call one letter after another, when presented in regular order; but, taken separately, and in any other place than the accustomed column of letters, they were, perhaps, as unintelligible as Hebrew or Greek characters. I have known children, of good abilities, tortured, for months, and even years, in this absurd and stupifying method of teaching; but when the teacher, in despair of their ever mastering their alphabet, put them upon spelling, the work was found to be accomplished; as a few exercises of this kind connected, in the child's mind, the form, with the sound, of the letters.

But here, again, the child's progress is interrupted by the mistaken idea, that, before beginning to read, he must

be able to spell words of several syllables. He reads "abasement," "ambiguity," and "contemporary," with a mind entirely vacant of thought; indeed, he is not aware that the words have any meaning, or, indeed, any other use, than to fill the columns in his spelling book. The reading lessons, first presented, are often dry and abstract propositions, wholly beyond the comprehension of any child, even of one whose mental powers have been properly cultivated. In the most popular spelling book,* which has been in use for the last half century, the first lessons in reading are of this nature. There are, however, in the book, some things of a different kind; and the story of the "old man who found a rude boy upon one of his trees, stealing apples," is perused by the young student, with great delight, for the simple reason, that he can understand it.

The method of infant-school education affords a pleasing contrast to that just described. Knowledge is here made easy and pleasant; the intellectual faculties are roused, by objects addressed to the senses. Pictures, with their names attached, are presented to the children; and, in deciphering these names, they learn to consider words, as representatives of things. In process of time, it is easy for them to learn, that words may also be the representatives of ideas.

The different manner in which children read, who are taught by these two processes, is apparent. A child, unaccustomed to consider written language as the sign for things and ideas, or made to read without knowledge or interest, can have no idea of emphasis or intonations. The habit of reading mechanically, once formed, is with difficulty broken, even after the developement of reason, and the cultivation of taste, exhibit written characters, as kindled by the fire of genius, or glowing with the most impassioned feeling.

To early defects in education, we must attribute the fact, that there are among us, few good readers. There are many requisites for good reading, besides early habits. It requires, not only knowledge of language, of the deri

* Webster's.