TO WHICH LE PREFIXED

RULES IN ELOCUTION,

And Directions for Expressing the Principal Passions
of the Mind.

BEING

THE THIRD PART

OF A

GRAMMATICAL INSTITUTE

OF THE

ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

BY NOAH WEBSTER, JUN.
Author of " Differtations on the English Language, Colletion c
Effays and Fugitive Writings," " The Prompter," &c.

ELIZABETH-TOWN:

PRINTED BY JOHN WOODS, FOR EVERT DUY KINCK,

NEW-YORK-1802.

SPA

PUBLIC LIBRARYREFACE.

161253

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS.

THE Sign of this Third Part of the Grammatical

Institute of the English Language, is to furnish Schoolswith a variety of exercises for Reading and Speaking. Colleges and Academies are already supplied with many excellent collections for this purpose: among which, the Art of Speaking, Enfield's Speaker, Endfield's Ex ercises, the Preceptor, the Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor and Scott's Lessons, are used with great reputa tion. But none of these, however judicious the selections, is calculated particularly for American schools. The essays, respect distant nations or ages, or contain gene, ral ideas of morality. In America, it will be useful to furnish schools with additional essays, containing the history, geography, and transactions of the United States. Information on these subjects is necessary for youth, both in forming their habits and improving their minds. A love of our country and an acquaintance with its true state are indispensible-they should be acquired in early life.

In the following work, I have endeavoured to make such a collection of essays as should form the morals as well as improve the knowledge of youth,

In the choice of pieces, I have been attentive to the political interest of America, I consider it as a capital fault in all our schools, that the books generally used contain subjects wholly uninteresting to our youth; while the writings that marked the revolution, which are not inferior in any respect to the orations of Cicero and Demostbenes, and which are calculated to impress interesting truths upon young minds, lie neglected and forgotten. Several of those masterly addresses of Congress, written at the commencement of the late revolution, contains such noble sentiments of liberty and patriotism, that I cannot help wishing to transfuse them into the breasts of the rising generation.

RULES FOR READING AND SPEAKING.

A

RULEI.

Let your articulation be clear and diflina.

GOOD articulation consists in giving every letter and fyl lable its proper pronunciation of found. Let each fyllable and the letters which compose it, be pro. nounced, with a clear voice, without whining, drawling, lifp. ing, ftammering, mumbling in the throat, or speaking through the nose. Avoid equally a dull drawling habit, and too much rapidity of pronunciation; for each of these faults destroys. distinct articulation.

RULE II.

Observe the flops, and mark the proper pauses, but make no pauje whers the fenfe requires none.

The characters we use as stops are extremely arbitrary and do not always mark a fufpenfion of the voice. On the contrary, they are often employed to separate the several member of a period, and how the grammatical construction. Nor when they are defiged to make pauses, do they always determine the length of those paules; for this depends much on the fenfe and nature of the subject. A femicolon, for example, requires a longer paule in a grave difcoure, than in a lively and spirited declamation. However as children are incapable of nice dif. tinctions, it may be best to adoptat first some general rule with refpect to the panfes, and teach them to pay the fame attention to these characters as they do in the words. They should be cautioned likewise against pauling in the midst of a member of a fentence, where the sense requires the words to be closely connected in pronunciation.

RULE IH.

Pay the ftrifteft attention to accent, emphasis and cadence. Let the accented syllables be pronounced with a proper stress of voices the unaccented with little stress of voice, but distinctly. The important words of a fentence, which I call naturally emphatical, have no claim to a confiderable force of voice; bur

* See the first part of the Institute, where the proportion of comma, femicolon, colon and period, is fixed at one, two, four, ix