o become known or suspected. This is what I
should be glad to assist him in; and amongst other points connected with
his object, towards which my experience might furnish him with some
hints, I shall here offer him the very shortest of lessons for his
guidance in the matter of English pronunciation.

What can be attempted on so wide a field in a paper limited so severely
in dimensions as all papers published by this journal _must_ be limited
in obedience to the transcendent law of variety? To make it possible
that subjects _enough_ should be treated, the Proprietor wisely insists
on a treatment vigorously succinct for each in particular. I myself, it
suddenly strikes me, must have been the chief offender against this
reasonable law: but my offences were committed in pure ignorance and
inattention, faults which henceforth I shall guard against with a
penitential earnestness. Reformation meanwhile must begin, I fear,
simultaneously with this confession of guilt. It would not be possible
(would it?) that, beginning the penitence this month of November, I
should postpone the amendment till the next? No, _that_ would look too
brazen. I must confine myself to the two and a half pages prescribed as
the maximum extent--and of that allowance already perhaps have used up
one half at the least. Shocking! is it not? So much the sterner is the
demand through the remaining ground for exquisite brevity.

Rushing therefore at once _in medias res_, I observe to the reader that,
although it is thoroughly impossible to give him a guide upon so vast a
wilderness as the total area of our English language, for, if I must
teach him how to pronounce, and upon what learned grounds to pronounce,
40,000 words, and if polemically I must teach him how to dispose of
40,000 objections that have been raised (or that _may_ be raised)
against these pronunciations, then I should require at the least 40,000
lives (which is quite out of the question, for a cat has but
nine)--seeing and allowing for all this, I may yet offer him some
guidance as to his guide. One sole rule, if he will attend to it,
governs in a paramount sense the total possibilities and compass of
pronunciation. A very famous line of Horace states it. What line? What
is the supreme law in every language for correct pronunciation no less
than for idiomatic propriety?

'_Usus_, quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi:'

usage, the established practice, subject to which is al