ing, that "when the accent
falls _on a mute_, the syllable cannot be lengthened by _dwelling upon the
semi-vowel_"? This is an apparent truism, and yet not true. For a semivowel
in the middle or at the beginning of a syllable, may lengthen it as much as
if it stood at the end. "_Cur_" and "_can_," here given as protracted
syllables, are certainly no longer by usage, and no more susceptible of
protraction, than "_mat_" and "_not_," "_art_" and "_ant_," which are among
the author's examples of short quantity. And if a semivowel accented will
make the syllable long, was it not both an error and a self-contradiction,
to give "_b~onnet_" and "_h~unger_" as examples of quantity _shortened_ by
the accent? The syllable _man_ has two semivowels; and the letter _l_, as
in "_ful fil_," is the most sonorous of consonants; yet, as we see above,
among their false examples of short syllables accented, different authors
have given the words "_man_" and "_manner_," "_dismantle_" and "_com
pel_," "_master_" and "_letter_," with sundry other sounds which may
easily be lengthened. Sanborn says, "The _breve_ distinguishes a short
syllable; as, _m~anner_."--_Analytical Gram._, p. 273. Parker and Fox say,
"The Breve (thus ~) is placed over a vowel to indicate _its short sound_;
as, St. H~elena."--_English Gram._, Part iii, p. 31. Both explanations of
this sign are defective; and neither has a suitable example. The name "_St.
H~l=en~a_," as pronounced by Worcester, and as commonly heard, is two
trochees; but "_Helena_," for _Helen_, having the penult short, takes the
accent on the first syllable, which is thereby _made long_, though the
vowel sound is _called short_. Even Dr. Webster, who expressly notes the
difference between "long and short _vowels_" and "long and short
_syllables_," allows himself, on the very same page, to confound them: so
that, of his three examples of a _short syllable,--"th~at, not,
m~elon,"_--all are erroneous; two being monosyllables, which any emphasis
must lengthen; and the third,--the word "_m~elon_,"--with the first
syllable marked short, and not the last! See _Webster's Improved Gram._, p.
157.

OBS. 20.--Among the latest of our English Grammars, is Chandler's new one
of 1847. The Prosody of this work is fresh from the mint; the author's old
grammar of 1821, which is the nucleus of this, being "confined to Etymology
and Syantax." [sic--KTH] If from anybody the public have a right to expect
correctness in the deta