_speech_, is made up of articulate sounds uttered by the human
voice."--_Kirkham's Gram._, p. 17. On the next, "The most important use of
_that faculty called speech_, is, to convey our thoughts to
others."--_Ib._, p. 18. Thus the grammarian who, in the same short
paragraph, seems to "defy the ingenuity of man to give his words any other
meaning than that which he himself intends _them to express_," (_Ib._, p.
19,) either writes so badly as to make any ordinary false syntax appear
trivial, or actually conceives man to be the inventor of one of his own
_faculties_. Nay, docs he not make man the contriver of that "natural
language" which he possesses "in common with the brutes?" a language "_The
meaning of which_," he says, "_all the different animals perfectly
understand_?"--See his _Gram._, p. 16. And if this notion again be true,
does it not follow, that a horse knows perfectly well what horned cattle
mean by their bellowing, or a flock of geese by their gabbling? I should
not have noticed these things, had not the book which teaches them, been
made popular by _a thousand_ imposing attestations to its excellence and
accuracy. For grammar has nothing at all to do with inarticulate voices, or
the imaginary languages of _brutes_. It is scope enough for one science to
explain all the languages, dialects, and speeches, that lay claim to
_reason_. We need not enlarge the field, by descending

"To beasts, whom[84] God on their creation-day
Created mute to all articulate sound."--_Milton_.[85]

PART I.

ORTHOGRAPHY.

ORTHOGRAPHY treats of letters, syllables, separate words, and spelling.

CHAPTER I.--OF LETTERS.

A _Letter_ is an alphabetic character, which commonly represents some
elementary sound of the human voice, some element of speech.

An elementary sound of the human voice, or an element of speech, is one of
the simple sounds which compose a spoken language. The sound of a letter is
commonly called its _power_: when any letter of a word is not sounded, it
is said to be _silent_ or _mute._ The letters in the English alphabet, are
twenty-six; the simple or primary sounds which they represent, are about
thirty-six or thirty-seven.

A knowledge of the letters consists in an acquaintance with these _four
sorts of things_; their _names_, their _classes_, their _powers_, and their
_forms_.

The letters are written, or printed, or painted, or engraved, or embossed,
in an infinite variety of shapes and