ivowels, and mutes, are better
adapted to their new and peculiar division of these elements. Thus, by
reforming both language and philosophy at once, they may make what they
will of either!

OBS. 4.--Some teach that _w_ and _y_ are always vowels: conceiving the
former to be equivalent to _oo_, and the latter to _i_ or _e_. Dr. Lowth
says, "_Y_ is always a vowel," and "_W_ is either a vowel or a diphthong."
Dr. Webster supposes _w_ to be always "a vowel, a simple sound;" but admits
that, "At the beginning of words, _y_ is called an _articulation_ or
_consonant_, and _with some propriety perhaps_, as it brings the root of
the tongue in close contact with the lower part of the palate, and nearly
in the position to which the close _g_ brings it."--_American Dict.,
Octavo_. But I follow Wallis, Brightland, Johnson, Walker, Murray,
Worcester, and others, in considering both of them sometimes vowels and
sometimes consonants. They are consonants at the beginning of words in
English, because their sounds take the article _a_, and not _an_, before
them; as, _a wall, a yard_, and not, _an wall, an yard_. But _oo_ or the
sound of _e_, requires _an_, and not _a_; as, _an eel, an oozy bog_.[94] At
the end of a syllable we know they are vowels; but at the beginning, they
are so squeezed in their pronunciation, as to follow a vowel without any
hiatus, or difficulty of utterance; as, "_O worthy youth! so young, so
wise!_"

OBS. 5.--Murray's rule, "_W_ and _y_ are consonants when they begin a word
or syllable, but in every other situation they are vowels," which is found
in Comly's book, _Kirkham's_, Merchant's, Ingersoll's, Fisk's. Hart's,
Hiley's, Alger's, Bullions's, Pond's, S. Putnam's, Weld's, and in sundry
other grammars, is favourable to my doctrine, but too badly conceived to be
quoted here as authority. It _undesignedly_ makes _w_ a consonant in
_wine_, and a vowel in _twine_; and _y_ a consonant when it _forms_ a
syllable, as in _dewy_: for a letter that _forms_ a syllable, "begins" it.
But _Kirkham_ has lately learned his letters anew; and, supposing he had
Dr. Rush on his side, has philosophically taken their names for their
sounds. He now calls _y_ a "_diphthong_." But he is wrong here by his own
showing: he should rather have called it a _triphthong_. He says, "By
pronouncing in a very deliberate and perfectly natural manner, the letter
_y_, (which is a _diphthong_,) the _unpractised_ student will perceive,
that the sound