ee-oo_; 3. _OU_--as
_au-oo_. CONSONANTS: 1. Mutes,--_c_ or _s, f, h, k_ or _q, p, t, th sharp,
sh_; 2. Liquids,--_l_, which has no corresponding mute, and _z, v, r, ng,
m, n, th flat_ and _j_, which severally correspond to the eight mutes in
their order; 3. Subliquids,--_g hard, b_, and _d_. See "Music of Nature,"
by _William Gardiner_, p. 480, and after.

OBS. 13.--Dr. Rush comes to the explanation of the powers of the letters as
the confident first revealer of nature's management and wisdom; and hopes
to have laid the foundation of a system of instruction in reading and
oratory, which, if adopted and perfected, "will beget a similarity of
opinion and practice," and "be found to possess an excellence which must
grow into sure and irreversible favour."--_Phil. of the Voice_, p. 404. "We
have been willing," he says, "_to believe, on faith alone_, that nature is
wise in the contrivance of speech. Let us now show, by our works of
analysis, how she manages the _simple elements_ of the voice, in the
production of their unbounded combinations."--_Ibid._, p. 44. Again: "Every
one, with peculiar self-satisfaction, thinks he reads well, and yet all
read differently: there is, however, _but one mode_ of reading
well."--_Ib._, p. 403. That one mode, some say, his philosophy alone
teaches. Of that, others may judge. I shall only notice here what seems to
be his fundamental position, that, on all the vocal elements of language,
nature has stamped duplicity. To establish this extraordinary doctrine, he
first attempts to prove, that "the letter _a_, as heard in the word _day_,"
combines two distinguishable yet inseparable sounds; that it is a compound
of what he calls, with reference to vowels and syllables in general, "the
radical and the vanishing movement of the voice,"--a single and indivisible
element in which "two sounds are heard continuously successive," the sounds
of _a_ and _e_ as in _ale_ and _eve_. He does not know that some
grammarians have contended that _ay_ in _day_ is a proper diphthong, in
which both the vowels are heard; but, so pronouncing it himself, infers
from the experiment, that there is no simpler sound of the vowel a. If this
inference is not wrong, the word _shape_ is to be pronounced _sha-epe_;
and, in like manner, a multitude of other words will acquire a new element
not commonly heard in them.

OBS. 14.--But the doctrine stops not here. The philosopher examines, in
some similar way, the other simple vowe