English metropolis. Both the rough and the smooth r are indistinctly sounded by Londoners, but more especially the latter. Instead of garden, York, fork, card, reward, you hear, gaaden, Yauk, fauk, caad, rewaad. The smooth sound of r in these and similar words should be distinctly heard. Some young persons have a difficulty in sounding the rough r at the beginning of words, and after a consonant, and seek to obviate it by improperly substituting the sound of w. Thus instead of saying, "He ran down the terrace," they say, "He wan down the tewwace." If this be not checked early, it is likely to become an incurable habit. The defect may be corrected, if not inveterate, by any teacher who will be at the pains of directing the pupil's attention to the proper position of the organs, sounding each word deliberately himself with a slight pause on the r, and making the learner repeat it after him in the same manner. EXERCISE 6. Still is the toiling hand of care, The panting herds repose; Yet hark! how through the peopled air, The busy murmur glows! The insect youth are on the wing, And float amid the liquid noon; Some lightly o'er the current skim, Quick glancing to the sun. To contemplation's sober eye, Such is the race of man; And they that creep, and they that fly Methinks I hear in accents low, Poor moralist! and what art thou? Thy joys no glittering female meets, No painted plumage to display; Gray. LESSON 7. ON THE SOUND IN THE TERMINATIONS, tion, sion, tious, &c. NOTHING can be more offensive to a correct ear, or tends so much to vitiate the whole pronunciation, as excluding the vowel sounds from words having these endings, and, as it were, crushing the THE TERMINATIONS tion, sion, tious, ETC. 29 consonants together. Such words as relation, station, occasion, should not be sounded as if written relashn, stashn, occazhn, as they too frequently are, but thus: relashun, stashun, occazhun, the vowel sound in the final syllable being that of u. senses. EXERCISE 7. ON VISION. Sight is the most perfect and delightful of all our It fills the mind with the greatest variety of ideas, converses with objects at the greatest distance, and continues the longest in action without being satiated with its proper enjoyments. The sense of feeling can indeed give us a notion of extension, shape, and all other ideas that enter at the eye, except colours: but yet it is much straitened and confined in its operation, to the number, bulk, and distance of its particular objects. Our sight seems designed to supply all these defects, and may be considered as a more delicate and diffusive kind of touch that spreads itself over an infinite multitude of bodies, comprehends the largest figures, and brings into our reach some of the most remote parts of the universe. All modern philosophers agree that vision is performed by rays of light reflected from the several points of objects, received in at the pupil of the eye, refracted and collected in their passage through the coats and humours of the retina; and thus striking or making on so many points of it an impression, which is conveyed to the brain by the correspondent capillaments or fibres of the optic nerve. The cornea or second coat of the eye being of a convex figure, performs the office of a glass lens. To illustrate this by a familiar example, put a glass lens into a hole made in the window shutter of a darkened room, present a pasteboard to this lens, and you will immediately have a picture, in which all the objects without, whether still or in action will be painted with the greatest precision, and according to the rules of the most exact perspective. The humours of the eye act in the same way as the lens in the camera obscura; the retina serves as the pasteboard. The black skin which hangs within the pupil, performs the office of a shutter that excludes the light; it extinguishes the rays whose reflection would render the image less distinct. The pupil, by contracting or dilating itself in proportion to the strength of the light, moderates the action of the rays on the retina, and the nerve placed behind this communicates to the brain, as before observed, the various concussions it receives, and to which various perceptions correspond.—Addison. LESSON 8. ON SOUNDING THE ASPIRATED h. THERE can scarcely be anything more disagreeable to a correct ear, than the vice of sinking the initial letter h, in words where it ought to be heard. The following is an enumeration of the only words in our language in which this initial letter is not sounded:- Heir, heiress, herb, herbage, herbal, herbaceous, honest, honesty, honestly, honour, honourable, honourably, hostler, hour, hourly, humour, humorist, humorous, humorously. It should be observed that the words hospital, humble, and humbly, which formerly belonged to the above class, are now very generally sounded with aspiration by the best public readers and speakers. It should be further noticed that h is not sounded in words beginning with that letter, after the indefinite article, if the accent fall on the second syllable; we say a history, an histórian, a heresy, an herétical doctrine, &c. It is very desirable that the pupil should commit this list of words to memory. EXERCISE 8. Ah! little think the gay licentious proud, Ah! little think they, while they dance along, How many sink in the devouring flood, |