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O F

LESSONS,

IN

READING AND SPEAKING,

CALCULATED

TO IMPROVE THE MINDS AND REFINE THE
TASTE OF YOUTH :

TO WHICH RE PREFIXED

RULES IN ELOCUTION,

And Directions for Expressing the Principal Passion

of the Mind.

BEING

THE THIRD PART

OF A

GRAMMATICAL INSTITUTE

OF THE

ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

BY NOAH WEBSTER, JUN.
Author of "Differtations on the English Language, Colletion of
Effays and Fugitive Writings," The Prompter, &c.,

ELIZABETH-TOWN:

PRINTED BY JOHN WOODS, FOR EVERT DUY KI

NEW-YORK-1802.

PUBLIC LIBRARY EFACE. 161253

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS.

THE sign of this Third Part of the Grammatical

Institute of the English Language, is to furnish Schools with a variety of exercises for Reading and Speaking. Colleges and Academies are already supplied with many excellent collections for this purpose: among which, the Art of Speaking, Enfield's Speaker, Endfield's Exe ercises, the Preceptor, the Young Gentleman and Ledy's Monitors and Scott's Lessons, are used with great reputa tion. But none of these, however judicious the selections, is calculated particularly for American schools. The essays, respect distant nations or ages; or contain general ideas of morality. In America, it will be useful to furnish schools with additional essays, containing the history, geography, and transactions of the United States. Information on these subjects is necessary for youth, both in forming their habits and improving their minds. A love of our country and an acquaintance with its true state are indispensible--they should be acquired in early life.

In the following work, I have endeavoured to make such a collection of essays as should form the morals as well as improve the knowledge of youth,

In the choice of pieces, I have been attentive to the political interest of America, I consider it as a capital fault in all our schools, that the books generally used con tain subjects wholly uninteresting to our youth; while the writings that marked the revolution, which are not inferior in any respect to the orations of Cicero and Demostkenes, and which are calculated to impress interesting truths upon young minds, lie neglected and forgotten. Several of those masterly addresses of Congress, written at the commencement of the late revolution, contains such noble sentiments of liberty and patriotism, that I cannot help wishing to transfuse them into the breasts of the rising generation.

RULE I.

Let your articulation be clear and diflinā.

A GOOD articulation confifte in giving every letter and fyl.

lable its proper pronunciation of found.

Let each fyllable and the letters which compofe it, be pro nounced, with a clear voice, without whining, drawling, lifp. ing, ftammering, mumbling in the throat, or fpeaking through the nofe. Avoid equally a dull drawling habit, and too much rapidity of pronunciation for each of thefe faults destroys a diftinct articulation.

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RULE II.

Obferve the flops, and mark the proper pauses, but make no pauje where the fenfe requires none.

The characters we ufe as tops are extremely arbitrary and do not always mark a fufpenfion of the voice. On the contrary, they are often employed to separate the several member of a period, and how the grammatical construction. Nor when they are defiged to make pauses, do they always determine the length of those paules; for this depends much on the fenfe and nature of the subject. A femicolon, for example, requires a longer paule in a grave difcoure, than in a lively and fpirited declamation. However as children are incapable of nice dif. tinctions, it may be beft to adoptat first fome general rule with refpect to the panfes, and teach them to pay the fame attention to these characters as they do in the words. They should be cautioned likewise againft pauling in the midst of a member of a fentence, where the fenfe requires the words to be closely connected in pronunciation.

RULE IH.

Pay the frittefl attention to accent, emphasis and cadence. Let the accented fyllables be pronounced with a proper Atrefs of voice, the unaccented with little trefs of voice, but diftinctly. The important words of a a fentence, which I call naturally emphatical, have no claim to a confiderable furce of voice; but

*See the first part of the Inftitute, where the proportion of t comma, femicolon, colon and period, is fixed at one, two, four, iz

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