904 COPYRIGHT, 1891, C. J. PETERS & SON, PRESS OF BERWICK & SMITH. PREFACE. THIS little book is intended to take its place as one of a series for the study of the English Language, for pupils in our higher institutions of learning. There seems no good reason why the young men and women in our schools should be more thoroughly and intimately acquainted with the phonetics, the grammar, the rhetoric, and the prosody of the classical languages, than with those of their vernacular. But, unfortunately, this is too often the case, notwithstanding the constant multiplication of text-books upon the English language. These text-books, for the most part, lack perspective, and grasp of the natural method. We need, first, a book which shall treat thoroughly, but simply, of the phonetic elements of English, with the laws of euphony, of roots and derivation, of grammatical forms, and of the syntactical and idiomatic structure of sentences. The next book in the series should be an English Prose Composition, — not dignified by the name of Rhetoric, but devoted wholly to mastering the various transformations of which sentences are capable, to produce variety of expression. The third book might be English Versification, for which the present manual is offered iii |