The Students' Series of English Classics. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner A Ballad Book Edited by KATHARINE LEE BATES, Wellesley College. Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum Webster's First Bunker Hill Oration Milton, Lyrics Edited by Louise Manning HODGKINS. Introduction to the Writings of John Ruskin Macaulay's Essay on Lord Clive Edited by VIDA D. SCUDDER, Wellesley College. George Eliot's Silas Marner Scott's Marmion . Edited by MARY HARRIOTT NORRIS, Instructor, New York. Macaulay's Second Essay on the Earl of Chatham Edited by W. W. CURTIS, High School, Pawtucket, R.I. Johnson's History of Rasselas Edited by FRED N. SCOTT, University of Michigan. Joan of Arc and Other Selections from De Quincey 35. Edited by JAMES CHALMERS, Ohio State University. Edited by HENRY H. BELFIELD, Chicago Manual Training School. Carlyle's The Diamond Necklace Edited by W. F. MOZIER, High School, Ottawa, Ill. Macaulay's Essays on Milton and Addison . Lays of Ancient Rome [Nearly ready] Edited by JAMES ARTHUR TUFTS, Phillips Exeter Academy. Charles Sumner's True Grandeur of Nations. [Nearly ready] Edited by GEO. L. MARIS, Friends' Central School, Philadelphia. Selected Orations and Speeches [Nearly ready] Edited by C. A. WHITING, University of Utah. Several others are in preparation, and all are substantially bound in cloth. LEACH, SHEWELL, & SANBORN, Publishers, FOR THE USE OF STUDENTS. BY REV. JAMES C. PARSONS, PRINCIPAL OF PROSPECT HILL SCHOOL, GREENFIELD, MASS. LEACH, SHEWELL, AND SANBORN. BOSTON. NEW YORK. CHICAGO. 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 |