Such is the subject which invites the attention of the reader of the following work, and were not every field of knowledge wonderful, we might claim for this a surpassing interest. Into the nature of written language the Author has not entered. But the mechanism of speech-the construction of that curious and complicated instrument, which he has expressively and happily termed the 'voice-machine'-the dif ferent origin and nature of the vocal elements, he has exhibited in a manner most clear and satisfactory. Those to whom this subject is new, will find in it matter of curious inquiry. They will find human speech made up of sound or voice, variously modified, issuing from the throat, (forming the vowels,) and, in its passage through the mouth, wrought upon, and jointed or articulated by the tongue, teeth, lips, &c., so as to produce the various consonant sounds. This power of articulating the voice, is a distinguishing characteristic of human speech, and led the observing ancients to designate man as the 'voice-dividing' animal.

But, commending this whole curious subject to the reader, under the able guidance of the Author, it only remains that I express my earnest desire, that the work may find, especially with the youthful community, a favorable reception. For them it is especially designed, and to all intelligent youth it cannot fail of proving highly instructive. The Author has evidently brought to his work a hearty love for his subject, and a due sense of the richness of the field which he explores. His researches have evidently been patient and thorough, and he has looked on nature with a quick and loving eye, which has enabled him to detect, as it were, her inmost soul. He writes in a free and joyous spirit, gives spontaneous utterance to pure and elevated sentiments, and displays,

every where, a vigorous and fertile mind. Should any of the more grave among his readers deem his spirit too light and frolicksome, they will easily make allowance for the exuberance of youthful imagination, and the warm, unrestrained flow of youthful feeling. To "frolic while 'tis May," may surely be innocently allowed to the fancy, which all too soon will be inevitably sobered by the stern realities of life, seen in the clear, uncolored light of reason and experience.

A. C. KENDRICK.

ATTRACTIONS OF LANGUAGE.

PART FIRST.

CHAPTER I.

What the Critic says to the author-His early difficultiesHis opinion of English Grammar—His “position defined”Remarkable coincidence in views-Author's plan.

"ATTRACTIONS OF LANGUAGE? English Grammar newly vamped, I suppose. A sort of gilded pill as bitter as ever; a liberal spoonful of medicine and sugar; the latter disappearing like an April snow-the former, like Eneas" voice, "faucibus hæsit," sticking to one's jaws for more leisurely rumination.

Now, if this attractive title only betokens a renewal of the dose, I declare to you of the book, that I protest against such cruel empiricism.

As for the "Attractions" that stare at me so saucily from your title page, let me inquire whether those winged moonites, or, as Webster has it, lunarians, which were pleased to render themselves visible to him of the telescope, (happy man !) made any disclosures on the subject, which have been misanthropically suppressed until now?

They must indeed be a late discovery; for my own part, I never spied any worthy of note. Stop; in fact, I have a confused recollection of a sort of capillary attraction, in whose efficacy my teacher manifested great confidence, especially in cases of listlessness and kindred maladies that afflict Murray's young disciples.

I studied English Grammar as other children, and by dins of certain forcible arguments, (striking is a more expressive word,) attained a mastery truly marvellous. I could ring all the changes upon the verb "to love" with astonishing accuracy and velocity; only intimate to me the first person singular of any tense, and I was off to the third person plural, with a speed that all the whips and spurs of New-Market could not have possibly accelerated; and then, simply tarried a moment for the signal, to display equal powers on any other portion of specified time.

I do not recollect that I ever acquired a momentum which carried me into another division without the "starting" word. No, like a well-bred racer, the height of my ambition was to reach the goal, and it was a tense a heat.

This is not all; I could rattle off the rules, numbers, notes, exceptions and all, with a velocity which would bid defiance to a very professor of stenography, and put a yankee pedlar or city auctioneer to the blush; and which not unfrequently fairly distanced my own thoughts.

So skilled was I, that my tongue would perform the various evolutions in the production of the verb "to be," without any volition on my part; and then what wondrous feats of legerdemain, we performed on the writings of Pope and Milton; now substituting a word here—now expunging one there, till our mystified intellects could compare a sentence in blank verse, (appropriate adjective!) to nothing less than Pandora's veritable box, containing

"All the ills that flesh is heir to,"

but which our instructor, (may he rest in peace!) facetiously termed "beauties."

I have sometimes laughed outright, when thinking with what a comico-serio visage, the blind bard or the prince of English rhyme would view a band of little urchins industriously employed in distorting, mutilating, murdering, any thing but eating his immortal lines, if like Samuel of old, he could revisit earth.

For example, in parsing (mysterious process,) that couplet of Pope's,

"In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear; whatever is, is right."

Only supply the single word "right" after the second verb,
and "such a change!" What a flood of light bursts at once
upon
the passage, irradiating the countenance of the operator
with a glory second only to its own.

How profound, how sublime the thought; how comprehensive the expression. What a system of ethics is contained in that little line. Shade of Seneca! It was not for thee. Just think of it; whatever is right, is right! I know not to whom belongs the honor of this and numberless discoveries of a similar character, but how easily could we pardon him, if with all the enthusiasm of the old philosopher, forgetting the fashionable habiliments of these degenerate days, he had rushed from his couch into the street, with the extatic exclamation bursting from his lips, "eureka! eureka!" "I have found it out! I have found it out!"

All this I accomplished, with an interest as deep and abiding, as if it had been in the unknown tongue, and when I think of the practical advantage, I am reminded of the remark of a shrewd playmate, when taken to task for a gross trans