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PRONUNCIATION OK TIIE LATIN LANGUAGE. ( Continued .J Our method of pronunciation very seldom allows us to give the iust quantity to final syllables and monosyllables.” These last are commonly pro nounced short. Os, the mouth, and os, a hone, are not distinguished from each other in the nomina tive; nihil becomes nil, wife never, the sign of the aspirate being omitted, it is written nil (niil) : al though we pronounce the uncontracted form, not only distinctly as two syllables, but change the short vowel of the first syllable to a diphthong (:naihil ) ; thus depriving this word, at one time, ot one half its just measure of vowel sound, and giving it one halt more than its due at another, i The termination es, however, whether as a mono- 1 syllable or a final syllable, enjoys the privilege of] being always long ; ihus es from esse, has the same I quantity with cs from edcre; the last sj T liable of miles is as long as that ot quits. ! The capricious manner in which the sounds of the vowels are varied in our pronunciation ot Latin leads to countless irregularities that have no real existence. The vowel ot the nominative case j of the noun is sometimes shortened, sometimes lengthened, and not untrequently changed for a wholly different sound in the other cases. Ihus the o which we shorten in the nominative ot os, j becomes long in oris; the i ot miles, which is ex-; panded into the sound ot the diphthong ai, in the nominative, is forced to contract itselt to that ot short i in the genitive militis. The verbs also have frequently one vowel sound in the present, and quite another in the imperfect; and, again, recover the first in the perfect; the sound contin ually shifting, and the quantity expanding or contracting, as the number of syllables is increased or diminished. But, though we thus vary the sounds of the vowels without scruple, where there is no authority tor it, yet when these changes ac tually take place, distinguishing contracted from uncontracted forms, or denoting difference ot tense, we either neglect them altogether, or ap ply them according to the rule ot contraries. 1 bus we in ike no distinction between the e ot pcs and tint of pedis, but pronounce both long alike ;we shorten the o ot bos. which, as the vowel ot a word originally a dissyllable, is long, and yet lengthen the short oof the genitive bovis. We do not ob serve the distinction between the short e of the present and the long e of the perfect of venire; vet, in the tenses formed trom the perfect, we indeed change the quantity, and, as we have m ide the short first syllable ot the present long, so we make the long first syllable ot the pluperfect short. If there yet remain any doubt in the mind of the reader, as to the incompatibility ot the Eng lish mode of pronouncing the vowels with the just quantity of Latin words, let him compare the rules laid down for the sounds ot the letters, in the grammar of Andrews and Stoddard, now used in the principal schools in New England, with those given in the same volume tor the quan tity of syllables. The first direction which is given for the sounds ot the vowels is the follow ing : ■ An accented vowel, at the end of a syllable, has always its long English sound.” The italics are not ours. It was probably deemed the more essential to impress this lule on the mind of the youthful aspirant for knowl edge, inasmuch as, ot the six examples given un der this rule, of words in which the vowel of the accented syllable is to be pronounced long, four, namely, pater , dcdit, tuba, Tyrus , have the accented vowel short; and the bewildered pupil will heic after find, under the rules tor the quantity ot first and middle syllables, dedi specified as one of seven perfects that have the first syllable short. Again: “7 is long in the first syllable ol a word the second of which is accented, when it stands alone before a consonant, or ends a syllable oetore a vowel.” The example which illustrates the first part of this rule is idoncus, in which the initial i is short. With the second part — i is long when it ends a syllable before a vowel —let the reader compare the first general rule of quantity, “ A vowel before another vpwel is short.” Again : *• When a syllable ends with a consonant, it has always the short English sound.” Well may the student who, reading this com prehensive rule, has begun to flatter himseit that the difficulties of Latin quantity have been exag gerated, stand confounded, when, turning over bis grammar, he meets with two pages ot rules in large print, and exceptions in fine, all devoted to this very subject ot the quantity ot syllables ending in consonants. Still more will his pei plexity increase, when the fourth general rule of quantity meets his eye. This instructs him, that “a vowel naturally short, before two consonantsis long; but, turning to the examples which illustrate the rule of pronunciation, that “ a syllable ending with a consonant has its vowel short he finds that, in five of these, namely, in regnum, magnus, Jingo, fastis, cy<rnus, the vowel to be pronounced short is pre cisely in the position, which by the rule of proso dy, should entitle it to be long. It is but just to state, however, that this rule of pronunciation allows of some exceptions; and the second and third of these chance to agree with the rule on page 278, that es and os, as final syllables arc long. This; coincidence, indeed, is but partial; for the rule of pronunciation declares os to be long only in plural cases, while the rule of quantity admits, in Latin words, of but three exceptions. On the other hand, the direction to make es final long,.which, when a rule of quantity, has many exceptions, as a rule of pronunciation has none. But let not the j student complain ot this slight discrepancy, nor let him ask why that which is the rule on one page of his grammar is reduced to be an excep tion to an opposite rule on another ; let him lather be grateful, “that he is allowed to find even this perverse and imperfect conformity between the pronunciation of Latin words and their quantity. A single word enjoys, under the rules for pro nunciation, the dignity of an exception to itself. The word post —in virtue of there being in Eng lish a word post, in which the o is pionounced long* —is entitled to have its vowel long. But this privilege is not extended to the words de rived from it; and here the student may again compare what is said of the pronunciation of pos tremus, on p. 4, with the rule of quantity on p. 262, which declares that “derivative words re tain the quantity of their primitives.” The labors of the Latin Grammar at length accomplished, the laws ot quantity known by theory, and those of pronunciation familiarized by use, the student, perhaps, attempts to put in practice these contradictory rules, and, by their aid, to fathom the mysteries of ancient song. Now is it that, with Mr. Melmoth, t he is lost in wonder at the “exquisite sensibility of the ancient ear,” that could find distinctions in the length ot sylla bles in which the duller modern organ can detect no inequality. He has heard, perhaps, that it has been said by someone of elder time, that if, in the first line of Virgil, primus had been prinus, the harmony of the line would be destroyed. $ He may read the line again and again, but rests in the conviction that, to his ear, the harmony is in no way affected by the change. He feels, in deed, a secret misgiving that all the words in the JEneid might be varied indefinitely as to their sound, without its making any particular differ ence to him. If he be an ingenuous youth, he contents himseit with lamenting the obtuseness of his ow-n faculties, and resigns the hope ot ever discovering the charm of Latin verse. It he be a bit of a quack, or if his imagination be capable of uncommon flights, he puts a good face on the mat ter, talks of the melody of Latin poetry, for the benefit of the less imaginative or the more frank, to the end of his Latin reading days, which most commonly, except with men professedly literary, extend no farther than the term of the academic course. Even in the scanning of verses, according to the English and American mode of practising it, the just quantity of the syllables is wholly neg lected. Nothing more is done than to divide the line into the proper number ot feet, and the feet into the due number of syllables, these being arbi trarily called long or short, as the case may re quire ; though the ear can discover no such dis tinction, or, more often, perceives the short to be long, and the long to be short. For an example, we need <*o no further than the two first teet ot the first line of Virgil: Anna vi | rumqiie ca | The last syllable of both these dactyls is, by English and American scholars, pronounced long; in the first, the short i of virum is changed to a diphthong; in the second, the short a of cano re ceives the long sound ot c. But to understand fully what fate the labored lines of Virgil musi find in an American mouth, we have but to read the concluding observations on the pronunciation of penultimate and final syllables in the received Latin Grammar. “ To pronounce Latin words correctly, it is necessary to ascertain the quantities of their two last syllables only ; and the rules for the quanti ties of final syllables would be unnecessary, but for the occasional addition of enclitics. As these are generally monosyllables, and, for the purpose of accentuation, are considered as parts of the words to which they are annexed, they cause the final syllable of the original word to become the penult of the compound. It is necessary, there fore, to learn the quantities of those final syllables only which end in a vowel.” Nothing more is necessary, then, in order to pronounce Latin, than to know the quantity of ihe penultimate syllable. Nothing more is neces sary in order to read correctly the elaborated works of those poets whom,|j as Cicero tells us, the laws of measure so strictly bound, that no syl lable in their verse might be, even by a breath, longer or shorter than was fitting. Well might Milford assert, that English scholars “ seem re solved to confine the doctrine ot quantity as some thing mysterious or cabalistical, to be locked up in the mind, and forbidden in practice.” Yet the whole subject of quantity is extremely simple, and may be easily comprehended by any boy often years old. The truth is, all these rules upon rules, and exceptions upon exceptions,(would be superfluous, if children were taught from the beginning to pronounce Latin properly; they would, in that case, never err in the quantity or * Yet the pronuncifition of the word post is in English rather the exception than the ruL ; most words spelt in this way change the sound of o to a sound lying between a and o, but nearer to the first; as, lost, frost , &c. f Author of Fitzosborne's Letters. f The last syllable of primus being short, and that of prirnis long, in Roman mouths : in the English pronunciation of Latin, both are short alike. |1 Quos necessitas cogit, et ipsi numeri et modi, sic verba versu includere, ut nihil sit, ne spiritu quidem minimo, bre vius aut longius quam uccesse ost. De Orat. L. 111. c. xlviii. i accent of a word, any more than the Romans I themselves did. Most of the general rules of quantity would, if the language were correctly | pronounced, be deduced from it by the pupil him self. For example, the rule which declares a diphthong to be long. If the learner had been accustomed to sound t lie two vowels of the diph | thong, he would no more need to be told that a j I diphthong is longer than a simple vowel, than that two svllables are longer than one. But if, instead of pronouncing the diphthong as a double sound, be has been used to give to the broad, full sounds ac and oc. the sound oft, the slenderest of la l l the vowels, there is no diphthong there, and the rule, which at first seemed superfluous as a truism, now becomes doubly superfluous from the want of any thing to which to apply it. But j in truth, we understand by a diphthong not twoj vowel sounds in one syllable, but two vowel characters written one into the other. So abso lutely is this the case, and so coolly taken for granted to be so, that Walker talks, in all se riousness, of “ ocular diphthongs ” and diphthongs ! to the a/e. ]t must have been in prophetic vision j of the fate his c herished language was hereafter j to meet, that Cicero wrote —“Omnium longitu dinutn et brevitatum in sonis, sicut acutarum gra viumque vocutn judicium, natura in auribus nos tris collocavit ; M a truth which otherwise it had j seemed the world hardly needed a Cicero to tell it. Syllables were not arbitrarily called long or short by the ancients. This distinction wasfound ed on fact. Nor was it a nice distinction, per ceptible only by a delicate ear ;* the di Acre nee between a long vowel and a short, one w as as the j difference between two and one. It is wadi known i that the Romans anciently wrote the long vowels with two vowel characters, as amaabaamu*, musaa \ (abl.) The genitive of Fompcius was written Tom pciii. The temporal augments were originally written in full, as call, cemi , &c. This custom continued, according to Quintilian, until the time of Accius, and even somewhat later. Subsequent ly, for greater expedition in writing, one of the vowels was omitted, and the apex was placed over the remaining vowel, to mark the omission.t These contractions were made merely for the convenience of the scribe; the syllable lost nothing of its just quantity of sound in consequence. In order to read Latin, and especially Latin po etrv, with propriety, it is necessary that each syllable of each word should receive its just meas ure of sound. Children should be taught to pro nounce accurately, in this respect, from their lirst entrance into the study of Latin. To facilitate this, it is desirable that, at least in all the books intended for the instruction of youth, every long vowel should he marked as such. All these mi -11 uic rules for finding the quantity of syllables would he extremely useful to an editor in this view, but it is surely superfluous for each indi vidual to learn by rote a set of tedious rules, of which he is never to make any application, when, by a little pains in his early instruction, all that these arc designed to teach might be familiarly known to him by practice. Thus trained, the student would afterwards read Latin poetry, as the Romans themselves read it, without the aid of rules; and, if the composition of verses in a for eign and dead language be deemed a thing desi rable, even for this, he would have a guide within himself more unerring than any written laws. It is to be remembered, that the poets did not com pose their verses by these rules of prosody, bul in conformity with their own poetic sense. —Ante enim carmen ortuni est, quara observatio carmi nis.—The rules were deduced from the writings of Greek and Roman poets; and were thus care fully elaborated at a later time, when the pronun ciation having been corrupted, the ear alone could no longer judge of the harmony of ancient verse. Those, therefore, who were ambitious of writing after classic models, studied exactly the compositions of the ancient masters. The labors of the expositors of ancient prosody are most val uable, since, by their help, the student may read the Greek and Roman poets ; but they are of use only so far as they are put in practice; enclosed within the covers of a book, or stowed away, with other scholastic lumber, in some unfurnished corner of the brain, they are absolutely valueless. To be Continued . * Longam (syllabam) esse duorumtemporuuj, brevemunius, etinin pueri sciunt. Quint. Inst. Oral. L. ix. f In the case of the i this mark of abbreviation was not used ; the long or double i was denoted by a lengthened character; as in this line from an inscription of the time of Tiberius : nIl PROSVNT LACRLUAE NEC POSSVNT FATA MOVErL The omission of a vowel character was also sometimes no ted by a slight space and a mark like that ot the acute accent; as in prosunt in the above line ; but this was not common. Window sashes and blinds.—sooo lights, hby jo Sash; 201)0 do 10 bv 12 do; 1000 do assorted sizes; JOO pair Venetian Blinds, assorted sizes. For sale by Aug 2 J G. FALLIGANT._ W ANTED T 6 HIRE— A Negro Boy, about 14 to 16 yeais old, of good oharactcr, and well acquainted with the city. En quire at this office ts oc^JA__ HITE LEAD—IO,OOO LBS. Atlantic White Lead, war ranted pure ; 4000 English do. do. do. For sale by J. G. FALLIGANT. WOOD, WOOD, WOOD.— The subscribers will keep con stantly on hand a supply of the best Black Jack and Oak Wood for sale in lots to suit purchasers. R. A. ALLEN &, CO. oct 4 3 no Turpentine. “1 BARRELS City Distilled, for sale by XU Aug 2 J 1 G, FALLIGANT. SI rUATiON WAN TED ay a middle aged man, wno has bjen for a number of years engaged in the Waiehouse of the Central Railroad. Satisfactory references will ba given. A moderate compensation is all that is required. oct. 11—ts HOWARD HOUSE MARIETTA, GEORGIA. ’ WE are gratified to inform the public, and especially from the low country, that the Howard R (1 ' u passed into our agency, we are determined to do awa v ‘&, complaints that Marietta does not afiord the requisite con ’ bv which visitors would be induced to sojourn in this cality. ‘Wil* The Howard House is now renovated, and accommodaf’ pared which cannot fail io please. r l he chambers are nj, , ns Px conveniently furnished. The table will be amply sui every luxury the country affords. Attentive seivants af “ ‘ ’ in short, if agreeable quarters, a well spread table, cJeanii’ at.ention, joined with moderate charges, can phase, patrons that they will be found at the Howard House. SSUre Bg P G • ‘ DIX FLETcH r* Swift, Dciislow & Webster. DEALERS in Groceries Provisions, }\w and Domestic Liquors, Oil, Gunpowder, Shot IV land wrapping Paper. Corner of Hay and Whitaker-*,!’ ‘ Savannah, Georgia. “ f * etl EDWARD SWIFT, ALLEN A. DENSLOW, JOSEPH W ! July 25 ‘ STr *’ FALL AND WINTER CLOTHINfU JUST received per brig Clinton, a splendid assortment of q,, Coats, Frocks and Sacks, fancy Cass. Pants, fancy Sih’ Vests, together with a large assoitment of Twilled , ‘ I Pants and Jackets, Satinet Pants and Jackets, Corderoy p, 3 j Beaver Coats, Sacks, Blanket and Flushing Coats and Over S, For sale, very low, wholesale and retail, at No. 10 Whitaker.*!, sp pt 6 PIERSON St HEIDV Dentistry. Dr. I* AXCOST has removed to Bryan street, East sideJtL ument square, near the State bank, where he may he f, a! all hours, niU t or day, fully prepared to wait upon his friends,! the public generally. N. B. Artificial teeth inserted fiom one to a whole set, an; , sored to give satisfaction to the wearer. N. B. Chaiges greatly reduced. Gmo ai)j ,, 7 A CARD. TFIR undersigned hnving re-opened, with , entire New Stock of DRUGS. CHEMICALS nm I FANCY ARTICLES, nt No. 139 (South side) Broughton, street, (formerly Walker’s Marble Ynrd,) is now rendv f f) j furnish any thing in his line, at the shortest notice. So])\ ; WATER, made in his own peculiar way, sent to any part the city, and always to be lmd at the store, in the highest state of perfection. Prescriptions put up with care and despatch. The subscriber hnving served the public long and faithfully respectfully solicits a share of tlicir patronage, apr 26 * THOS. RYERBON. To tho Planters and rsrmcrs of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Tcnn. essee and Florida. T AM THE AUTHORIZED AGENT for the 1 sale and purchase of the CAMELTNA SATIVA oi GOLD OF PLEASURE SEED, a native of Siberia. I am now rendv to fill all orders for the seed, and being mi thorized by the Company to purchase the same, I will pnytli highest market price for all that may he shipped to me i 1 Savannah. WM. HUMPHREYS, Jr., may 31 Agent for the Company of New York. Silunliots Wanted. BY A YOUNG MAN, as Clerk or Book keeper good references can he given to any person needingV> services. Apply at this office. may .31 rLOSIH\G. piF.RSON & HE IDT offer for sale Clotliinr L Wholesale and Retail, at New York prices. No. 1 Whitaker-street. apr 26 To Ihc Public. THE Subscriber, hnving entered extensive into the making of BRICK of a superior quality tor manufactured in this city, is prepared to fill orders at theshor est notice, and as low as any establishment, of the kind in near Savannah. WM. 11. LLOYD. .Tune 21 ROBERT N. ADAMS, CABINET-MAKER AND UNDERTAKES, No. 93 Broughton St., Savannah, Ga., IS prepared to execute all orders in his line at the lowest prices, Avith dispatch. Orders from the counfiv promptly attended to. Ready-made coffins always on hand, and made to order at short notice, june 28 3iw isl. A. Cohen. (Late of the firm of S. Solomons Sf Cos.) COMMISSION AND FORWARDING HEilfll.W SAVANNAH, GA. Agent for steam packets H. L. Cook and Ivanhoc. may 10 marsh & Webster, ATTORNEYS AT L.A W, 17 5 Bay-Street—Up-Stairs. SAVANNAH, GEORGIA. Mulford Marsh. Andrew M. Wkbsth BOOK AND JOB PRINTING, Os all kinds, executed nt lli* Office, with ucalncM *■’ despatch* Having lately put our O/fice in copiplete orde and made large additions to it, we have now the most?’ tensive Job Printing Office in the City and are prepared 1 execute all kinds of PLAIN AND FANCY PRINTIN’ with neatness and despatch, and on the most accomodatii terms. Office 102 Bryan-street, entrance on Bay Lane. Savannah, March 22d, 1849. EDWARD J. PURSE- A FRIEND OF THE FAMILY. A WEEKLY SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER, PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY. BY EDWARD J. PURSE. TER M S:—T WO DOLLARS A YE AR • * flfl Three Copies for one year, or one copy three years, ■ ’ Seven Copies, - - - - - - Twelve Copies, ------ *.* Advertisements to a limited extent, will be iasU 1 i s for at the rate of 50 cents for a square of nine lines or the first insertion, and 30 cents for each subsequent in^ ! 8 Business cards inserted for a year at Five Dollars. julF* A liberal discount will be made to Post Masters “ will do us the favor to act as Agents. Postmasters are authorized to remit money to P u^lS and all money mailed in presence of the Postman ! - duly forwarded by him, is at our risk. All communications to be addressed (post-paid) ,( E. J. PURSE, Savannah,