by dwelling upon the semi-vowel”?  This is an apparent truism, and yet not true.  For a semivowel in the middle or at the beginning of a syllable, may lengthen it as much as if it stood at the end. “Cur” and “can,” here given as protracted syllables, are certainly no longer by usage, and no more susceptible of protraction, than “mat” and “not,” “art” and “ant,” which are among the author’s examples of short quantity.  And if a semivowel accented will make the syllable long, was it not both an error and a self-contradiction, to give “b~onnet” and “h~unger” as examples of quantity shortened by the accent?  The syllable man has two semivowels; and the letter l, as in “ful fil,” is the most sonorous of consonants; yet, as we see above, among their false examples of short syllables accented, different authors have given the words “man” and “manner,” “dismantle” and “com pel,” “master” and “letter,” with sundry other sounds which may easily be lengthened.  Sanborn says, “The breve distinguishes a short syllable; as, m~anner.”—­Analytical Gram., p. 273.  Parker and Fox say, “The Breve (thus ~) is placed over a vowel to indicate its short sound; as, St. H~elena.”—­English Gram., Part iii, p. 31.  Both explanations of this sign are defective; and neither has a suitable example.  The name “St. H~l=en~a,” as pronounced by Worcester, and as commonly heard, is two trochees; but “Helena,” for Helen, having the penult short, takes the accent on the first syllable, which is thereby made long, though the vowel sound is called short.  Even Dr. Webster, who expressly notes the difference between “long and short vowels” and “long and short syllables,” allows himself, on the very same page, to confound them:  so that, of his three examples of a short syllable,—­“th~at, not, m~elon,"—­all are erroneous; two being monosyllables, which any emphasis must lengthen; and the third,—­the word “m~elon,”—­with the first syllable marked short, and not the last!  See Webster’s Improved Gram., p. 157.

OBS. 20.—­Among the latest of our English Grammars, is Chandler’s new one of 1847.  The Prosody of this work is fresh from the mint; the author’s old grammar of 1821, which is the nucleus of this, being “confined to Etymology and Syantax.” [sic—­KTH] If from anybody the public have a right to expect correctness in the details of grammar, it is from one who has had the subject so long and so habitually before him. “Accent” says this author, “is the stress on a syllable, or letter.”—­Chandler’s Common School Gram., p. 188.  Now, if our less prominent words and syllables require any force at all, a definition so loose as this, may give accent to some words, or to all; to some syllables, or to all; to some letters, or to all—­except