adopted what I conceive to be the best authorized, and at the same time the most intelligible.  He that dislikes the scheme, may do better, if he can.  But let him with modesty determine what sort of discoveries may render our ancient authorities questionable.  Aristotle, three hundred and thirty years before Christ, divided the Greek letters into vowels, semivowels, and mutes, and declared that no syllable could be formed without a vowel.  In the opinion of some neoterics, it has been reserved to our age, to detect the fallacy of this.  But I would fain believe that the Stagirite knew as well what he was saying, as did Dr. James Rush, when, in 1827, he declared the doctrine of vowels and consonants to be “a misrepresentation.”  The latter philosopher resolves the letters into “tonics, subtonics, and atonics;” and avers that “consonants alone may form syllables.”  Indeed, I cannot but think the ancient doctrine better.  For, to say that “consonants alone may form syllables,” is as much as to say that consonants are not consonants, but vowels!  To be consistent, the attempters of this reformation should never speak of vowels or consonants, semivowels or mutes; because they judge the terms inappropriate, and the classification absurd.  They should therefore adhere strictly to their “tonics, subtonics, and atonics;” which classes, though apparently the same as vowels, semivowels, and mutes, are better adapted to their new and peculiar division of these elements.  Thus, by reforming both language and philosophy at once, they may make what they will of either!

OBS. 4.—­Some teach that w and y are always vowels:  conceiving the former to be equivalent to oo, and the latter to i or e.  Dr. Lowth says, “Y is always a vowel,” and “W is either a vowel or a diphthong.”  Dr. Webster supposes w to be always “a vowel, a simple sound;” but admits that, “At the beginning of words, y is called an articulation or consonant, and with some propriety perhaps, as it brings the root of the tongue in close contact with the lower part of the palate, and nearly in the position to which the close g brings it.”—­American Dict., Octavo.  But I follow Wallis, Brightland, Johnson, Walker, Murray, Worcester, and others, in considering both of them sometimes vowels and sometimes consonants.  They are consonants at the beginning of words in English, because their sounds take the article a, and not an, before them; as, a wall, a yard, and not, an wall, an yard.  But oo or the sound of e, requires an, and not a; as, an eel, an oozy bog.[94] At the end of a syllable we know they are vowels; but at the beginning, they are so squeezed in their pronunciation, as to follow a vowel without any hiatus, or difficulty of utterance; as, “O worthy youth! so young, so wise!”