OBS. 1.—­A knowledge of sounds can be acquired, in the first instance, only by the ear.  No description of the manner of their production, or of the differences which distinguish them, can be at all intelligible to him who has not already, by the sense of hearing, acquired a knowledge of both.  What I here say of the sounds of the letters, must of course be addressed to those persons only who are able both to speak and to read English.  Why then attempt instruction by a method which both ignorance and knowledge on the part of the pupil, must alike render useless?  I have supposed some readers to have such an acquaintance with the powers of the letters, as is but loose and imperfect; sufficient for the accurate pronunciation of some words or syllables, but leaving them liable to mistakes in others; extending perhaps to all the sounds of the language, but not to a ready analysis or enumeration of them.  Such persons may profit by a written description of the powers of the letters, though no such description can equal the clear impression of the living voice.  Teachers, too, whose business it is to aid the articulation of the young, and, by a patient inculcation of elementary principles, to lay the foundation of an accurate pronunciation, may derive some assistance from any notation of these principles, which will help their memory, or that of the learner.  The connexion between letters and sounds is altogether arbitrary; but a few positions, being assumed and made known, in respect to some characters, become easy standards for further instruction in respect to others of similar sound.

OBS. 2.—­The importance of being instructed at an early age, to pronounce with distinctness and facility all the elementary sounds of one’s native language, has been so frequently urged, and is so obvious in itself, that none but those who have been themselves neglected, will be likely to disregard the claims of their children in this respect.[98] But surely an accurate knowledge of the ordinary powers of the letters would be vastly more common, were there not much hereditary negligence respecting the manner in which these important rudiments are learned.  The utterance of the illiterate may exhibit wit and native talent, but it is always more or less barbarous, because it is not aided by a knowledge of orthography.  For pronunciation and orthography, however they may seem, in our language especially, to be often at variance, are certainly correlative:  a true knowledge of either tends to the preservation of both.  Each of the letters represents some one or more of the elementary sounds, exclusive of the rest; and each of the elementary sounds, though several of them are occasionally transferred, has some one or two letters to which it most properly or most frequently belongs.  But borrowed, as our language has been, from a great variety of sources, to which it is desirable ever to retain the means of tracing it, there is certainly much apparent lack