for this purpose, he would conduct the learner through the following particulars, and have him remember them all:  1. Fifteen distinctions respecting the “classification and organic formation of the letters.” 2. Sixty-three rules for “the sounds of the vowels, according to their relative positions.” 3. Sixty-four explanations of “the different sounds of the diphthongs.” 4. Eighty-nine rules for “the sounds of the consonants, according to position.” 5. Twenty-three heads, embracing a hundred and fifty-six principles of accent. 6. Twenty-nine “rules for dividing words into syllables.” 7. Thirty-three “additional principles;" which are thrown together promiscuously, because he could not class them. 8. Fifty-two pages of “irregular Words,” forming particular exceptions to the foregoing rules. 9. Twenty-eight pages of notes extracted from Walker’s Dictionary, and very prettily called “The Beauties of Walker.”  All this is Walker simplified for children!

OBS. 4.—­Such is a brief sketch of Mulkey’s system of orthoepy; a work in which “he claims to have devised what has heretofore been a desideratum—­a mode by which children in our common schools may be taught the rules for the pronunciation of their mother tongue.”—­Preface, p. 4.  The faults of the book are so exceedingly numerous, that to point them out, would be more toil, than to write an accurate volume of twice the size.  And is it possible, that a system like this could find patronage in the metropolis of New England, in that proud centre of arts and sciences, and in the proudest halls of learning and of legislation?  Examine the gentleman’s credentials, and take your choice between the adoption of his plan, as a great improvement in the management of syllables, and the certain conclusion that great men may be greatly duped respecting them.  Unless the public has been imposed upon by a worse fraud than mere literary quackery, the authorities I have mentioned did extensively patronize the scheme; and the Common Council of that learned city did order, November 14th, 1833, “That the School Committee be and they are hereby authorized to employ Mr. William Mulkey to give a course of Lectures on Orthoepy to the several instructors of the public schools, and that the sum of five hundred dollars is hereby appropriated for that purpose, and that the same amount be withdrawn from the reserved fund.”—­See Mulkey’s Circular.

OBS. 5.—­Pronunciation is best taught to children by means of a good spelling-book; a book in which the words are arranged according to their analogies, and divided according to their proper sounds.  Vocabularies, dictionaries, and glossaries, may also be serviceable to those who are sufficiently advanced to learn how to use them.  With regard to the first of the abovenamed purposes of syllabication, I am almost ready to dissent even from the modest opinion of Walker himself; for ignorance can only guess at