ON LATIN PRONUNCIATION. 465 



student as dependent, the one upon tlie other. It will be found, I 

 think, upon careful examination that the methods employed in England 

 and America to express quantity necessarily fail to eflect that object, 

 because they are the fruit of incorrect generalisation from a few of the 

 rules laid down by the Grammarians to govern a totally diflferent ele- 

 ment — that of accent. 



■So far as regards the representation of the first element in the same 

 country, it is immaterial for all practical purposes whether it be 

 attempted to reproduce the ancient Latin sounds or not. In fact each 

 country now reads Latin according to the analogy of its own language 

 and the fruitless attempt to discover the original sounds is wisely 

 abandoned. There is, however, no reason why natives speaking the 

 same language should not have one uniform system, each word being 

 pronounced in a fixed way, just as educated men pronounce their native 

 tongue. As it is, the number of systems in vogue in America and 

 England is a source of great perplexity, which is not by any means 

 relieved when we consider that there are many who employ no system 

 at all. To secure uniformity it would be necessary to frame laws for 

 the sounds of vowels and dipthongs — a matter of considerable difficulty 

 in consequence of the variety in the pronunciation of the same vowels 

 and dipthongs in different words. Take for instance the sounds posses- 

 sed by o as exemplified in note, rod, how, move, dove, or by the 

 diphthong ei in height, freight, receipt, their. Similar variations in 

 the case of other vowels and vowel combinations will readily occur to 

 the mind ; it is unnecessary therefore to adduce them. Of the entire 

 number of these variations in English vowel sounds, it will be found 

 that there are two sounds of each vowel occurring more frequently than 

 the rest. These may be denominated the prevailing sounds of the 

 vowel, and are usually known to us as the open and close vowel sounds. 

 In attempting to arrange a complete set of vowel sounds for the Latin, 

 several courses are open to us. In the first place, we may adopt for 

 the purpose the prevailing vowel sounds as they are employed in Eng- 

 lish, selecting, in any particular case, the one we should be most likely 

 to use if the word were English. Or secondly, we may rigidly adhere 

 to one uniform set of sounds in all cases. Finally, we may adopt the 

 system prevailing in some foreign country. Of these three plans I am 

 inclined to prefer the second, provided the sounds chosen were such as 

 to assimilate our pronunciation to the systems in vogue on the continent 

 of Europe, a step which would tend in some degree to the adoption of 



