Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

A

COURSE OF READING

FOR

COMMON SCHOOLS

AND THE

LOWER CLASSES OF ACADEMIES,

ON THE PLAN

OF

THE AUTHOR'S "ELEMENTS OF READING AND
ORATORY."

BY

HENRY MANDEVILLE, D.D.,

FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF MORAL SCIENCE AND BELLES-LETTRES IN
HAMILTON COLLEGE, NEW YORK.

NEW EDITION, REVISED AND CORRECTED.

NEW YORK:

D. APPLETON & CO., 200 BROADWAY.

PHILADELPHIA:

G. S. APPLETON, 164 CHESNUT STREET.

M DCCC LI.

[ocr errors][merged small]

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850,

BY D. APPLETON & COMPANY,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

PREFACE.

THE following work is divided into three parts.

The first relates to grammar: it contains a description of the different letters of the alphabet and their various sounds, of syllables, and also of words as parts of speech; using that phrase in its technical sense. A knowledge of several of these (the relative pronoun, the adverb, the conjunction, and the participle) being necessary to render subsequent portions of the work intelligible, it struck me while drawing up a description of them, and explaining their functions, that the pupil might be advantageously made acquainted with them all. Accordingly I have made this part of the work more comprehensive and systematic than I originally intended. It should be borne in mind, however, that this portion of the work is written, not for the purpose of making grammarians, but readers. Consequently no more is introduced than may subserve that end; and in a manner such as I thought best fitted to subserve it.

The second part contains a classification and description of all the sentences or formulas of thought, in every degree of expansion, to be found in the English language. Each of these I have successively named and defined: then subjoined a long train of examples to be read, so arranged that in reading them the pupil begins with the shortest specimen, and, passing through longer and longer, concludes with the longest and most complicated of the species. At proper intervals I have inserted a series of miscellaneous examples of the several species, previously described and read, as a severer exercise of his ingenuity and capacity in distinguishing them from one another by their characteristic properties.

The design of this part is mainly to make the pupil thoroughly acquainted with sentential structure. The delivery, however, should not be neglected, nor indeed can it be; for it flows so naturally and obviously from the structure, and is so uniform, apart from the modifications of emphasis, that, I flatter myself, in view of much experience and observation, and more reflection, the mere knowledge of structure will contribute more to form a correct reader than all the instruction usually given in connection with the singularly unphilosophical and inefficient method in use. The student is not left, however, to infer the delivery wholly from the structure; I have introduced a train of signs, explained at the beginning of this part of the

« ПредишнаНапред »