owly joined in
pronunciation with the _following letters_; as, 'F=all, b=ale, m=o=od,
h=o=use, f=eature.' [2.] A syllable is short, when the vowel is quickly
joined to the succeeding _letter_; as, '~art, b~onn~et, h~ung~er.'"--_Ib._,
p. 166. Besides the absurdity of representing "_a vowel_" as having
"_vowels_ contained in it," these rules are _made up_ of great faults. They
confound syllabic quantities with vowel sounds. They suppose quantity to
be, not the time of a whole syllable, but the quick or slow junction of
_some_ of its parts. They apply to no syllable that ends with a vowel
sound. The former applies to none that ends with one consonant only; as,
"_mood_" or the first of "_feat-ure_." In fact, it does not apply to _any_
of the examples given; the final letter in each of the other words being
_silent_. The latter rule is worse yet: it misrepresents the examples; for
"_bonnet_" and "_hunger_" are trochees, and "_art_," with any stress on it,
is long.

OBS. 15.--In all late editions of L. Murray's Grammar, and many
modifications of it, accent is defined thus: "Accent is _the laying of_ a
peculiar stress of the voice, on a certain _letter_ OR _syllable_ in a
word, that _it_ may be better heard than _the rest_, or distinguished from
_them_; as, in the word _presume_, the stress of the voice must be on the
_letter u_, AND [the] _second syllable, sume_, which takes the
accent."--_Murray's Gram._, 8vo, p. 235; 12mo, 188; 18mo, 57; _Alger's_,
72; _Bacon's_, 52; _Comly's_, 168; _Cooper's_, 176; _Davenport's_, 121;
_Felton's_, 134; _Frost's El._, 50; _Fisk's_, 32; _Merchant's_, 145;
_Parker and Fox's_, iii, 44; _Pond's_, 197; _Putnam's_, 96; _Russell's_,
106; _R. O. Smith's_, 186. Here we see a curious jumble of the common idea
of accent, as "stress laid on some particular _syllable_ of a _word_," with
Sheridan's doctrine of accenting always "a particular _letter_ of a
_syllable_,"--an idle doctrine, contrived solely for the accommodation of
short quantity with long, _under the accent_. When this definition was
adopted, Murray's scheme of quantity was also revised, and materially
altered. The principles of his main text, to which his copiers all confine
themselves, then took the following form:

"The quantity of a syllable, is _that_ time which is occupied in
pronouncing it. It is considered as LONG or SHORT.

"A _vowel or syllable_ is long, when the accent is on the vowel; _which_
occasions it to be slowly joined in