er is ever given, cannot be a
letter; though it may, like the marks used for punctuation, deserve a name
and a place in grammar. Commas, semicolons, and the like, represent
_silence_, rather than sounds, and are therefore not letters. Nor are the
Arabic figures, which represent entire _words_, nor again any symbols
standing for _things_, (as the astronomic marks for the sun, the moon, the
planets,) to be confounded with letters; because the representative of any
word or number, of any name or thing, differs widely in its power, from the
sign of a simple elementary sound: i. e., from any constituent _part_ of a
written word. The first letter of a word or name does indeed sometimes
stand for the whole, and is still a letter; but it is so, as being the
first element of the word, and not as being the representative of the
whole.

OBS. 3.--In their definitions of vowels and consonants, many grammarians
have resolved letters into _sounds only_; as, "A Vowel is an articulate
_sound_," &c.--"A Consonant is an articulate _sound_," &c.--_L. Murray's
Gram._, p. 7. But this confounding of the visible signs with the things
which they signify, is very far from being a true account of either.
Besides, letters combined are capable of a certain mysterious power which
is independent of all sound, though speech, doubtless, is what they
properly represent. In practice, almost all the letters may occasionally
happen to be _silent_; yet are they not, in these cases, necessarily
useless. The deaf and dumb also, to whom none of the letters express or
represent sounds, may be taught to read and write understandingly. They
even learn in some way to distinguish the accented from the unaccented
syllables, and to have some notion of _quantity_, or of something else
equivalent to it; for some of them, it is said, can compose verses
according to the rules of prosody. Hence it would appear, that the powers
of the letters are not, of necessity, identified with their sounds; the
things being in some respect distinguishable, though the terms are commonly
taken as synonymous. The fact is, that a word, whether spoken or written,
is of itself _significant_, whether its corresponding form be known or not.
Hence, in the one form, it may be perfectly intelligible to the illiterate,
and in the other, to the educated deaf and dumb; while, to the learned who
hear and speak, either form immediately suggests the other, with the
meaning common to both.

OBS. 4.--Ou