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EXPLANATIONS OF THE CORRECTIONS.

Note.-The numbers refer to the figures in the margin.

1. Wrong Letters or Words. A wrong letter in a word is noted by drawing a short slant line through it, as here through the e in severel, making a similar slant line in the margin, and writing to the left of it the correct letter. A whole word, if wrong, is corrected by drawing a line across it, and writing the correct word in the margin opposite.

2. Letters Upside-down.-A letter that is upside-down is noted by drawing a slant line through it, and making in the margin the mark here given.

3. Caps, Small Caps, and Italics.— If letters or words are to be altered from one character to another, it is noted by drawing parallel lines below the letters or words so to be altered; namely, three lines for Capitals, two lines for Small Capitals, and one line for Italics; and by writing in the margin the word Caps, Sm. Caps, or Italics.

4. Dele-ing. When a word or a letter is to be taken out, make a slant line through it, and place in the margin the mark here given, which is the old way of writing the letter d, and stands for the Latin dele, destroy.

5. Changing Punctuation.- A point is to be corrected in the same manner as a letter (No. 1). If the point to be inserted is a period, it should be enclosed in a circle. (See example at the bottom of the page.)

6. Space Omitted.—If a space is omitted between two words or letters, put a caret under the place where the space ought to be, and put in the margin the character here given.

7. Hyphen Omitted. If a hyphen has been omitted, put a caret under the place, and write the hyphen in the margin between two slant lines.

8. Letters Omitted.—If a letter has been omitted, put a caret under the place, and put in the margin a slant line with the letter to the left of it.

9. Closing Up. If a line is too widely spaced, or letters are separated that should be joined, the letters that are to be brought together should be connected by a curved mark, either above or below, or both, and a corresponding mark should be placed in the margin.

10. New Paragraph.— When a new paragraph is required, put a caret at the place where the new paragraph should begin, and a quadrangle in the margin. 11. Apostrophe, etc. When the apostrophe, inverted commas, the star and other references, or letters and figures of any kind that go over the line, have been omitted, put a caret at the place, and write the omitted apostrophe or other character in the margin, in the bosom of an angle made for the purpose, and opening upwards. 12. Transposing.-When a word is to be transposed, draw a line round it and carry the line over to the place where the word is to be put, writing in the margin tr. (transpose). If two or three letters in a word are misplaced, draw a line under them, and write them correctly in the margin. If several words are misplaced, draw a line under them all, write over them the figures 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., to show the order in which they should stand, and put tr. in the margin."

13. Stet.-When by mistake a word has been marked to be struck out, and you wish it to stand, put a row of dots under it, and the word stet (let it stand) in the margin. 14. Space Projecting.- When a space (a thin slip of metal used for spacing) projects, draw a line under it and the corresponding mark in the margin.

15. Words Out. When several words have been left out, write them at the foot of the page, and draw a line from them to the place where they should be inserted. If the matter omitted is too much to be thus written at the foot of the page, write on the margin the words, Out, see copy, and write likewise on the margin of the copy the word Out, and enclose the omitted words in brackets.

16. Letters Standing Crooked. - The marks here given show the mode of noting this defect.

17. Wrong Fount.- When a letter of a different fount has been inserted, mark it with a slant line, and write w. f. (wrong fount) in the margin.

18. No Paragraph.—When a paragraph has been made where none was intended, draw a line from the broken-off matter to the next paragraph, and write in the margin No ¶.

19. Left Out. When a word has been left out, make a caret at the place, and write the word in the margin.

20. Faulty Letter.- When a letter is faulty, draw a cross under it, and make a small cross in the margin.

AN EXAMPLE OF A PROOF-SHEET

CORRECTED.

THOUGH several differing opinions exist as to the individual by whom the art of printing was first discovered; yet all authorities concur in admitting PETER SCHOEFFER to be the person who invented cast metal types, having learned the art of cutting the letters from the Guttenbergs: he is also supposed to have been the first who engraved on copper-plates. The following testimony is preserved in the family, by Jo. Fred. Faustus, of Aschaffenburg:

'PETER SCHOEFFER, of Gernsheim, perceiving his master Faust's design, and being himself ardently desirous to improve the art, found out (by the good providence of God) the method of cutting (incidendi) the characters in a matrix, that the letters might easily be singly cast, instead of being cut. He privately cut matrices for the whole alphabet: and when he showed his master the letters cast from these matrices, Faust was so pleased with the contrivance, that he promised Peter to give him his only daughter Christina in marriage, a promise which he soon after performed. But there were as many difficulties at first with these letters, as there had been before with wooden ones, the metal being too soft to support the force of the impression: but this defect was soon remedied, by mixing the metal with a substance which sufficiently hardened it.'

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THE STUDY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

RHETORIO is, from its very nature, so closely connected with the study of Language, that I shall make no apology for appending to the present treatise some remarks upon the English Language, giving a general outline of its origin, history, affiliations, and character, and some suggestions as to the manner in which its study and culture are to be pursued. These remarks are not intended as a part of the text, to be studied in the ordinary routine of the classroom, but as a matter of information for those students who may not have access to the numerous and extended volumes which are devoted to this particular subject.

LINGUISTICS is gradually acquiring the consistency of a science. If not so definite as mathematics and other pure sciences, it has yet made good its claim to be regarded as a science, both by the character of its methods and the wide generalizations which it has reached. Languages have long, almost always indeed, been a subject of study. But one may be an accomplished linguist, reading and speaking many tongues, without being an adept in the science of language. This science, in its more recent and exact form, differs perceptibly even from philology. The material, or subject-matter of the science, is not one language, or any one class of languages, ancient or modern, living or dead, but language itself, in its entirety. Its methods are to observe, arrange, and classify all the forms of speech that are, or ever have been, in use, and from them to deduce the necessary laws of speech for a race constituted as the human race is. It aims to show how language originated, that is, to show why we speak at all, and why we speak as we do; to show what is the inner life of language, and how its changes are effected; to trace

the relations between language and thought; and, finally, as the geologist is able from existing phenomena to read the history of the globe far back anterior to human records, so from the existing forms of speech to travel back into the prehistoric annals of the race, and to trace the doings and the character of races of whom there is no other record.

The science of language, as thus understood, is the youngest of the sciences, younger even than geology, being yet hardly half a century old. Among its cultivators are two particularly noticeable by those of the English-speaking race, both as being on the foremost wave of the advancing science, and as using our language in their investigations, and being, therefore, the more accessible to English and American students. These are Professor Max Müller, of the University of Oxford, and Professor Whitney, of Yale College. Professor Whitney's book,' although it has been but a short time before the public, has already placed its author in a position of most honorable distinction before the eyes of his countrymen. If not so brilliant and fascinating in style as are the volumes of Max Müller, the work is equally learned, and is decidedly more sober and trustworthy in its conclusions.

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The recent contributions to the study of English by Professor Marsh, Professor Schele de Vere, Richard Grant White, and Edward S. Gould," of this country, and by Latham,' Trench, Alford, and Moon,10 in England, as well as the elaborate reviews which have appeared in nearly all the leading periodicals of both countries, show that the subject has awakened public attention. All the works referred to have been received with marked favor, and they have done much towards making the genius and resources of our language better understood by those who use it. But the works of Professor Müller and Professor Whitney, while necessarily dealing largely with English, and while of great interest and

1. Language and the Study of Language. By William Dwight Whitney, Professor of Sanskrit in Yale College. 8vo.

2. Science of Language, 2 vols.; and Chips from a German Workshop, 2 vols. 3. The Origin and History of the English Language. 1 vol., 8vo. Lectures on the English Language. By George P. Marsh. 1 vol., 8vo.

4. Studies in English. By M. Schele de Vere. 1 vol., 8vo.

5. Words and Their Uses. By Richard Grant White.

6. Good English. By Edward S. Gould. 1 vol., 12mo.

7. The English Language. By R. G. Latham.

8. English, Past and Present. By Richard Chevenix Trench. The Study of Words. By Richard Chevenix Trench.

9. The Queen's English. By Henry Alford, Dean of Canterbury. 10. The Dean's English. By G. Washington Moon.

value to the mere student of English, yet take a much wider range than those of the other writers who have been named. The difference between them is like the difference between a work on general geology and a work on trilobites or on the carboniferous

era.

Having referred thus to the principal sources of information on this subject which are accessible to the English student, I proceed to give a brief outline of the accepted theory in regard to the origin and character of the English language, and of its relation to the other languages of the earth.

In doing this, it will be necessary first to take the reader to regions apparently remote from the topic named. But in many things a comprehensive survey of a whole subject is the shortest way of getting at a precise knowledge of a particular division of it. Some idea of the general grouping of the languages of the earth is necessary to a proper understanding of the place which English holds, both in history and in general philology. This is the more necessary, because the whole science of language has been revolutionized, or rather it has been created, in times within the memory of persons still living. The old theory, which until lately nobody ever questioned, was, that the Hebrew was the original language of the earth, and that all other languages in some way sprung from it. "All antiquity," says Jerome, "affirms that Hebrew, in which the Old Testament is written, was the beginning of all speech." When, therefore, attempts began to be made at a scientific classification of languages, the problem which presented itself to scholars was, Hebrew, being undoubtedly the mother of all languages, how can we explain the process by which it became split into so many dialects, and how can we trace back the words in all the various languages of the world to their original Hebrew roots? The amount of learning and ingenuity bestowed upon the solution of this problem was prodigious, and has well been compared to that bestowed by the earlier astronomers in undertaking to explain the movement of the heavenly bodies on the assumption that the earth was the centre of the universe. The foundations of the old theory of language began to be shaken as far back as the time of Leibnitz, in 1710, and primarily by Leibnitz himself. But no great and certain advance was made in the way of establishing a true theory, until near the close of the last century. The steps which then led to the discovery and the establishment of the science of language,

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