PHONETIC SHORTHAND.

1.

A practical acquaintance with this art is highly favourable to the improvement of the mind, invigorating all its faculties, and drawing forth all its resources. The close attention requisite in following the voice of the speaker induces habits of patience, perseverance, and watchfulness, which will gradually extend themselves to other pursuits and avocations, and at length inure the writer to exercise them on every occasion in life. When writing in public, it will also be absolutely necessary to distinguish and adhere to the train of thought which runs through the discourse, and to observe the modes of its connection. This will naturally have a tendency to endue the mind with quickness of apprehension, and will impart an habitual readiness and distinction of perception, as well as a methodical simplicity of arrangement, which cannot fail to conduce greatly to mental superiority. The judg ment will be strengthened, and the taste refined; and the practitioner will, by degrees, become habituated to seize the original and leading parts of a discourse or harangue, and to reject whatever is common-place, trivial or uninteresting.

The memory is also improved by the practice of stenography. The obligation the writer is under to retain in his mind the last sentence of the speaker, at the same time that he is carefully attending to the following one, must be highly beneficial to that faculty, which, more than any other, owes its improvement to exercise. And so much are the powers of retention strengthened and expanded by this exertion, that a practical stenographer will frequently recollect more without writing, than a person unacquainted with the art could copy in the time by the use of common-hand.

II.

It has been justly observed, "this science draws out all the powers of the mind : it excites invention, improves the ingenuity, matures the judgment, and endows the

retentive faculty with the superior advantages of precision, vigilance, and perseverance."

The facility it affords to the acquisition of learning ought to render it an indispensable branch in the education of youth. To be enabled to treasure up for future study the substance of lectures, sermons, etc., is an accomplishment attended with so many evident advantages that it stands in no need of recommendation. Nor is it a matter of small importance that by this art the youthful student is furnished with an easy means of making a number of valuable extracts in the moments of leisure, and of thus laying up a stock of knowledge for his future occasions. The pursuit of this art materially contributes to improve the student in the principles of grammar and composition. While tracing the various forms of expression by which the same sentiment can be conveyed; and while endeavouring to represent by modes of contraction, the dependence of one word upon another, he is insensibly initiated in the science of universal language, and particularly in the knowledge of his native tongue.

The rapidity with which it enables a person to commit his own thoughts to the safety of manuscript, also renders it an object peculiarly worthy of regard. By this means many ideas which daily strike us, and which are lost before we can record them in the usual way, may be snatched from destruction, and preserved till mature deliberation can ripen and perfect them.

GAWTRESS, Quoted in "Pitman's Phonography."

THE STUDY OF SYNONYMS.

The study of synonyms has always been regarded as one of the most valuable of intellectual disciplines, independently of its great importance as a guide to the right practical use of words. The habit of thorough investigation into the meaning of words, and of exact discrimination in the use of them, is indispensable to precision and accuracy of thought, and it is surprising how soon the process becomes spontaneous and almost mechanical and

unconscious, so that one often finds himself making nice and yet sound distinctions between particular words which he is not aware that he has ever made the subject of critical analysis. The subtle intellect of the Greeks was alive to the importance of this study, and we not only observe just discrimination in the employment of language in their best writers, but we not unfrequently meet with discussions as to the precise signification of words, which show that their exact import had become a subject of thoughtful consideration before much attention had been bestowed upon grammatical forms. Ina tongue in the main homogeneous, and full of compounds and derivatives, the source of the word would naturally be first appealed to as the key to its interpretation. Etymology is still an indispensable auxiliary to the study of synonyms; but in a composite language like English, where the root-forms are inaccessible to the majority of those who use it, the primary signification of the radical does not operate as a conservative influence, as it did in Greece, by continually suggesting the meaning, and thus keeping the derivative or compound true to its first vocation. Words with us incline to diverge from the radical meaning; and therefore etymology, though a very useful clue to the signification, is, at the same time, a very uncertain guide to the actual use of words.

G. P. MARSH,

"

Student's English Language."

THE SCOPE OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY.

Moral philosophy teaches, for the conduct of the understanding a variety of delicate rules which can result only from such sort of meditation; and it gradually subjects the most impetuous feelings to patient examination and wise control; it inures the youthful mind to intellectual difficulty, and to enterprise in thinking; and makes it as keen as an eagle, and as unwearied as the wing of an angel. In looking round the region of spirit, from the mind of the brute and the reptile to the sublimest exertions of the human understanding, this philosophy lays deep the foundations of a fervent and grateful piety, for

those intellectual riches which have been dealt out to us with no scanty measure.

With sensation alone, we might have possessed the earth, as it is possessed by the lowest order of beings : but we have talents which bend all the laws of nature to our service; memory for the past, providence for the future, senses which mingle pleasure with intelligence, the surprise of novelty, the boundless energy of imagination, accuracy in comparing, and severity in judging; an original affection, which binds us together in society; a swiftness to pity; a fear of shame; a love of esteem; a detestation of all that is cruel, mean, and unjust. All these things Moral Philosophy observes, and, observing. adores the Being from whence they proceed.

SYDNEY SMITH, "Lectures on Moral Philosophy." TENDENCY AND EFFECTS OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES.

He who has seen obscurities which appeared impenetrable in physical and mathematical science suddenly dispelled, and the most barren and unpromising fields of inquiry converted, as if by inspiration, into rich and inexhaustible springs of knowledge and power, on a simple change of our point of view, or by merely bringing them to bear on some principle which it never occurred before to try, will surely be the very last to acquiesce in any dispiriting prospects of either the present or the future destinies of mankind; while, on the other hand, the boundless views of intellectual and moral, as well as material relations which open on him on all hands in the course of these pursuits, the knowledge of the trivial place he occupies in the scale of creation, and the sense continually pressed upon him of his own weakness and incapacity to suspend or modify the slightest movement of the vast machinery he sees in action around him, must effectually convince him that humility of pretension, no less than confidence of hope, is what best becomes his character. Sir JOHN HERSCHEL, "Introduction to the Study of Natural

Philosophy."