"The following short and practical rules will be found, we hope, fully adequate to every purpose for which they were intended, and are far superior in the facility of their application to any which we have seen.

"Rule 1st. The usual abbreviations in long-hand are always to be followed; as Mr. for Master, M. D. for Doctor of Physic, and Abp. for Archbishop, &c.

"Rule 2nd. Substantives, adjectives, verbs and participles, when the sense will direct to the meaning, are to be expressed by their initial consonant with their distinguishing marks; viz. a substantive must have the dot exactly over its initial consonant; an adjective must have a dot under it; a verb is to be expressed by a comma over its initial consonant; and a participle by a comma under. These being the four principal parts of speech, will be sufficient; and an adept will never be at a loss to know when he can with safety apply this rule to them.

"Rule 3d. To render the writing more legible, the last letter of the word may be joined to the first, and the proper mark applied.

"Rule 4th. The constituent or radical part of words, especially if they are long, will often serve for the whole, or sometimes the first syllable; as, we ought to moderate our ex. by our circum.; a man's man. commonly shape his for.

"Rule 5th. All long words, without exception, may. have their prepositions or terminations expressed by the incipient consonant of such preposition or termination.

"Rule 6th. When there is a great dependence be

tween the parts of a sentence, the initial letter will often suffice; as L. is the capital of Great B. The eldest son of the king of Great B. is styled prince of W. Every one, it is presumed, will allow this to be perfectly legible in long-hand, [particularly in England] then why should it not be in stenography?

"Rule 7th. The terminations ness and less, may be omitted; as faithfulness is only to be written faithful; forwardness, forward; heedless, heed; stubbornness, stubborn, &c.

Rule 8th. The second and third persons of verbs ending in eth, and est, may be expressed by s; as he loves, thou teaches: instead of he loveth, thou teacheth; or even without s; as, he love, &c.

"Rule 9th. Words may often be entirely omitted, and yet no ambiguity ensue; as, In beginning God created Heaven and Earth, for, In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth.

"Rule 10th. When there is an immediate repetition of a sentence or word, a line is to be drawn under the sentence or word to be repeated; as, Amen, Amen, is to be written Amen; but if any words intervene, before a word or sentence is to be repeated, the line must be drawn as before, and a caret or mark of omission placed where the repetition should begin; as, Is it just the innocent should be condemned reviled?"

Λ

Most of my readers doubtless recollect that in my introduction I enumerated, according to my own understanding, the merits and demerits of the early systems of short-hand, and showed that, in many instances, the method though originally well conceived, had been

finally rendered objectionable by the introduction of arbitrary marks or other matters, by which the art was made complex and difficult to be acquired, and thus necessarily confined to a few individuals.

I spoke of Byrom's method as standing pre-eminently above all that had preceded it, though I was at the same time constrained to add, from an experimental conviction of the fact, that he, too, had fallen into the common error of doing too much-he had obscured the merits of his original plan, by the introduction of numerous grammar rules, plausible in theory, but useless in practice.

Fully persuaded of the truth of the above position, I long since abandoned the use of such learned dis. tinctions still,there are many valuable hints contained in his rules which may be useful to those of my readers who wish to pursue the subject to its utmost limits. This consideration, added to the high standing of Byrom and Mavor, and the very learned works from which I have copied their rules of abbreviation, will, I trust, be a sufficient apology for the insertion of the preceding extracts.

And I am at the same time free to admit, that if I had no other object in view, than that of reporting speeches, or writing with the greatest possible despatch, I might again revive some of the rules laid down by Byrom and Mavor-although the method which I now practice is entirely adequate to all the purposes for which short writing is usually employed, and at the same time free from the shackles, which numerous rules must unavoidably impose.

But I have a higher object in view-it is, to rescue an invaluable art, from the exclusive monopoly of a few indefatigable writers, in order to place it within the reach of every member of the community-as effectually, as are arithmetic, grammar, and geography. I am therefore willing to forego, even in my own practice, as a reporter, all the benefits which might be thought to flow, from the use of these abstruse and complicated rules; which, though familiar to me, might not be easily reduced to practice by my pupils. I therefore confine myself to the method laid down in the eleventh and twelfth pages of my published work-as exemplified by the short-hand plates, and the preceding numbers of this publication; with the exception of an occasional omission of small words, where the sense is so clear as to restore them without difficulty when reading or copying the notes thus taken.

But knowing as I do, from an experience acquired in teaching thousands to write, the inquisitiveness of almost every individual who learns this art, I have, as a matter of condescension rather than conviction, added to my own instruction, the rules of two of the most distinguished Stenographers, with comments from three of the most learned works of the age. And should my readers draw from these rules, any thing to gratify their curiosity, or to facilitate their progress in acquiring a desirable rapidity of hand, it will afford me as much pleasure, as if they had been equally benefitted by rules which I had myself drawn out.

I shall also, in the same spirit of condescension to the inquiring minds of my readers, proceed in due time

to an explanation of the few arbitrary signs found in the 33d page of my book; and likewise the character and use, of a method which I have been pleased to call SHORT-HAND SHORTENED, as found in page 34, and exemplified in plate 17.

This plan, though it saves as much time and labour as all the abbreviating rules of Byrom and Mavor combined, may be familiarized in one tenth of the time which they would demand. Nor does it require the philological acumen of a Lowth, a Nares, a Murray, or a Webster, to scan each sentence before it is written, and while passing from the lip of the speaker to the ear of the writer, to pronounce, that this is a disjunctive conjunction, and therefore to be written-this a pronominal adjective, a gerundial participle, or some other part of speech, and consequently to be omitted(especially if there be not time to write it.) All this might do in the Chamber of the Philosopher; but the writer, who, cumbered about with all the grammatical panoply of the schools, shall attempt, while “seizing words upon the wing," to bring his seventeen rules into successful action, either in solid column, or single file, will find a task as formidable, as that of an individual who professed to have personally "surrounded and captured a regiment." And such writer must ultimately come to the conclusion, that there is a possibility of having "too much of a good thing;" and, that a method of short-hand however simple and practicable, may, by the injudicious intermixture of fine spun theories, be rendered entirely useless and impracticable, to a great majority of writers. Against this evil, I have