cent, the Hebrew grammarians-instead of trusting that the voice will of itself modify the vowel when the accent is shifted-generally think it necessary to depict the vowel differently: which is one principal cause of the complicated changes of the vowel points. A second concomitant of the accent is less marked in English than in Italian or Greek; namely a musical elevation of the voice. On a piano or violin we of course separate entirely the stress given to a note (which is called forte and staccato) from its elevation (which may be A, or c, or F); yet in speech it is natural to execute in a higher tone, or, as we improperly term it, in a higher key, a syllable on which we desire to lay stress: possibly because sharp sounds are more distinctly heard than flat ones. Practically, therefore, accent embraces a slide of the voice into a higher note, as well as an emphasis on the vowel; and in Greek and Latin it would appear that this slide upwards was the most marked peculiarity of accent, and was that which gained it the names poowdía, accentus. Even at the present day, if we listen to the speech of a Greek or Italian, we shall observe a marked elevation in the slides of the voice, giving the appearance of great vivacity, even where no peculiar sentiment is intended. Thus, if a Greek be requested to pronounce the words oopía (wisdom), Tapaßon (parable), his voice will rise on the and in a manner never heard from an Englishman. In ancient Greek, however, yet greater nicety existed; for the voice had three kinds of accent, or slides, which the grammarians called flat, sharp, and circumflex; as in Tis, Tís; Tоû. It is at the same time to be remarked, that this flat accent was solely oratorical; for when a word was read in a vocabulary, or named in isolation, or indeed at the end of a sentence, it never took the flat accent, even on the last syllable; except, it would seem, the word rìs, a certain one. In the middle of a sentence, however, the simple accent (for we are not speaking of the circumflex) on a penultima or antepenultima was always sharp, and on a last syllable was flat. Possibly a stricter attention to the speech of the best educated modern Greeks, or, on the contrary, to that of their peasants in isolated districts, might detect a similar peculiarity: but it is generally believed that it has been lost, and some uncertainty therefore naturally rests on the true pronunciation. On the whole, it is most probable that the flat accent was a stress of the voice uttered in a lower note, much as the second accent in grandfather; that the sharp accent was that which prevails in modern Greek, and has been above described; and that the circumflex combined an upward and a downward slide on the same vowel. The last was naturally incapable of being executed, unless the vowel was long; but the other two accents could exist equally well on a short vowel. In English elocution various slides are to be heard, more complicated than the Greek circumflex; but with us they are wholly oratorical, never vocabular. Moreover, they are peculiar to vehement or vivacious oratory; being abundant in familiar or comic speech, and admissible also in high pathetic or indignant declamation: but they are almost entirely excluded from tranquil and serious utterance. Secondary Accent.-On the same word, when it consists of many syllables, a double accent is frequently heard, certainly in English, and probably in most languages; but in our own tongue one of the two is generally feebler than the other, and may be called secondary. If we agree to denote this by the flat accent () of the Greeks, we may indicate as follows our double accent: consideration, disobedience, unpreténding; sécondary, áccessory, péremptorily. We have purposely selected as the three last examples cases in which the secondary accent falls on a very short or obscure vowel, such as can never sustain the primary accent. In some cases, two syllables intervene between the accents, and it may then be difficult to say which accent is the principal. In aristocrat, équalize, antidote, the first syllable has a stronger accent than the last; but in aristocrátic, équalizátion, antediluvian, they seem to be as equal as possible, though the latter catches the ear more. In aristocracy, the former is beyond a doubt secondary; but here the two are separated by only one syllable. Prédetermination has three accents, of which the middlemost is secondary. In the Greek language a double accent is sometimes found on one word; but only when the latter is superinduced by some short and subordinate word which hangs upon the other. Such short words are called enclitics, and form a class by themselves in the language, as they cannot be known by their meaning or form. By way of example we may give, Túpavvós TIS (a certain usurper), oldá σe (I know thee). In these cases, we observe that the two accents, if both are sharp, are found on alternate syllables, as in English; but whether one of them was secondary we do not know. If the former is a circumflex, the latter is on the following syllable. Occasionally, two or more enclitics follow each other in succession, and produce a curious combination; as, elás Tоú Tí μot. These accents, however, are not vocabular, but oratorical. The Hebrews have, in many cases, secondary accents, called a foretone, because with them it always precedes the principal accent (or 'tone'), as, n, katebú; the intermediate and unaccented vowel being in such cases exceedingly short and obscure, so that some grammarians refuse to count it at all. This foretone is described as a stress of the voice uttered in a lower note, and therefore may seem identical in sound with the flat accent of the Greeks. It differs, however, in being always accompanied with the sharp accent on the same word, and in being vocabular, not merely oratorical. On the Place of the Accent.-A great difference exists between different languages as to the place of the accent. In Hebrew it is found solely on the last syllable and last but one, and is assumed systematically by many grammatical terminations, as in Mélek (for Malk), a king, pl. Mel`aki'm. This is so entirely opposed to the analogies of English, that it has been alleged (Latham On the English Language) that Princess is the only word in which our accent falls on a final inflection. The radical contrast of all this to our own idiom leads to a perverse pronunciation of most Hebrew names: thus we say Isaiah, Nehemiah, Canaan, Israel-although with their true accent they are Isaiah, Nehemyáh, Caná-an, | mesticity, domèstication; possible, possibility; Isra-él; to say nothing of other peculiarities of barbarous, barbárity. But the moment we treat the native sound. In Greek, the accent is any of these words as natives, we follow our own found on any of the three last syllables of a rule of keeping the accent on the radical sylword; the circumflex only on the two last. In lable; as in barbarousness, where the Saxon the Latin language, it is very remarkable that ending, ness, is attached to the foreign word. (except in the case of monosyllables) the accent With the growth of the language, we become never fell on the last syllable, but was strictly more and more accustomed to hear a long train confined to the penultima and antepenultima. of syllables following the accent. Thus, we This peculiarity struck the Greek ear, it is said, have comfort, comfortable, comfortableness; pármore than anything else in the sound of Latin, as liament, párliamentary, which used to be pàrliait gave to it a pompous air. It is the more diffi- méntary. cult to believe that any thoughtful Greek seriously imputed it to Roman pride, since we are told that the Æolic dialect of Greek itself agreed in this respect with the Latin (See Foster On Accent and Quantity, ch. iv.). The Latin accentuation is remarkable for having the place of the accent dictated solely by euphony, without reference to the formation or meaning of the word; in which respect the Greek only partly agrees with it, chiefly when the accent falls on the penultima or antepenultima. The Latin accent, however, is guided by the quantity of the penultimate syllable; the Greek accent by the quantity of the ultimate vowel. The rules are these: In many provinces of England, and in particular families, the older and better pronunciations, contráry, industry, keep their place, instead of the modern cóntrary, industry. The new tendency has innovated in Latin words so far, that many persons say inimical, cóntemplate, inculcate, décorous, sonorous, and even cóncordance, for inimícal, contémplate, &c. 'Alexander has supplanted 'Alexander. In the cases of concordance, clamorous, and various others, it is probable that the words have been made to follow the pronunciation of concord, clamor, as in native English derivatives. The principle of change, to which we have been pointing, is probably deepseated in human speech; for the later Attics are stated to have made a similar innovation in various words; for example, Æschylus and Thucydides said duotos, Tроraîov, but Plato and Aristotle, quoios, Tрónaιov. If the principal accent is very distant from one end of a long word, a great obscurity in the distant vowel-sounds results, which renders a word highly unmusical, and quite unmanageable to poetry. This will be seen in such pronunciations as parliamentary, péremptorily. In Hebrew the same phenomenon is exhibited in a contrary way, the early vowels of a word being apt to become extremely short, in consequence of the accent being delayed to the end. Thus, i, óhe'l, a tent, pl. D, öhālim; T they killed him. Oratorical reasons occasionally 1. Greek: 'When the last vowel is long, the accent is on the penultima; when the last vowel is short, the accent is on the antepenultima.' Orytons are herein excepted.. 2. Latin: When the penultimate syllable is long, the accent is upon it; when short, the accent is on the antepenultima. Every dissyllable is accented on the penultima. Accordingly, the Greek accent, even on the cases of the very same noun, shifted in the following curious fashion: N. avoршños, G. ȧvθρώπου, D. ἀνθρώπῳ, Αc. ἄνθρωπον; and in Latin, rather differently, yet with an equal change, N. Sérmo, G. Sermónis, &c. It is beyond all question that the above rule in Greek is genuine and correct (though it does not apply to oxytons, that is, to words accented on the last syllable, and has other exceptions which the Greek gram-, gatelu, they killed; ?, qătalāhu, mars will tell); but there is a natural difficulty among Englishmen to believe it, since we have been taught to pronounce Greek with the accentuation of Latin; a curious and hurtful corruption, to which the influence of Erasmus is said to have principally contributed. It deserves to be noted that the modern Greeks, in pronouncing their ancient words, retain, with much accuracy on the whole, the ancient rules of accent; but in words of recent invention or introduction they follow the rule, which seems natural to an Englishman, of keeping the accent on the same syllable through all cases of a noun. Thus, although they sound as of old, N. aveρwπos, G. åveрánov, yet in the word kokán, a lady, which is quite recent, we find (plural), Ν. αἱ κοκώνες, G. τῶν κοκώνων, &e. Similarly, & KaTITάvos, the captain, G. TO KATITávou, &c. This is only one out of many marks that the modern Greek has lost the nice appreciation of the quantity or time of vowel sounds, which characterized the ancient. In all Latin or Greek words which we import into English, so long as we feel them to be foreign, we adhere to the Latin rules of accentuation as well as we know how: thus, in démocrat, democracy, democrátical; philosophy, philosóphical; astrónomy, astronómical; doméstic, do induce a sacrifice of the legitimate vocabular of antithesis; as when the verbs, which would accent. In English this happens chiefly in cases ordinarily be sounded increase and decrease, re clearly the contrasted syllables: ‘He must increase, but I must decrease.' verse their accent in order to bring out more This change is intended, not for mere euphony, but to assist the meaning. Variety and energy seem to be aimed at in the following Hebrew example, which Ewald has noticed, and which remain to be discovered: Judges v. 12, 'Uri, uri, Debord: 'uri, 'iri, dabbiri shir; which, after Ewald, we may imitate by translating thus, 'Up then, up then, Deborah: úp then, úp then, utter a sóng.' The Greek and Hebrew languages, moreever, in the pause of a sentence, modified the accent without reference to the meaning of the words. Thus the verb ordinarily sounded gàdelu, with a very short penultimate vowel, becomes at the end of the sentence, gadélu, with a long and accented penultima (See Ewald's Hebrew Gram. § 131, 133). The Greek lan seems to indicate that more of the same sort must guage also at the end of a sentence changes a flat accent into a sharp one; for instance, the word run (honor) before a pause becomes Tiμh; but no elongation of vowels ever accompanies this phenomenon. meanings of epithets. Thus, unтpókтovos means mother-slain, or slain by one's mother; while μNTρOKTÓνos is mother-slaying, or slaying one's mother. Such distinctions, however, seem have been confined to a very small class of compounds. to Sense of a simple word modified by the Accent.-It is familiarly remarked in our English grammars, that (in words of Latin origin, generally imported from French) we often distinguish a verb from a noun by putting the accent on the penultimate syllable of the noun and the ulti Accent in Compound Words.—It is principally by the accent that the syllables of a word are joined into a single whole; and on this account a language with well-defined accentuation is (cæteris paribus) so much the easier to be understood when heard, as well as so much the more musical. This function of the accent is distinctly perceived by us in such words of our lan-mate of the verb. Thus, we say, an insult, to guage as have no other organized union of their parts. To the eye of a foreigner reading an English book, steam-boat appears like two words; especially as our printers have an extreme dislike of hyphens, and omit them whenever the corrector of the press will allow it. In Greek or Persian two such words would be united into one by a vowel of union, which is certainly highly conducive to euphony, and the compound would appear in the form steamiboat or steamobótos. As we are quite destitute of such apparatus (in spite of a few such exceptions as handicraft, mountebank), the accent is eminently important; by which it is heard at once that steamboat is a single word. In fact, we thus distinguish be tween a stonebox and a stóne bóx; the former meaning a box for holding stones, the latter a box made of stone. Mr. Latham (Engl. Language, §234) has ingeniously remarked that we may read the following lines from Ben Jonson in two ways: 'An'd thy silvershining quiveror, An'd thy silver shining quiver — with a slight difference of sense. insult; a contest, to contést; &c., &c. The distinction is so useful, that in doubtful cases it appears desirable to abide by the rule, and to say (as many persons do say) a perfume, to perfime; détails, to detail; the contents of a book, to content; &c. It is certainly curious that the very same law of accent pervades the Hebrew language, as discriminating the simplest triliteral noun and verb. Thus, we have, mélek, king; 2, mālák, he ruled. In the Greek lanin which the throwing of the accent on the last guage the number of nouns is very considerable syllable seriously alters the sense; as, тpóños, a manner; Tрords, the leather of an oar: Ovuds, anger or mind; búuos, garlic: кpívwv, judging; pivov, a lily-bed: wuos, a shoulder; wuds, cruel. A very extensive vocabulary of such cases is appended to Scapula's Greek Lexicon. Relation of Accent to Rhythm and Metre.Every sentence is necessarily both easier to the voice and pleasanter to the ear when the whole is broken up into symmetrical parts, with convenient pauses between them. The measure of the parts is marked out by the number of principal beats of the voice (or oratorical accents) which each clause contains; and when these are so regulated as to attain a certain musical uniformity without betraying art, the sentence has the pleasing rhythm of good prose. When art is not avowed, and yet is manifest, this is unpleasing, as seeming to proceed from affectation and insincerity. When, however, the art is avowed, we call it no longer rhythm, but metre; and with the cultivation of poetry, more and more melody has been exacted of versifiers. The Hebrew language is generally regarded as quite destitute of compound words. It possesses, nevertheless, something at least closely akin to them in (what are called) nouns in regimen. Being without a genitive case, or any particle devoted to the same purpose as the English preposition of, they make up for this by sounding two words as if in combination. The former word loses its accent, and thereby often incurs a shortening and obscuration of its vowels; the voice hurrying on to the latter. This may be illustrated by the English pronunciation of ship of war, man of war, man at árms, phrases which, To the English ear, three and four beats of the by repetition, have in spirit become single words, voice give undoubtedly the most convenient length the first accent being lost. Many such exist in of clauses. Hence, in what is called poetical our language, though unregistered by gram- prose, it will be found that any particularly memarians—in fact, even in longer phrases the phe-lodious passage, if broken up into lines or verses, nomenon is observable. Thus, Secretary at War, yields generally either three or four beats in every Court of Queen's Bench, have very audibly but For example: one predominating accent, on the last syllable. "Where is the máid of Arvan? So, in Hebrew, from ji'‡♫, xizzāyo'n, a vision, Góne, as a vision of the night. comes nji, xezyön-läïld, vision of the night (Job xx. 8). That every such case is fairly to be regarded as a compound noun was remarked by Dr. Campbell of Aberdeen, who urged that otherwise, in Isaiah ii. 20, we ought to render the words the idols of his silver; whereas, in fact, the exact representation of the Hebrew in Greek is not eldwλa ȧpyúpov-avтoû, but, so to say, ἀργυρείδωλα αὐτοῦ. In Greek compounds the position of the accent is sometimes a very critical matter in distinguishing active and passive verse. Where shall her lóver look for her? The háll, which once she gláddened, is désolate.' But no poetical prose, not even translations of poetry which aim at a half-metrical air, will be found to retain constantly the threefold and fourfold accent. To produce abruptness, half lines, containing but two accents, are thrown in; and in smoother feeling clauses of five accents, which often tend to become the true English blank verse. All longer clauses are composite, and can be resolved into three and three, four and three, four and four, &c. To illustrate this, let us take He had horns coming out of his hand, Confusion of Accent with Quantity.-It is a striking fact that Foster, the author of a learned and rather celebrated book intended to clear up this confusion, succeeded in establishing the truth concerning Greek and Latin, by help of ancient grammarians, but himself fell into the popular errors whenever he tried to deal with the English language. Not only does he allege that the voice dwells longer' on the first syllable of honestly, character, &c., than on the two last (and improperly writes them honestly, chārăcter), but he makes a general statement that accent and quantity, though separated in Greek and Latin, are inseparable in English. The truth is so far The accent is clearly on the first syllable; but that syllable in each is very short. On the other hand, the second syllable of both, though unaccented, yet by reason of the consonants s tl, et, is long, though less so than if its vowel likewise had been long. The words are thus, like the Greek Kúλvdpos, a cylinder, accented on the first syllable, yet as to quantity an amphibrach (-). Until an Englishman clearly feels and knows these facts of his own tongue, he, will be unable to avoid the most perplexing errors on this whole subject. that the accentual marks of the Greeks were inInvention of Accents.-We have already said vented not long after the Macedonian conquests. To Aristophanes of Byzantium, master of the celebrated Aristarchus, is ascribed the credit of fixing both the punctuation and the accentuation And there was the hiding of his power.' &c. &c. otherwise, that probably in three words out of four we separate them. As single instances, conThe accent which we have been here describ-sider the words honestly, character, just adduced. ing as the source of rhythm is strictly the oratorical accent. As this falls only on the more emphatic words of the sentence, it is decidedly strong, and, in comparison with it, all the feebler and secondary accents are unheard, or at least uncounted. Nor is any care taken that the successive accents should be at equable distances. Occasionally they occur on successive syllables; much oftener at the distance of two, three, or four syllables. Nevertheless, this poetical rhythm, as soon as it becomes avowedly cultivated, is embryo-metre; and possibly this is the real state of the Hebrew versification. Great pains have been taken, from Gomarus in 1630 to Bellermann and Saalschutz in recent times, to define the laws of Hebrew metre. A concise history of these attempts will be found in the Introduction to De Wette's Commentary on the Psalms. But although the occasional use of rhyme or assonance in Hebrew seems to be more than accidental, the failure of so many efforts to detect any real metre in the old Hebrew is decisive enough to warn future inquirers against losing their labour. (See the article Parallelismus in Ersch and Gruber's Encyclopedie). The modern Jews, indeed, have borrowed accentual metre from the Arabs: but, although there is nothing in the genius of the tongue to resist it, perhaps the fervid, practical genius of the Hebrew prophets rejected any such trammel. Repetition and amplification mark their style as too declamatory to be what we call poetry. Nevertheless, in the Psalms and lyrical passages, increasing investigation appears to prove that considerable artifice of composition has often been used (See Ewald's Poetical Books of the Old Test. vol. i.). In our own language, it is obvious to every considerate reader of poetry that the metres called anapastic depend far more on the oratorical accent than on the vocabular (which is, indeed, their essential defect); and on this account numerous accents, which the voice really utters, are passed by as counting for nothing in the metre. We offer, as a single example, the two following lines of Campbell, in which we have denoted by the flat accent those syllables the stress upon which is subordinate and extra metrum : "Say, rush'd the bold eagle exúltingly forth From his home, in the dárk-rolling clouds of the north.' Such considerations, drawn entirely out of oratory, appear to be the only ones on which it is any longer useful to pursue an inquiry concerning Hebrew metres. of Greek. He was born near the middle of the second century B.C.; and there seems to be no doubt that we actually have before our eyes a pronunciation which cannot have greatly differed from that of Plato. As for the Hebrew accentuation generally called Masoretic, the learned are agreed that it was a system only gradually built up by successive additions; the word Masora itself meaning tradition. The work is ascribed to the schools of Tiberias and Babylon, which Romans; but it cannot be very accurately stated arose after the destruction of Jerusalem by the and accentuation attained the fully-developed in how many centuries the system of vowel-points state in which we have received it. There is, however, no question among the ablest scholars that these marks represent the utterance of a genuine Hebrew period; the pronunciation, it may be said with little exaggeration, of Ezra and Nehemiah.-F. W. N. ACCHABIS. [SPIDER.] Diod. ACCHO (; Sept. "Axxw), a town and haven within the nominal territory of the tribe of Asher, which however never acquired possession of it (Judg. i. 31). The Greek and Roman writers call it "An, ACE (Strab. xvi. 877; Sic. xix. 93; C. Nep. xiv. 5); but it was eventually better known as PTOLEMAIS (Plin. Hist. Nat. v. 19), which name it received from the first Ptolemy, king of Egypt, by whom it was much improved. By this name it is mentioned in the Apocrypha (1 Macc. x. 56; xi. 22, 21; xii. 45, 48; 2 Macc. xiii. 14), in the New Testament (Acts xxi. 7), and by Josephus (Antiq. xiii. 12, 2, seq.). It was also called Colonia Claudii Cæsaris, in consequence of its receiving the privileges of a Roman city from the emperor Claudius (Plin. v. 17; xxxvi. 65). But the names thus imposed or altered by foreigners never took with the natives, and the place is still known in the country by the name of Ke AKKA. It continued to be called Ptolemais by the Greeks of the lower empire, as well as by Latin authors, while the Orientals adhered to the original designation. This has occasioned some speculation. Vitriacus, who was bishop of the place, produces the opinion (Hist. Orient. c. 25) that the town was founded by twin-brothers, Ptolemæus and Acon. Vinisauf imagines that the old town retained the name of Accho, while that of Ptolemais was confined to the more modern additions northward, towards the hill of Turon (G. Vinisauf, i. 2, p. 248), but the truth undoubtedly is that the natives never adopted the foreign names of this or any other town. The word Accho, or Akka, can be traced to no Hebrew or Syriac root, and is, Sir W. Drummond alleges (Origines, b.v. c. 3), clearly of Arabian origin, and derived from ak, which signifies sultry The neighbourhood was famous for the sands which the Sidonians employed in making glass (Plin. Hist. Nat. v. 19; Strabo, xvi. 877); and the Arabians denote a sandy shore heated by the sun by the word de akeh, or e aket, or (with the nunnation) aketon. During the Crusades the place was usually known to Europeans by the name of AcoN: afterwards, from the occupation of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, as St. JEAN D'ACRE, or simply ACRE. This famous city and haven is situated in N. lat. 32° 55', and E. long. 35° 5', and occupies the north-western point of a commodious bay, called the Bay of Acre, the opposite or southwestern point of which is formed by the promontory of Mount Carmel. The city lies on the plain to which it gives its name. Its western side is washed by the waves of the Mediterranean, and on the south lies the bay, beyond which may be seen the town of Caipha, on the site of the ancient Calamos, and, rising high above both, the shrubby heights of Carmel. The mountains belonging to the chain of Anti-Libanus are seen at the distance of about four leagues to the north, while to the east the view is bounded by the fruitful hills of the Lower Galilee. The bay, from the town of Acre to the promontory of Mount Carmel, is three leagues wide and two in depth. The port, on account of its shallowness, can only be entered by vessels of small burden; but there is excellent anchorage on the other side of the bay, before Caipha, which is, in fact, the roadstead of Acre (Turner, ii. 111; G. Robinson, i. 198). In the time of Strabo Accho was a great city (ПToλeuats ἐστι μεγάλη πόλις ἣν ̓́Ακην ὠνόμαζον πρότερον, xvi. p. 877), and it has continued to be a place of importance down to the present time. But after the Turks gained possession of it, Acre so rapidly declined, that the travellers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries concur in describing it as much fallen from its former glory, of which, however, traces still remained. The missionary Eugene Roger (La Terre Saincte, 1645, pp. 44-46), remarks that the whole place had such a sacked, He and desolated appearance, that little remained |