We cannot pronounce more than two unaccented syllables with perfect ease; but four or five can hardly be articulated without an intervening accent. We glide over the unaccented syllables with such rapidity, that we have hardly time to place the organs in a position to articulate them. The difficulty is in proportion to the number: So that after passing over two or three, the voice very naturally rests or falls forceably upon a particular syllable. Hence the words most difficult to be pronounced, are those of four syllables, accented on the first; as _figurative_, _literature_, _applicable_. The difficulty is very great, when the middle syllables abound with consonants, even in trissyllables, as _ag'grandize_; but is itself a sufficient reason for not accenting the first syllable of such words as _acceptable_ and _refractory_. When one of the words which have the accent on the first, and three succeeding unaccented syllables, is followed by two or three particles, the passage is weak and often occasions hesitation in a speaker; as "_applicable to the affairs of common life_." A remarkable instance of this, we find in Priestley's Preface to Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever; "Whether of a _pleasureable or of a_ painful nature." In this example there are six weak syllables following each other without interruption, and such passages are not reduceable to any kind of poetic feet. This assemblage of unimportant syllables makes a hiatus in language, which should, as far as possible, be avoided by a writer; for the melody of prose consists in a proper mixture of important and unimportant syllables.[46][K] DIFFERENCES _of_ PRONUNCIATION _and_ CONTROVERTED POINTS EXAMINED. Having laid down some general rules reflecting pronunciation, I proceed to examin local differences, and the most material points of controversy on this subject. In the eastern states, there is a practice prevailing among the body of the people, of prolonging the sound of _i_ in the termination _ive_. In such words as _motive_, _relative_, &c. the people, excepting the more polished part, give _i_ its first sound. This is a local practice, opposed to the general pronunciation of the English on both sides of the Atlantic, sometimes to the rules of accent, and always to derivation. In dissyllables, as _motive_, _active_, the genius of our language requires that the accent should be laid on _one_ syllable, and that the other should be short.[47] But by prolonging _i_ in the last, the distinction of accent is totally destroyed.