Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/249

 above mentioned, that is to say, first, in the way of well selected and concise descriptions, and secondly, in that of the accumulation of kindred terms, we shall go near to comprehend the entire vocabulary of the language, as related to the objects of sense.

But there remains a process of another sort, and of the highest utility, as well in relation to that command of language which we wish to insure, as to the enrichment of the conceptive faculty. To explain what I now mean I must remind the reader that the vocabulary of words (whatever may be their grammatical form, and which is accidental merelywhether substantives, adjectives, verbs, participles, adverbs) relating to the visible appearances and sensible properties of the external world, is, if we speak of it in a massa RECORD of general facts, cognizable by the human mind, through the senses. And whereas no one human mind, however nice in its perceptions, or exact and excursive in its habits of observation, ever takes account of more than a portion, and probably a very small portion, of the sensible qualities and shades of difference which are actually cognizable by man, a copious and refined language, such for example as our own, contains the recorded notices of thousands of minds, and of minds of all classes, and of all degrees of precision.

Thus for example: if the most frequently used words, or epithets, of a language are taken as representing the broad perceptions of the mass of mankind, and as sufficient for all ordinary purposes of description and narration, there yet remain, in reserve, several sets of terms, representing the more exact, or more penetrating perceptions of minds whose faculties have been exercised and sharpened by peculiar pursuits, or by the habit of admitting intense sensations. One such set comprises those descriptive words that find a place only in poetry, and which are nothing else