Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/243

 akspeare''.

LESSON II.--PARSING.

"Every family has a master; (or a mistress--I beg the ladies' pardon;) a ship has a master; when a house is to be built, there is a master; when the highways are repairing, there is a master; every little school has a master: the continent is a great school; the boys are numerous, and full of roguish tricks; and there is no master. The boys in this great school play truant, and there is no person to chastise them."--See Webster's Essays, p. 128.

"A man who purposely rushes down a precipice and breaks his arm, has no right to say, that surgeons are an evil in society. A legislature may unjustly limit the surgeon's fee; but the broken arm must be healed, and a surgeon is the only man to restore it."--See ib., p. 135.

"But what new sympathies sprung up immediately where the gospel prevailed! It was made the duty of the whole Christian community to provide for the stranger, the poor, the sick, the aged, the widow, and the orphan."--M'Ilvaine's Evi., p. 408.

"In the English language, the same word is often employed both as a noun and as a verb; and sometimes as an adjective, and even as an adverb and a preposition also. Of this, round is an example."--See Churchill's Gram., p. 24.

"The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,   The moss-covered bucket, arose from the well."--Woodworth.

LESSON III.--PARSING.

"Most of the objects in a natural landscape are beautiful, and some of them are grand: a flowing river, a spreading oak, a round hill, an extended plain, are delightful; and even a rugged rock, and a barren heath, though in themselves disagreeable, contribute by contrast to the beauty of the whole."--See ''Kames's El. of Crit.'', i, 185.

"An animal body is still more admirable, in the disposition of its several parts, and in their order and symmetry: there is not a bone, a muscle, a blood-vessel, a nerve, that hath not one corresponding to it on the opposite side; and the same order is carried through the most minute parts."--See ib., i, 271. "The constituent parts of a plant, the roots, the stem, the branches, the leaves, the fruit, are really different systems, united by a mutual dependence on each other."--Ib., i, 272.

"With respect to the form of this ornament, I observe, that a circle is a more agreeable figure than a square, a globe than a cube, and a cylinder than a parallelopipedon. A column is a more agreeable figure than a pilaster; and, for that reason, it ought to be preferred, all other circumstances being equal. An other reason concurs, that a column connected with a wall, which is a plain surface, makes a greater variety than a pilaster."--See ib., ii, 352.

"But ah! what myriads claim the bended knee!   Go, count the busy drops that swell the sea."--Rogers.

IMPROPRIETIES FOR CORRECTION.

ERRORS RESPECTING ARTICLES.

LESSON I.--ADAPT THE ARTICLES.

"Honour is an useful distinction in life."--Milnes's Greek Grammar, p. vii.

[FORMULE.--Not proper, because the article an is used before useful, which begins with the sound of yu. But, according to a principle expressed on page 225th, "A is to be used whenever the following word begins with a consonant sound." Therefore, an should here be changed to a; thus, "Honour is a useful distinction in life."]

"No writer, therefore, ought to foment an humour of innovation."--Jamieson's Rhet., p. 55. "Conjunctions require a situation between the things of which they form an union."--Ib., p. 83. "Nothing is more easy than to mistake an u for an a."--Tooke's Diversions, i, 130. "From making so ill an use of our innocent expressions."--''Wm. Penn''. "To grant thee an heavenly and incorruptible crown of glory."--Sewel's Hist., Ded., p. iv. "It in no wise follows, that such an one was able to predict."--Ib., p. viii. "With an harmless patience they have borne most heavy oppressions,"--Ib., p. x. "My attendance was to make me an happier man."--Spect., No. 480. "On the wonderful nature of an human mind."--Ib., 554. "I have got an hussy of a maid, who is most craftily given to this."--Ib., No. 534. "Argus is said to have had an hundred eyes, some of which were always awake."--Classic Stories, p. 148. "Centiped, an hundred feet; centennial, consisting of a hundred years."--Town's Analysis, p. 19. "No good man, he thought, could be an heretic."--Gilpin's Lives, p. 72. "As, a Christian, an infidel, an heathen."--''Ash's Gram.'