OBS. 14.—­Lennie observes, “When a preposition”—­(he should have said, When an other preposition—­) “follows the participle, of is inadmissible; as, His depending on promises proved his ruin. His neglecting to study when young, rendered him ignorant all his life.”—­Prin. of E. Gram., 5th Ed., p. 65; 13th Ed., 91.  Here on and to, of course, exclude of; but the latter may be changed to of, which will turn the infinitive into a noun:  as, “His neglecting of study,” &c. “Depending” and “neglecting,” being equivalent to dependence and neglect, are participial nouns, and not “participles.”  Professor Bullions, too, has the same faulty remark, examples and all; (for his book, of the same title, is little else than a gross plagiarism from Lennie’s;) though he here forgets his other erroneous doctrines, that, “A preposition should never be used before the infinitive,” and that, “Active verbs do not admit a preposition after them.”  See Bullions’s Prin. of E. Gram., pp. 91, 92, and 107.

OBS. 15.—­The participle in ing is, on many occasions, equivalent to the infinitive verb, so that the speaker or writer may adopt either, just as he pleases:  as, “So their gerunds are sometimes found having [or to have] an absolute or apparently neuter signification.”—­Grant’s Lat.  Gram., p. 234.  “With tears that ceas’d not flowing” [or to flow].—­Milton.  “I would willingly have him producing [produce, or to produce] his credentials.”—­Barclay’s Works, iii, 273.  There are also instances, and according to my notion not a few, in which the one is put improperly for the other.  The participle however is erroneously used for the infinitive much oftener than the infinitive for the participle.  The lawful uses of both are exceedingly numerous; though the syntax of the participle, strictly speaking, does not include its various conversions into other parts of speech.  The principal instances of regular equivalence between infinitives and participles, may be reduced to the following heads: 

1.  After the verbs see, hear, and feel, the participle in ing, relating to the objective, is often equivalent to the infinitive governed by the verb; as, “I saw him running”—­“I heard it howling.”—­W.  Allen.  “I feel the wind blowing.”  Here the verbs, run, howl, and blow, might be substituted. 2.  After intransitive verbs signifying to begin or to continue, the participle in ing, relating to the nominative, may be used in stead of the infinitive connected to the verb; as, “The ass began galloping with all his might.”—­Sandford and Merton.  “It commenced raining very hard.”—­Silliman.  “The steamboats commenced running on