that it may be disparaged in the hearing of the young, without injury.  What would be the natural effect of the following sentence, which I quote from a late well-written religious homily?  “The pedagogue and his dunce may exercise their wits correctly enough, in the way of grammatical analysis, on some splendid argument, or burst of eloquence, or thrilling descant, or poetic rapture, to the strain and soul of which not a fibre in their nature would yield a vibration.”—­New-York Observer, Vol. ix, p. 73.

12.  Would not the bright boy who heard this from the lips of his reverend minister, be apt the next day to grow weary of the parsing lesson required by his schoolmaster?  And yet what truth is there in the passage?  One can no more judge of the fitness of language, without regard to the meaning conveyed by it, than of the fitness of a suit of clothes, without knowing for whom they were intended.  The grand clew to the proper application of all syntactical rules, is the sense; and as any composition is faulty which does not rightly deliver the author’s meaning, so every solution of a word or sentence is necessarily erroneous, in which that meaning is not carefully noticed and literally preserved.  To parse rightly and fully, is nothing else than to understand rightly and explain fully; and whatsoever is well expressed, it is a shame either to misunderstand or to misinterpret.

13.  This study, when properly conducted and liberally pursued, has an obvious tendency to dignify the whole character.  How can he be a man of refined literary taste, who cannot speak and write his native language grammatically?  And who will deny that every degree of improvement in literary taste tends to brighten and embellish the whole intellectual nature?  The several powers of the mind are not so many distinct and separable agents, which are usually brought into exercise one by one; and even if they were, there might be found, in a judicious prosecution of this study, a healthful employment for them all.  The imagination, indeed, has nothing to do with the elements of grammar; but in the exercise of composition, young fancy may spread her wings as soon as they are fledged; and for this exercise the previous course of discipline will have furnished both language and taste, as well as sentiment.

14.  The regular grammatical study of our language is a thing of recent origin.  Fifty or sixty years ago, such an exercise was scarcely attempted in any of the schools, either in this country or in England.[54] Of this fact we have abundant evidence both from books, and from the testimony of our venerable fathers yet living.  How often have these presented this as an apology for their own deficiencies, and endeavoured to excite us to greater diligence, by contrasting our opportunities with theirs!  Is there not truth, is there not power, in the appeal?  And are we not bound to avail ourselves of the privileges which they have provided, to build upon the foundations which their wisdom has laid, and to carry forward the work of improvement?  Institutions can do nothing for us, unless the love of learning preside over and prevail in them.  The discipline of our schools can never approach perfection, till those who conduct, and those who frequent them, are strongly actuated by that disposition of mind, which generously aspires to all attainable excellence.