speakers; guarding, at the same time, against such a degree of diffusion, as renders them languid and tiresome; which will always prove the case, when they inculcate too much, and present the same thought under too many different views.”—­Blair’s Rhet., p. 177.  “As sentences should be cleared of redundant words, so also of redundant members.  As every word ought to present a new idea, so every member ought to contain a new thought.  Opposed to this, stands the fault we sometimes meet with, of the last member of a period being no other than the echo of the former, or the repetition of it in somewhat a different form.” [458]—­Ib., p. 111. “Which always refers grammatically to the substantive immediately preceding:  [as,] ’It is folly to pretend, by heaping up treasures, to arm ourselves against the accidents of life, which nothing can protect us against, but the good providence of our heavenly Father.’”—­Murray’s Gram., p. 311; Maunder’s, p. 18; Blair’s Rhet., p. 105.  “The English adjectives, having but a very limited syntax, is classed with its kindred article, the adjective pronoun, under the eighth rule.”—­L.  Murray’s Gram., 8vo, p. 143.  “When a substantive is put absolutely, and does not agree with the following verb, it remains independent on the participle, and is called the case absolute, or the nominative absolute.”—­Ib., p. 195.  “It will, doubtless, sometimes happen, that, on this occasion, as well as on many other occasions, a strict adherence to grammatical rules, would render the language stiff and formal:  but when cases of this sort occur, it is better to give the expression a different turn, than to violate grammar for the sake of ease, or even of elegance.”—­Ib., p. 208.  “Number, which distinguishes objects as singly or collectively, must have been coeval with the very infancy of language”—­Jamieson’s Rhet., p. 25.  “The article a or an agrees with nouns in the singular number only, individually or collectively.”—­L.  Murray’s Gram., p. 170; and others.  “No language is perfect because it is a human invention.”—­Parker and Fox’s Grammar, Part III, p. 112.  “The participles, or as they may properly be termed, forms of the verb in the second infinitive, usually precedes another verb, and states some fact, or event, from which an inference is drawn by that verb; as, ’the sun having arisen, they departed.’”—­Day’s Grammar, 2nd Ed., p. 36.  “They must describe what has happened as having done so in the past or the present time, or as likely