31.  Secondly—­from his syntactical parsing:  “Vice degrades us.”  Here his form for the word Vice is—­“Vice is a common substantive, of the third person, in the singular number, and the nominative case.”—­Murray’s Gram., 8vo, Vol. ii, p. 9.  Now, when the learner is told that this is the syntactical parsing of a noun, and the other the etymological, he will of course conclude, that to advance from the etymology to the syntax of this part of speech, is merely, to omit the gender—­this being the only difference between the two forms.  But even this difference had no other origin than the compiler’s carelessness in preparing his octavo book of exercises—­the gender being inserted in the duodecimo.  And what then?  Is the syntactical parsing of a noun to be precisely the same as the etymological?  Never.  But Murray, and all who admire and follow his work, are content to parse many words by halves—­making, or pretending to make, a necessary distinction, and yet often omitting, in both parts of the exercise, every thing which constitutes the difference.  He should here have said—­“Vice is a common noun, of the third person, singular number, neuter gender, and nominative case:  and is the subject of degrades; according to the rule which says, ’A noun or a pronoun which is the subject of a verb, must be in the nominative case.’  Because the meaning is—­vice degrades.”  This is the whole description of the word, with its construction; and to say less, is to leave the matter unfinished.

32.  Thirdly—­from his “Mode of verbally correcting erroneous sentences:”  Take his first example:  “The man is prudent which speaks little.” (How far silence is prudence, depends upon circumstances:  I waive that question.) The learner is here taught to say, “This sentence is incorrect; because which is a pronoun of the neuter gender, and does not agree in gender with its antecedent man, which is masculine.  But a pronoun should agree with its antecedent in gender, &c. according to the fifth rule of syntax. Which should therefore be who, a relative pronoun, agreeing with its antecedent man; and the sentence should stand thus:  ’The man is prudent who speaks little.’”—­Murray’s Octavo Gram., Vol. ii, p. 18; Exercises, 12mo, p. xii.  Again:  “’After I visited Europe, I returned to America.’  This sentence,” says Murray, “is not correct; because the verb visited is in the imperfect tense, and yet used here to express an action, not only past, but prior to the time referred to by the verb returned, to which it relates.  By the thirteenth rule of syntax, when verbs are used that, in point of time, relate to each other, the order of time should be observed.  The imperfect tense visited should therefore have been had visited, in the pluperfect tense, representing the action of visiting, not only as past, but also as prior