number, gender, case, mood, tense, and many others, are used in a technical and peculiar sense; and, in all scientific works, the sense of technical terms should be clearly and precisely defined.  Nothing can be gained by substituting other names of modern invention; for these also would need definitions as much as the old.  We want to know the things themselves, and what they are most appropriately called.  We want a book which will tell us, in proper order, and in the plainest manner, what all the elements of the science are.

33.  What does he know of grammar, who cannot directly and properly answer such questions as these?—­“What are numbers, in grammar?  What is the singular number?  What is the plural number?  What are persons, in grammar?  What is the first person?  What is the second person?  What is the third person?  What are genders, in grammar?  What is the masculine gender?  What is the feminine gender?  What is the neuter gender?  What are cases, in grammar?  What is the nominative case?  What is the possessive case?  What is the objective case?”—­And yet the most complete acquaintance with every sentence or word of Murray’s tedious compilation, may leave the student at a loss for a proper answer, not only to each of these questions, but also to many others equally simple and elementary!  A boy may learn by heart all that Murray ever published on the subject of grammar, and still be left to confound the numbers in grammar with numbers in arithmetic, or the persons in grammar with persons in civil life!  Nay, there are among the professed improvers of this system of grammar, men who have actually confounded these things, which are so totally different in their natures!  In “Smith’s New Grammar on the Productive System,” a work in which Murray is largely copied and strangely metamorphosed, there is an abundance of such confusion.  For instance:  “What is the meaning of the word number?  Number means a sum that may be counted.”—­R.  C. Smith’s New Gram., p. 7.  From this, by a tissue of half a dozen similar absurdities, called inductions, the novice is brought to the conclusion that the numbers are two—­as if there were in nature but two sums that might be counted!  There is no end to the sickening detail of such blunders.  How many grammars tell us, that, “The first person is the person who speaks;” that, “The second person is the person spoken to;” and that, “the third person is the person spoken of!” As if the three persons of a verb, or other part of speech, were so many intelligent beings!  As if, by exhibiting a word in the three persons, (as go, goest, goes,) we put it first into the speaker, then into the hearer, and then into somebody else!  Nothing can be more abhorrent to grammar, or to sense, than such confusion.  The things which are identified in each of these three definitions, are as unlike as Socrates and moonshine!  The one is a thinking