23.  Towards this point, tends every attempt to simplify grammar by suppressing any of the ten parts of speech.  Nothing is gained by it; and it is a departure from the best authority.  We see by what steps this kind of reasoning may descend; and we have an admirable illustration of it in the several grammatical works of William S. Cardell.  I shall mention them in the order in which they appeared; and the reader may judge whether the author does not ultimately arrive at the conclusion to which the foregoing series is conducted.  This writer, in his Essay on Language, reckons seven parts of speech; in his New-York Grammar, six; in his Hartford Grammar, three principal, with three others subordinate; in his Philadelphia Grammar, three only—­nouns, adjectives, and verbs.  Here he alleges, “The unerring plan of nature has established three classes of perceptions, and consequently three parts of speech.”—­P. 171.  He says this, as if he meant to abide by it.  But, on his twenty-third page, we are told, “Every adjective is either a noun or a participle.”  Now, by his own showing, there are no participles:  he makes them all adjectives, in each of his schemes.  It follows, therefore, that all his adjectives, including what others call participles, are nouns.  And this reduces his three parts of speech to two, in spite of “the unerring plan of nature!” But even this number is more than he well believed in; for, on the twenty-first page of the book, he affirms, that, “All other terms are but derivative forms and new applications of nouns.”  So simple a thing is this method of grammar!  But Neef, in his zeal for reformation, carries the anticlimax fairly off the brink; and declares, “In the grammar which shall be the work of my pupils, there shall be found no nouns, no pronouns, no articles, no participles, no verbs, no prepositions, no conjunctions, no adverbs, no interjections, no gerunds, not even one single supine.  Unmercifully shall they be banished from it.”—­Neef’s Method of Education, p. 60.

24.  When Cardell’s system appeared, several respectable men, convinced by “his powerful demonstrations,” admitted that he had made “many things in the established doctrines of the expounders of language appear sufficiently ridiculous;” [75] and willingly lent him the influence of their names, trusting that his admirable scheme of English grammar, in which their ignorance saw nothing but new truth, would be speedily “perfected and generally embraced.” [76] Being invited by the author to a discussion of his principles, I opposed them in his presence, both privately and publicly; defending against him, not unsuccessfully, those doctrines which time and custom have sanctioned.  And, what is remarkable, that candid opposition which Cardell himself had treated with respect, and parried in vain, was afterwards, by some of his converts, impeached of all unfairness, and even accused of wanting common sense.  “No one,” says Niebuhr, “ever