in France and America.  Upon this plain distinction, and the manifest inconvenience of any violation of so clear an analogy of the language, depends the propriety of most of the corrections which I shall offer under Rule 6th.  But if the inhabitants of any place choose to call their town a creek, a river, a harbour, or a bridge, and to think it officious in other men to pretend to know better, they may do as they please.  If between them and their correctors there lie a mutual charge of misnomer, it is for the literary world to determine who is right.  Important names are sometimes acquired by mere accident.  Those which are totally inappropriate, no reasonable design can have bestowed.  Thus a fancied resemblance between the island of Aquidneck, in Narraganset Bay, and that of Rhodes, in the AEgean Sea, has at length given to a state, or republic, which lies chiefly on the main land, the absurd name of Rhode Island; so that now, to distinguish Aquidneck itself, geographers resort to the strange phrase, “the Island of Rhode Island.”—­Balbi.  The official title of this little republic, is, “the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.”  But this name is not only too long for popular use, but it is doubtful in its construction and meaning.  It is capable of being understood in four different ways. 1.  A stranger to the fact, would not learn from this phrase, that the “Providence Plantations” are included in the “State of Rhode Island,” but would naturally infer the contrary. 2.  The phrase, “Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,” may be supposed to mean “Rhode Island [Plantations] and Providence Plantations.” 3.  It may be understood to mean “Rhode Island and Providence [i.e., two] Plantations.” 4.  It may be taken for “Rhode Island” [i.e., as an island,] and the “Providence Plantations.”  Which, now, of all these did Charles the Second mean, when he gave the colony this name, with his charter, in 1663?  It happened that he meant the last; but I doubt whether any man in the state, except perhaps some learned lawyer, can parse the phrase, with any certainty of its true construction and meaning.  This old title can never be used, except in law.  To write the popular name “Rhodeisland,” as Dr. Webster has it in his American Spelling-Book, p. 121, would be some improvement upon it; but to make it Rhodeland, or simply Rhode, would be much more appropriate.  As for Rhode Island, it ought to mean nothing but the island; and it is, in fact, an abuse of language to apply it otherwise.  In one of his parsing lessons, Sanborn gives us for good English the following tautology:  “Rhode Island derived its name from the island of Rhode Island.”—­Analytical Gram., p. 37.  Think of that sentence!