OBS. 18.—­Dr. Webster says, “A is also an abbreviation of the Saxon an or ane, one, used before words beginning with an articulation; as, a table, instead of an table, or one table. This is a modern change; for, in Saxon, an was used before articulations as well as vowels; as, an tid, a time, an gear, a year.”—­Webster’s Octavo Dict., w.  A.  A modern change, indeed!  By his own showing in other works, it was made long before the English language existed!  He says, “An, therefore, is the original English adjective or ordinal number one; and was never written a until after the Conquest.”—­Webster’s Philos.  Gram., p. 20; Improved Gram., 14. “The Conquest,” means the Norman Conquest, in 1066; but English was not written till the thirteenth century.  This author has long been idly contending, that an or a is not an article, but an adjective; and that it is not properly distinguished by the term “indefinite.”  Murray has answered him well enough, but he will not be convinced.[136] See Murray’s Gram., pp. 34 and 35.  If a and one were equal, we could not say, “Such a one,”—­“What a one,”—­“Many a one,”—­“This one thing;” and surely these are all good English, though a and one here admit no interchange.  Nay, a is sometimes found before one when the latter is used adjectively; as, “There is no record in Holy Writ of the institution of a one all-controlling monarchy.”—­Supremacy of the Pope Disproved, p. 9.  “If not to a one Sole Arbiter.”—­Ib., p. 19.

OBS. 19.—­An is sometimes a conjunction, signifying if; as, “Nay, an thou’lt mouthe, I’ll rant as well as thou.”—­Shak. “An I have not ballads made on you all, and sung to fifty tunes, may a cup of sack be my poison.”—­Id., Falstaff.  “But, an it were to do again, I should write again.”—­Lord Byron’s Letters.  “But an it be a long part, I can’t remember it.”—­SHAKSPEARE:  Burgh’s Speaker, p. 136.

OBS. 20.—­In the New Testament, we meet with several such expressions as the following:  “And his disciples were an hungred.”—­SCOTT’S BIBLE:  Matt, xii, 1.  “When he was an hungred.”—­Ib. xii, 3.  “When he had need and was an hungered.”—­Ib.  Mark, ii, 25.  Alger, the improver of Murray’s Grammar, and editor of the Pronouncing Bible, taking this an to be the indefinite article, and perceiving that the h is sounded in hungered, changed the particle to a in all these passages; as, “And his disciples were a hungered.”  But what sense he thought he had made of the sacred record, I know not.  The Greek text, rendered word for word, is simply this:  “And his disciples hungered.”  And that the sentences above,