a Frenchwoman; a Dutchman, a Dutchwoman:  and in these cases the adjective is employed as the collective noun; as, the Dutch, the French, &c.  A Scotchman, and a Scot, are both in use; but the latter is not common in prose writers:  though some employ it, and these generally adopt the plural, Scots, with the definite article, as the collective term.”—­Churchill’s New Gram., p. 70.

OBS. 14.—­The names of things without life, used literally, are always of the neuter gender:  as, “When Cleopatra fled, Antony pursued her in a five-oared galley; and, coming along side of her ship, entered it without being seen by her.”—­Goldsmith’s Rome, p. 160.  “The sun, high as it is, has its business assigned; and so have the stars.”—­Collier’s Antoninus, p. 138.  But inanimate objects are often represented figuratively as having sex.  Things remarkable for power, greatness, or sublimity, are spoken of as masculine; as, the sun, time, death, sleep, fear, anger, winter, war.  Things beautiful, amiable, or prolific, are spoken of as feminine; as, a ship, the moon, the earth, nature, fortune, knowledge, hope, spring, peace.  Figurative gender is indicated only by the personal pronouns of the singular number:  as, “When we say of the sun, He is setting; or of a ship, She sails well.”—­L.  Murray.  For these two objects, the sun and a ship, this phraseology is so common, that the literal construction quoted above is rarely met with.

OBS. 15.—­When any inanimate object or abstract quality is distinctly personified, and presented to the imagination in the character of a living and intelligent being, there is necessarily a change of the gender of the word; for, whenever personality is thus ascribed to what is literally neuter, there must be an assumption of one or the other sex:  as, “The Genius of Liberty is awakened, and springs up; she sheds her divine light and creative powers upon the two hemispheres.  A great nation, astonished at seeing herself free, stretches her arms from one extremity of the earth to the other, and embraces the first nation that became so.”—­Abbe Fauchet.  But there is an inferior kind of personification, or of what is called such, in which, so far as appears, the gender remains neuter:  as, “The following is an instance of personification and apostrophe united:  ’O thou sword of the Lord! how long will it be ere thou be quiet? put thyself up into thy scabbard, rest, and be still!  How can it be quiet, seeing the Lord hath given it a charge against Askelon, and against the sea-shore? there hath he appointed it.’”—­Murray’s Gram., p. 348.  See Jer., xlvii, 6.