as phrases, or as sentences, and not as cases.  They no more take the nature of cases, than they become nouns or pronouns.  Yet Nixon, by assuming that of, with the word governed by it, constitutes a possessive case, contrives to give to participles, and even to the infinitive mood, all three of the cases.  Of the infinitive, he says, “An examination of the first and second methods of parsing this mood, must naturally lead to the inference that it is a substantive; and that, if it has the nominative case, it must also have the possessive and objective cases of a substantive.  The fourth method proves its [capacity of] being in the possessive case:  thus, ‘A desire to learn;’ that is, ‘of learning.’  When it follows a participle, or a verb, as by the fifth or [the] seventh method, it is in the objective case.  Method sixth is analogous to the Case Absolute of a substantive.”—­Nixon’s Parser, p. 83.  If the infinitive mood is really a declinable substantive, none of our grammarians have placed it in the right chapter; except that bold contemner of all grammatical and literary authority, Oliver B. Peirce.  When will the cause of learning cease to have assailants and underminers among those who profess to serve it?  Thus every new grammatist, has some grand absurdity or other, peculiar to himself; and what can be more gross, than to talk of English infinitives and participles as being in the possessive case?

OBS. 3.—­It was long a subject of dispute among the grammarians, what number of cases an English noun should be supposed to have.  Some, taking the Latin language for their model, and turning certain phrases into cases to fill up the deficits, were for having six in each number; namely, the nominative, the genitive, the dative, the accusative, the vocative, and the ablative.  Others, contending that a case in grammar could be nothing else than a terminational inflection, and observing that English nouns have but one case that differs from the nominative in form, denied that there were more than two, the nominative and the possessive.  This was certainly an important question, touching a fundamental principle of our grammar; and any erroneous opinion concerning it, might well go far to condemn the book that avouched it.  Every intelligent teacher must see this.  For what sense could be made of parsing, without supposing an objective case to nouns? or what propriety could there be in making the words, of, and to, and from, govern or compose three different cases?  Again, with what truth can it be said, that nouns have no cases in English? or what reason can be assigned for making more than three?