an unfinished state of the act received—­an idea which seems adapted to the participle in ing, but which it is certainly no fault of a participle ending in d, t, or n, not to suggest.  To “express passively the doing of the act,” if the language means any thing rational, may be, simply to say, that the act is or was done.  For “doings” are, as often as any-wise, “things done,” as buildings are fabrics built; and “is built,” and “am smitten,” the gentlemen’s choice examples of false passives, and of “actions finished,”—­though neither of them necessarily intimates either continuance or cessation of the act suffered, or, if it did, would be the less or the more passive or present,—­may, in such a sense, “express the doing of the act,” if any passives can:—­nay, the “finished act” has such completion as may be stated with degrees of progress or of frequency; as, “The house is partly built.”—­“I am oftener smitten.”  There is, undoubtedly, some difference between the assertions, “The house is building,”—­and, “The house is partly built;” though, for practical purposes, perhaps, we need not always be very nice in choosing between them.  For the sake of variety, however, if for nothing else, it is to be hoped, the doctrine above-cited, which limits half our passive verbs of the present tense, to the progressive form only, will not soon be generally approved.  It impairs the language more than unco-passives are likely ever to corrupt it.

OBS. 18.—­“No startling novelties have been introduced,” says the preface to the “Analytical and Practical Grammar of the English Language.”  To have shunned all shocking innovations, is only to have exercised common prudence.  It is not pretended, that any of the Doctor’s errors here remarked upon, or elsewhere in this treatise, will startle any body; but, if errors exist, even in plausible guise, it may not be amiss, if I tell of them.  To suppose every verb or participle to be either “transitive” or “intransitive,” setting all passives with the former sort, all neuters with the latter; (p. 59;)—­to define the transitive verb or participle as expressing always “an act DONE by one person or thing to another;” (p. 60;)—­to say, after making passive verbs transitive, “The object of a transitive verb is in the objective case,” and, “A verb that does not make sense with an objective after it, is intransitive;” (p. 60;)—­to insist upon a precise and almost universal identity of “meaning” in terms so obviously contrasted as are the two voices, “active” and “passive;” (pp. 95 and 235;)—­to allege, as a general principle, “that whether we use the active, or the passive voice, the meaning is the same, except in some cases in the present tense;” (p. 67;)—­to attribute to the forms naturally