between particular words:  but it is true also, that conjunctions often connect words only; and that prepositions, by governing antecedents, relatives, or even personal pronouns, may serve to subjoin sentences to sentences, as well as to determine the relation and construction of the particular words which they govern.  Example:  “The path seems now plain and even, but there are asperities and pitfalls, over which Religion only can conduct you.”—­Dr. Johnson. Here are three simple sentences, which are made members of one compound sentence, by means of but and over which; while two of these members, clauses, or subdivisions, contain particular words connected by and.

OBS. 5.—­In one respect, the preposition is the simplest of all the parts of speech:  in our common schemes of grammar, it has neither classes nor modifications.  Every connective word that governs an object after it, is called a preposition, because it does so; and in etymological parsing, to name the preposition as such, and define the name, is, perhaps, all that is necessary.  But in syntactical parsing, in which we are to omit the definitions, and state the construction, we ought to explain what terms the preposition connects, and to give a rule adapted to this office of the particle.  It is a palpable defect in nearly all our grammars, that their syntax contains NO SUCH RULE.  “Prepositions govern the objective case,” is a rule for the objective case, and not for the syntax of prepositions. “Prepositions show the relations of words, and of the things or thoughts expressed by them,” is the principle for the latter; a principle which we cannot neglect, without a shameful lameness in our interpretation;—­that is, when we pretend to parse syntactically.

OBS. 6.—­Prepositions and their objects very often precede the words on which they depend, and sometimes at a great distance.  Of this we have an example, at the opening of Milton’s Paradise Lost; where “Of,” the first word, depends upon “Sing,” in the sixth line below; for the meaning is—­“Sing of man’s first disobedience,” &c.  To find the terms of the relation, is to find the meaning of the passage; a very useful exercise, provided the words have a meaning which is worth knowing.  The following text has for centuries afforded ground of dispute, because it is doubtful in the original, as well as in many of the versions, whether the preposition in (i. e., “in the regeneration”) refers back to have followed, or forward to the last verb shall sit:  “Verily I say unto you that ye who have followed me, in the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”—­Matt., xix, 28.  The second in is manifestly wrong:  the Greek word is [Greek:  epi], on or upon; i. e., “upon the throne of his glory.”