OBS. 13.—­In some instances, two prepositions come directly together, so as jointly to express a sort of compound relation between what precedes the one and what follows the other:  as, “And they shall sever the wicked from among the just.”—­Matt., xiii, 49.  “Moses brought out all the rods from before the Lord.”—­Numb., xvii, 9.  “Come out from among them.”—­2 Cor., vi, 17.  “From Judea, and from beyond Jordan.”—­Matt. iv, 25.  “Nor a lawgiver from between his feet.”—­Gen., xlix, 10.  Thus the preposition from, being itself adapted to the ideas of motion and separation, easily coincides with any preposition of place, to express this sort of relation; the terms however have a limited application, being used only between a verb and a noun, because the relation itself is between motion and the place of its beginning:  as, “The sand slided from beneath my feet.”—­Dr. Johnson.  In this manner, we may form complex prepositions beginning with from, to the number of about thirty; as, from amidst, from around, from before, from behind, &c.  Besides these, there are several others, of a more questionable character, which are sometimes referred to the same class; as, according to, as to, as for, because of, instead of, off of, out of, over against, and round about.  Most or all of these are sometimes resolved in a different way, upon the assumption that the former word is an adverb; yet we occasionally find some of them compounded by the hyphen:  as, “Pompey’s lieutenants, Afranius and Petreius, who lay over-against him, decamp suddenly.”—­Rowe’s Lucan, Argument to B. iv.  But the common fashion is, to write them separately; as, “One thing is set over against an other.”—­Bible.

OBS. 14.—­It is not easy to fix a principle by which prepositions may in all cases be distinguished from adverbs.  The latter, we say, do not govern the objective case; and if we add, that the former do severally require some object after them, it is clear that any word which precedes a preposition, must needs be something else than a preposition.  But this destroys all the doctrine of the preceding paragraph, and admits of no such thing as a complex preposition; whereas that doctrine is acknowledged, to some extent or other, by every one of our grammarians, not excepting even those whose counter-assertions leave no room for it.  Under these circumstances, I see no better way, than to refer the student to the definitions of these parts of speech, to exhibit examples in all needful variety, and then let him judge for himself what disposition ought to be made of those words which different grammarians parse differently.