Prat, Ruddiman, Grant, and other writers.  And here it may be proper to observe, that, the mixing of syntax with etymology, after the manner of Ingersoll, Kirkham, R. W. Green, R. C. Smith, Sanborn, Felton, Hazen, Parkhurst, Parker and Fox, Weld, and others, is a modern innovation, pernicious to both; either topic being sufficiently comprehensive, and sufficiently difficult, when they are treated separately; and each having, in some instances, employed the pens of able writers almost to the exclusion of the other.

OBS. 17.—­The syntax of any language must needs conform to the peculiarities of its etymology, and also be consistent with itself; for all will expect better things of a scholar, than to lay down positions in one part of his grammar, that are irreconcilable with what he has stated in an other.  The English language, having few inflections, has also few concords or agreements, and still fewer governments.  Articles, adjectives, and participles, which in many other languages agree with their nouns in gender, number, and case, have usually, in English, no modifications in which they can agree with their nouns.  Yet Lowth says, “The adjective in English, having no variation of gender and number, cannot but agree with the substantive in these respects.”—­Short Introd. to Gram., p. 86.  What then is the agreement of words?  Can it be anything else than their similarity in some common property or modification?  And is it not obvious, that no two things in nature can at all agree, or be alike, except in some quality or accident which belongs to each of them?  Yet how often have Murray and others, as well as Lowth, forgotten this!  To give one instance out of many:  “Gender has respect only to the third person singular of the pronouns, he, she, it.”—­Murray, J. Peirce, Flint, Lyon, Bacon, Russell, Fisk, Maltby, Alger, Miller, Merchant, Kirkham, and other careless copyists.  Yet, according to these same gentlemen, “Gender is the distinction of nouns, with regard to sex;” and, “Pronouns must always agree with their antecedents, and the nouns for which they stand, in gender.”  Now, not one of these three careless assertions can possibly be reconciled with either of the others!

OBS. 18.—­Government has respect only to nouns, pronouns, verbs, participles, and prepositions; the other five parts of speech neither govern nor are governed.  The governing words may be either nouns, or verbs, or participles, or prepositions; the words governed are either nouns, or pronouns, or verbs, or participles.  In parsing, the learner must remember that the rules of government are not to be applied to the governing words, but to those which are governed; and which, for the sake of brevity, are often technically named after the particular form or modification assumed; as, possessives, objectives, infinitives, gerundives.  These