OBS. 21.—­Again, by a different mode of reckoning them, the concords or the general principles of agreement, in our language, may be made to be only three or four; and some of these much less general, than they are in other languages:  (1.) Words in apposition agree in case, according to Rule 3d; of which principle, Rule 6th may be considered a modification. (2.) Pronouns agree, with their nouns, in person, number, and gender, according to Rule 10th; of which principle, Rules 11th, 12th, and 13th, may be reckoned modifications. (3.) Verbs agree with their nominatives, in person and number, according to Rule 14th; of which principle Rules 15th, 16th, and 17th, and the occasional agreement of one verb with an other, may be esteemed mere modifications. (4.) Some adjectives agree with their nouns in number.  These make up the twelve concords above enumerated.

OBS. 22.—­The rules of Government in the best Latin grammars are about sixty; and these are usually distributed (though not very properly) under three heads; “1.  Of Nouns. 2.  Of Verbs. 3.  Of Words indeclinable.”—­ Grant’s Lat.  Gram., p. 170.  “Regimen est triplex:  1.  Nominum. 2.  Verborum. 3.  Vocum indeclinabilium.”—­Ruddiman’s Gram., p. 138.  This division of the subject brings all the titles of the rules wrong.  For example, if the rule be, “Active verbs govern the accusative case,” this is not properly “the government of verbs” but rather the government of the accusative by verbs.  At least, such titles are equivocal, and likely to mislead the learner.  The governments in English are only seven, and these are expressed, perhaps with sufficient distinctness, in six of the foregoing rules:  (1.) Of Possessives by nouns, in Rule 4th; (2.) Of Objectives by verbs, in Rule 5th; (3.) Of Objectives by participles, in Rule 5th; (4.) Of Objectives by prepositions, in Rule 7th; (5.) Of Infinitives by the preposition to, in Rule 18th; (6.) Of Infinitives by the verbs bid, dare, &c., in Rule 19th; (7.) Of Participles by prepositions, in Rule 20th.

OBS. 23.—­The Arrangement of words, (which will be sufficiently treated of in the observations hereafter to be made on the several rules of construction,) is an important part of syntax, in which not only the beauty but the propriety of language is intimately concerned, and to which particular attention should therefore be paid in composition.  But it is to be remembered, that the mere collocation of words in a sentence never affects the method of parsing them:  on the contrary, the same words, however placed, are always to be parsed in precisely the same way, so long as they express precisely the same meaning.  In order to show that we have parsed any part of an inverted or difficult sentence rightly, we are at liberty to declare the meaning by any arrangement which will make the construction more obvious, provided we retain