(1) Part of the verb, making the definite tenses.

(2) Pure participles, which express action, but do not assert.

(3) Participial adjectives, which express action and also modify.

(4) Pure adjectives, which have lost all verbal force.

(5) Gerunds, which express action, may govern and be governed.

(6) Verbal nouns, which name an action or state, but cannot govern.

Exercise.

Tell to which of the above six classes each _-ing_ word in the following sentences belongs:—­

1.  Here is need of apologies for shortcomings.

2.  Then how pleasing is it, on your leaving the spot, to see the returning hope of the parents, when, after examining the nest, they find the nurslings untouched!

3.  The crowning incident of my life was upon the bank of the Scioto Salt Creek, in which I had been unhorsed by the breaking of the saddle girths.

4.  What a vast, brilliant, and wonderful store of learning!

5.  He is one of the most charming masters of our language.

6.  In explaining to a child the phenomena of nature, you must, by object lessons, give reality to your teaching.

7.  I suppose I was dreaming about it.  What is dreaming?

8.  It is years since I heard the laughter ringing.

9.  Intellect is not speaking and logicizing:  it is seeing and ascertaining.

10.  We now draw toward the end of that great martial drama which we have been briefly contemplating.

11.  The second cause of failure was the burning of Moscow.

12.  He spread his blessings all over the land.

13.  The only means of ascending was by my hands.

14.  A marble figure of Mary is stretched upon the tomb, round which is an iron railing, much corroded, bearing her national emblem.

15.  The exertion left me in a state of languor and sinking.

16.  Thackeray did not, like Sir Walter Scott, write twenty pages without stopping, but, dictating from his chair, he gave out sentence by sentence, slowly.

HOW TO PARSE VERBS AND VERBALS.

I. VERBS.

275.  In parsing verbs, give the following points:—­

(1) Class:  (a) as to form,—­strong or weak, giving principal parts; (b) as to use,—­transitive or intransitive.

(2) Voice,—­active or passive.

(3) Mood,—­indicative, subjunctive, or imperative.

(4) Tense,—­which of the tenses given in Sec. 234.

(5) Person and number, in determining which you must tell—­

(6) What the subject is, for the form of the verb may not show the person and number.

[Sidenote:  Caution.]