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QUESTIONS ON THE NOTES.

Whether the learner be required to answer the following questions, or not, is, of course, left discretionary with the teacher.  The author takes the liberty to suggest the expediency of not, generally, enforcing such a requisition, until the pupil goes through the book a second time.

Name some participial nouns.—­What are abstract nouns?—­What is the distinction between abstract nouns and adjectives?—­What are natural nouns?—­Artificial nouns?—­What is the distinction between material and immaterial nouns?—­Are nouns ever of the masculine and feminine gender?—­Give examples.—­When are nouns, naturally neuter, converted into the masculine or feminine gender?—­Give examples.—­Speak some nouns that are always in the singular number.—­Some that are always plural.—­Speak some that are in the same form in both numbers.—­Name all the various ways of forming the plural number of nouns.—­Of what number are the nouns news, means, alms, and amends?—­Name the plurals to the following compound nouns, handful, cupful, spoonful, brother-in-law, court-martial.

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    NOTES ON PHILOSOPHICAL GRAMMAR.

Perhaps no subject has, in this age, elicited more patient research, and critical investigation of original, constituent principles, formations, and combinations, than the English language.  The legitimate province of philology, however, as I humbly conceive, has, in some instances, been made to yield to that of philosophy, so far as to divert the attention from the combinations of our language which refinement has introduced, to radical elements and associations which no way concern the progress of literature, or the essential use for which language was intended.  Were this retrogressive mode of investigating and applying principles, to obtain, among philologists, the ascendency over that which accommodates the use of language to progressive refinement, it is easy to conceive the state of barbarism to which society would, in a short time, be reduced.  Moreover, if what some call the philosophy of language, were to supersede, altogether, the province of philology as it applies to the present, progressive and refined state of English literature, the great object contemplated by the learned, in all ages, namely, the approximation of language, in common with every thing else, to that point of perfection at which it is the object of correct philology to arrive, would be frustrated.

The dubious and wildering track struck out by those innovators and visionaries who absurdly endeavor to teach modern English, by rejecting the authority and sanction of custom, and by conducting the learner back to the original combinations, and the detached, disjointed, and barbarous constructions of our progenitors, both prudence and reason,