our vernacular tongue, that there is in contending, that their primitive meaning has an ascendency over the influence of the principle of association in changing, and the power of custom in determining, the import of words.  Many of our words are derived from the Greek, Roman, French, Spanish, Italian, and German languages; and the only use we can make of their originals, is to render them subservient to the force of custom in cases in which general usage has not varied from the primitive signification.  Moreover, let the advocates of a mere philosophical investigation of the language, extend their system as far as a radical analysis will warrant them, and, with Horne Tooke, not only consider adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections, as abbreviations of nouns and verbs, but, on their own responsibility, apply them, in teaching the language, in compliance with their radical import, and what would such a course avail them against the power of custom, and the influence of association and refinement?  Let them show me one grammarian, produced by such a course of instruction, and they will exhibit a “philosophical” miracle.  They might as well undertake to teach architecture, by having recourse to its origin, as represented by booths and tents.  In addition to this, when we consider the great number of obsolete words, from which many now in use are derived, the original meaning of which cannot be ascertained, and, also, the multitude whose signification has been changed by the principle of association, it is preposterous to think, that a mere philosophical mode of investigating and teaching the language, is the one by which its significancy can be enforced, its correctness determined, its use comprehended, and its improvement extended.  Before what commonly passes for a philosophical manner of developing the language can successfully be made the medium through which it can be comprehended, in all its present combinations, relations, and dependances, it must undergo a thorough retrogressive change, in all those combinations, relations, and dependances, even to the last letter of the alphabet.  And before we can consent to this radical modification and retrograde ratio of the English language, we must agree to revive the customs, the habits, and the precise language of our progenitors, the Goths and Vandals.  Were all the advocates for the introduction of such philosophical grammars into common schools, at once to enter on their pilgrimage, and recede into the native obscurity and barbarity of the ancient Britons, Picts, and Vandals, it is believed, that the cause of learning and refinement would not suffer greatly by their loss, and that the good sense of the present age, would not allow many of our best teachers to be of the party.

The last consideration which I shall give a philosophical manner of investigating and enforcing the English language, is, that by this mode of analyzing and reducing it to practice, it cannot,