Before you proceed to parse the following examples, please to review this lecture, and then the whole seven in the manner previously recommended, namely, read one or two sentences, and then look off your book and repeat them two or three times over in your mind.  This course will enable you to retain the most important ideas advanced.  If you wish to proceed with ease and advantage, you must have the subject-matter of the preceding lectures stored in your mind.  Do not consider it an unpleasant task to comply with my requisitions, for when you shall have learned thus far, you will understand seven parts of speech; and only three more will remain to be learned.

If you have complied with the foregoing request, you may commit the following order, and then proceed in parsing.

SYSTEMATIC ORDER OF PARSING.

The order of parsing a PREPOSITION, is—­a preposition, and why?—­what does it connect?—­what relation does it show?

“He saw an antelope in the wilderness."

In is a preposition, a word which serves to connect words, and show the relation between them—­it connects the words “antelope” and “wilderness”—­and shows the relation between them.

Wilderness is a noun, the name of a place—­com. the name of a sort or species—­neut. gend. it denotes a thing without sex—­third pers. spoken of—­sing. num. it implies but one—­and in the objective case, it is the object of a relation expressed by the preposition “in,” and governed by it, according to

RULE 31. Prepositions govern the objective case.

The genius of our language will not allow us to say, Stand before he; Hand the paper to they.  Prepositions require the pronoun following them to be in the objective form, position, or case; and this requisition amounts to government.  Hence we say, “Stand before him;” “Hand the paper to them.”  Every preposition expresses a relation, and every relation must have an object:  consequently, every preposition must be followed by a noun or pronoun in the objective case.

EXERCISES IN PARSING.

The all-wise Creator bestowed the power of speech upon man, for the most excellent uses.  Augustus heard the orator pleading the client’s cause, in a flow of most powerful eloquence.  Fair Cynthia smiles serenely over nature’s soft repose.  Life’s varying schemes no more distract the laboring mind of man.  Septimius stabbed Pompey standing on the shore of Egypt.

A beam of tranquillity often plays round the heart of the truly pious man.  The thoughts of former years glide over my soul, like swift-shooting meteors over Ardven’s gloomy vales.

At the approach of day, night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast; and ghosts, wandering here and there, troop home to church-yards.

  Love still pursues an ever devious race,
  True to the winding lineaments of grace.