sentence;” or why “prepositions serve to connect words with one another, and show the relation between them,” has never been explained.  They have been passed over with little difficulty by teachers, having been furnished with lists of words in each “part of speech,” which they require their pupils to commit to memory, and “for ever after hold their peace” concerning them.  But that these words have been defined or explained in a way to be understood will not be pretended.  In justification of such ignorance, it is contended that such explanation is not essential to their proper and elegant use.  If such is the fact, we may easily account for the incorrect use of language, and exonerate children from the labor of studying etymology.

But these words have meaning, and sustain a most important rank in the expression of ideas.  They are, generally, abbreviated, compounded, and so disguised that their origin and formation are not generally known.  Horne Tooke calls them “the wheels of language, the wings of Mercury.”  He says “tho we might be dragged along without them, it would be with much difficulty, very heavily and tediously.”  But when he undertakes to show that they were constructed for this object, he mistakes their true character; for they were not invented for that purpose, but were originally employed as nouns or verbs, from which they have been corrupted by use.  And he seems to admit this fact when he says,[19] “abbreviation and corruption are always busiest with the words which are most frequently in use.  Letters, like soldiers, being very apt to desert and drop off in a long march, and especially if their passage happens to lie near the confines of an enemy’s country.”

In the original construction of language a set of literary men did not get together and manufacture a lot of words, finished thro out and exactly adapted to the expression of thought.  Had that been the case, language would doubtless have appeared in a much more regular, stiff, and formal dress, and been deprived of many of its beautiful and lofty figures, its richest and boldest expressions.  Necessity is the mother of invention.  It was not until people had ideas to communicate, that they sought a medium for the transmission of thought from one to another; and then such sounds and signs were adopted as would best answer their purpose.  But language was not then framed like a cotton mill, every part completed before it was set in operation.  Single expressions, sign-ificant of things, or ideas of things and actions, were first employed, in the most simple, plain, and easy manner.[20] As the human mind advanced in knowledge, by observing the character, relations, and differences of things, words were changed, altered, compounded, and contracted, so as to keep pace with such advancement; just as many simple parts of a machine, operating on perfect and distinct principles, may be combined together