and form a most complicated, curious, and powerful engine, of astonishing power, and great utility.  In the adaptation of steam to locomotives, the principles on which stationary engines operated were somewhat modified.  Some wheels, shafts, bands, screws, etc., were omitted, others of a different kind were added, till the whole appeared in a new character, and the engine, before fixed to a spot, was seen traversing the road with immense rapidity.  The principles of the former engine, so far from being unessential, were indispensable to the construction of the new one, and should be clearly understood by him who would build or use the latter.  So, in the formation of language, simple first principles must be observed and traced thro all their ramifications, by those who would obtain a clear and thoro knowledge of it, or “read and write it with propriety.”

In mathematics, the four simple rules, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, form the basis on which that interesting science depends.  The modifications of these rules, according to their various capabilities, will give a complete knowledge of all that can be known of numbers, relations, and proportions, an acme to which all may aspire, tho none have yet attained it.  The principles of language are equally simple, and, if correctly explained, may be as well understood.  But the difficulty under which we labor in this department of science, is the paucity of means to trace back to their original form and meaning many words and phrases in common use among us.  Language has been employed as the vehicle of thought, for six thousand years, and in that long space has undergone many and strange modifications.  At the dispersion from Babel, and the “confusion of tongues” occasioned thereby, people were thrown upon their own resources, and left to pick up by piecemeal such shreds as should afterwards be wove into a system, and adopted by their respective nations.  Wars, pestilence, and famine, as well as commerce, enterprize, literature, and religion, brought the different nations into intercourse with each other; and changes were thus produced in the languages of such people.  Whoever will take the trouble to compare the idioms of speech adopted by those nations whose affairs, civil, political, and religious, are most intimately allied, will be convinced of the correctness of the sentiment now advanced.

In the lapse of ages, words would not only change their form, but in a measure their meaning, so as to correspond with the ideas of those who use them.  Some would become obsolete, and others be adopted in their stead.  Many words are found in the Bible which are not in common use; and the manner of spelling, as well as some entire words, have been changed in that book, since it was translated and first published in 1610.  With these examples you are familiar, and I shall be spared the necessity of quoting them.  I have already made some extracts from old writers, and may have occasion to do so again before I close this lecture.