In forming our notions of what is signified by an adjective, the mind should pause to determine the meaning of such word when used as a distinct name for some object, in order to determine the import of it in this new capacity.  A tallow candle is one made of a substance called tallow, and is employed to distinguish it from wax or spermaceti candles.  The adjective in this case, names the article of which the candle is made, and is thus a noun, but, as we are not speaking of tallow, but of candles, we place it in a new relation, and give it a new grammatical character.  But you will perceive the correctness of a former assertion, that all words may be reduced to two classes, and that adjectives are derived from nouns or verbs.

But you may inquire if there are not some adjectives in use which have no corresponding verb or noun from which they are derived.  There are many words in our language which in certain uses have become obsolete, but are retained in others.  We now use some words as verbs which originally were known only as nouns, and others as nouns which are unknown as verbs.  We also put a new construction upon words and make nouns, verbs and adjectives promiscuously and with little regard to rule or propriety.  Words at one time unknown become familiar by use, and others are laid aside for those more new or fashionable.  These facts are so obvious that I shall be excused from extending my remarks to any great length.  But I will give an example which will serve as a clew to the whole.  Take the word happy, long known only as an adjective.  Instead of following this word back to its primitive use and deriving it directly from its noun, or as a past participle, such as it is in truth, we have gone forward and made from it the noun happiness, and, in more modern days, are using the verb happify, a word, by the way, in common use, but which has not yet been honored with a place in our dictionaries; altho Mr. Webster has given us, as he says, the unauthorised (un-author-ised) word “happifying.”  Perhaps he had never heard or read some of our greatest savans, who, if not the authors, employ the word happify very frequently in the pulpit and halls of legislation, and at the bar, as well as in common parlance.

Happy is the past participle of the verb to hap, or, as afterwards used, with a nice shade of change in the meaning, to happen.  It means happied, or made happy by those favorable circumstances which have happened to us.  Whoever will read our old writers no further back than Shakspeare, will at once see the use and changes of this word.  They will find it in all its forms, simple and compound, as a verb, noun, and adjective.  “It may hap that he will come.”  It happened as I was going that I found my lost child, and was thereby made quite happy.  The man desired to happify himself and family without much labor, so he engaged in speculation; and happily he was not so hapless in his pursuit of happiness as often happens to such hap-hazard fellows, for he soon became very happy with a moderate fortune.