Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand,
They rave, recite, and madden round the land.

What walls can guard me, or what shades can hide,
They pierce my thickets, through my grot they glide;
By land, by water, they renew the charge,

They stop the chariot, and they board the barge."
Ep. to Dr. Arbuthnot.

BYRON.

"Day glimmers o'er the dying and the dead,
The cloven cuirass, and the helmless head;
The war-horse, masterless, is on the earth,
And that last gasp hath burst his bloody girth,
And near, yet quivering with what life remained,
The heel that urged him, and the hand that reined;

And some too near that rolling torrent lie,

Whose waters mock the lip of those that die." Lara.

SOUTHEY.

"In Mr. Bacon's parish, the vicarage, though humble as the benefice itself, was the neatest. The cottage in which he and Margaret passed their childhood, had been remarkable for that comfort which is the result and the reward of order and neatness, and when the reunion which blessed them both rendered the remembrance of those years delightful, they returned in this respect to the way in which they had been trained up, practised the economy which they had learned there, and loved to think how entirely their course of life, in all its circumstances, would be after the heart of that person, if she could behold it, whose memory they both with equal affection cherished. After his bereavement, it was one of the widower's pensive pleasures to keep everything in the same state as when Margaret was living. Nothing was neglected that she used to do, or would have done. The flowers were tended as carefully as if she were still to enjoy their fragrance and their beauty; and the birds, who came in winter for their crumbs, were fed as duly for her sake as they had formerly been by her hands."-The Doctor.

If the reader is not now satisfied that the masters of our language wrote that of their forefathers, he may search farther for himself; he will find the same results wherever a style is remarkable for its ease or its force. Let

the following passages, not certainly captivating to the ear, be compared with the above.

"It is the most probable supposition that he did not owe his exaltation in any great degree, if at all, to private favor or recom mendations, but principally or entirely to his character, which pointed him out as the person best qualified to adorn the station and to support its dignity. It is stated, and probably with truth, in a narrative of his life, that his zeal, candor, and learning, his exemplary behavior in a lower state, his public spirit in many scenes of life, his constancy in suffering, his unbiassed deportment, all concurred to recommend him as a fit governor of the Church in that turbulent age."-D'Oyly's Life of Abp. Sancroft.

"At this happy period of the world, we cannot reflect on the idolatry of ancient times, without astonishment at the infatuation which has so inveterately, in various regions clouded the human mind. We feel indeed that it is impossible to contemplate the grand canopy of the universe, to descry the planets moving in governed order; to find comets darting from system to system in an orbit, of which a space almost incalculable is the diameter to discover constellations beyond constellations in endless multiplicity, and to have indications of the light of others whose full beam of splendor has not yet reached us: we feel it impossible to meditate on these innumerable theatres of existence, without feeling with awe that this amazing magnificence of nature announces an Author tremendously great. But it is very difficult to conceive how the lessons of the skies should have taught that localizing idolatry which their transcendent grandeur and almost infinite extent seem expressly calculated to destroy.

Turner's Hist. of the Anglo-Saxons.

"From some passages in these letters it will be seen, that Foster began very early the cultivation of his conversational powers, instead of leaving this invaluable instrument of social pleasure and improvement to the casual excitement of circumstances. The result was such as might be expected from a mind which was receiving constant accessions from observation and reflection. No one could be on terms of familiar intercourse with Foster without being struck with his affluence of thought and imagery, and the readiness with which the most insignificant object or incident was taken as a kind of nucleus, on which was rapidly formed an assemblage of original remarks."

Life of John Foster.

The contrast between these latter quotations and the former hardly wants a comment. It is only needful to glance on the words in italics, to see why the latter are so stiff and so un-English in their style;-they have flouted at their good old mother-tongue, and she has had her revenge. It would be easy to multiply instances of faulty composition, for unfortunately they are too common; but it would be a thankless task, and would fill a space which this small treatise can ill afford. One passing remark may be allowed on the first class of quotations-that Lord Byron is the most completely English of any of the writers quoted, excepting the translators of the Bible, Shakspeare, and Swift. The admirers of his writings, perhaps, have hardly been aware of the source from which he drew his forcible expression-or guessed that much of the charm of his style was its thoroughly Saxon character; his imitators undoubtedly have been far from divining this passages may be found where he has purposely availed himself of the rich variety which English affords by its naturalization of words of all languages; but his language is habitually idiomatic; witness his letters.

And here the grammarian must pause. The fine taste which suits the style to the subject-which always selects the most appropriate word, and is easy or forcible as the occasion requires, cannot be taught by rule-it must be gained by the thought and study of the writer himself; and the only rules to be given are, never to let an unweighed expression pass, but to re-write even a letter of compliment, if on reading it over it appears that it might have been put in better phrase. To watch what displeases our ear in the writings of others, and avoid it; to observe what pleases particularly, and analyze if possible the causes of the pleasure it affords, so as to be able ourselves to reproduce those causes; and all this from youth up. At first, the judgment may be faulty-the taste false; but time and experience will correct these errors, and the man who has early made up his mind to write and speak well, even if he do not immediately attain his object, will rarely fail, by the time he reaches mature age, to have formed a correct taste, and a good style.

ON THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF GRAMMAR.

THE term grammar is derived from a Greek word ypapua, signifying a word or letter; but the English term is used to express that artificial arrangement of language, which nations have agreed on as the best for conveying the meaning of the speaker or the writer. Each nation varies this slightly, but the great distinctions, founded on the nature of things, will be found everywhere, and these distinctions may be reduced to rule, and form a kind of universal grammar, which will be applicable to all languages. These will be presently considered more at length; it may suffice here to give as an example of them the different relations in which persons and things stand to each other; the different times in which actions may take place.

It is clear that in all communities things are possessed, given, bought and sold, &c., and where these relations exist, a method of expressing such relation must be invented; and even if not expressed, the relation is not the less real. The Latin expresses this by putting the name of the possessor and the recipient respectively in the genitive and dative case,-that of the thing possessed or given, bought or sold, in the accusative; and each of these cases is in general marked by a different termination: but even where it is not so, the grammatical distinction is the same: the person is not less the possessor, even if his name undergo no change in speaking of him in that relative position:-the thing is equally bought, &c., whether the termination of its name remains the same or not; for among all nations, and in all countries, the thing which is the subject of an action and not its cause, must be in

the accusative case, or, in other words, it stands in the relation of patient or undergoer of the action.

It is equally clear that when things are possessed, or given, bought or sold, the action must be either going on and therefore present, as in the case of possession ;—or past, or future; but this must generally be subject to a variety of modifications, which give occasion to the various modes and times, or tenses of the action or verb, and these definite relations of things and times or modes of action form the foundation of all grammar.

Languages may be divided into families, each family having a certain resemblance to the common parent running through all the members of it; and not unfrequently even history is glad to supply its own deficiencies by the aid of this family likeness, which is the unmistakeable sign of former connection between the races. It is not my object in this small work, to go into this part of the philosophy of language, which would require much more space than can here be afforded: leaving the question, therefore, of how the grammar of the northern tongues gained its resemblance to the Greek, to those who are inclined to trace the migrations of nations,-I shall simply observe that the nations both of the north and south of Europe have evidently derived many of their grammatical forms from that language; but that these two great divisions are collateral, not lineal descendants. The type of all the Teutonic dialects would probably be found in some ancient one now lost-that of the nations of the south of Europe is in great measure the Latin, which fortunately we retain the knowledge of.

Rome was for some ages the metropolis of the Christian world, and the seat of the chief science which it then possessed, and thus it happened that the language of Rome was studied by the Teutones, no less than it had been in

* From the nations of the north probably the Slavonic tribes must be excepted, at least they do not own the same descent as the Teutonic; and in the south the Biscayan and some other dialects offer anomalies: the assertion, therefore, must be considered as a very general one, which is intended to approximate to the truth, rather than as one to be taken in a strict sense.