the time of its imperial government by the provinces, and thus it came to pass that a grammar school," par excellence, was a school where the Latin language was taught. From that time, when the barbarous vernacular dialects were held unworthy the notice of a scholar,-down to the present era, strange changes have taken place, yet the learned world has not yet emancipated itself from the trammels of Rome; and English, in classical hands, is too often made to wear the toga, however ill it may suit this northern clime. Indeed, unless the prestige of past ages still clung closely to the Latin, it would be difficult to say why its grammar has been chosen as that which is to introduce our youth to that branch of science; for the Greek offers many points of resemblance to our own language which are not to be found in the Latin. Thus, the article, so freely used in all the tongues which have sprung from an admixture of the northern tribes, is to be found in the Greek, but not at all in the Latin :-the ablative case, wanting in the Teutonic family, is also wanting in the Greek, and one farther especial resemblance in the grammatical structure of English and Greek, is to be found in the use of the genitive case instead of the possessive pronoun. His mother, and pnrnp avre, are identical in their construction. If then, in all families of language, it be desirable to take the one most complete in its grammatical arrangement as a key to the rest, Greek has far the best claim to be first taught, both from its rank as the ancestor of both divisions of the European languages, and from the greater resemblance which subsists between it and the northern dialects. As, however, it has not yet thrust Latin from its chair, it will be requisite to use them both in elucidating the principles of grammar, with a view to the applying those principles more especially to the formation of a pure style of English writing."

But it is not merely in writing our own language that an acquaintance with the general principles of grammar is useful; the study of foreign languages is greatly facilitated by it; for having laid down certain distinctions. which exist in the very nature of things, we need not go over them any more, and have therefore only to apply ourselves to the peculiarities of the tongue we would

learn, which in general are but few, and are easily remembered from their paucity: whereas, if we have to go over the whole system of grammar with every fresh language, it becomes a labor of no ordinary kind.

Let us suppose, on the contrary, that we have taken the Greek grammar as a sort of general type of that of the European languages: when we would acquire one of these, we shall have to ask ourselves first a few general questions: as, has it, besides the two necessary numbers of singular and plural, also a dual? No. Has it, besides the requisite active and passive voice of the verb, also a middle? No. Has it a distinct termination to mark the cases, &c.? The peculiarity of each language in these respects will be a thing to be examined and remembered; and thus, by questioning ourselves through the various parts of grammatical construction, we shall easily detect those which require especial attention, and by fixing them in our minds, find that we have mastered at once the most difficult part of all foreign languages-namely, the idiom.

I will now endeavor to show what are those great distinctions which may be said to form a system of universal grammar, and whereon they are based.

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR.

I. THE different words used between man and man for the communication of ideas necessarily divide themselves into different classes, called technically "parts of speech," which must exist in all languages; for there must be

1. The name imposed on the thing we mean to designate, or NOUN SUBSTANTIVE.

2. The action by which that thing is in some way connected with ourselves or others, or VERB.

And these two great classes must find place in every language, for they are the foundation of all speech: but as soon as more precision of language is required, other classes of words must come into use, for

3. The thing will have some quality or appearance by which it is to be distinguished from other things of a like kind; and the word expressing this quality or appearance is called a NOUN ADJECTIVE.

4. We seek to shorten the sentence and avoid repetition, by substituting some smaller word instead of constantly using the noun; and this substitute we call a PRONOUN.

5. The Verb will have some limitation or modification of its action; and this is an Adverb. 6. The thing will stand in some relation to something else; for all that has material form must have a place as regards some other material object, and if this be not expressed by an especial inflection in the word, (which is technically called a case,) it is signified by some separate word, which, from its usual place as regards the substantive,* is called a PREPOSITION.

* As, AFTER the king-BEFORE man—UNDER restraint.

7. As language becomes more complicated, particles which may connect one limb of a sentence with another become needful, and these are termed from their office CONJUNCTIONS.

8. Passion will be expressed by exclamation, and this is called an INTERJECTION.

II. All things must be either one or more; hence the distinction in grammar of SINGULAR and PLURAL as regards number. A few languages have a further distinction of a dual number, but this cannot be considered as a part of universal grammar, and must remain one of the peculiarities of the Greek, and perhaps of earlier tongues: for as families must consist in the first place of two only, it would seem as if the dual number must be the more ancient. A single human pair would have an expression for what was done separately or what was done in conjunction: the plural number would not be called for till society became more complex;-thus in all modern languages which serve the uses of men who are wont to carry on their affairs in relation to many, the dual is to be found no longer, being entirely superseded by the plural. Even in the Latin, which is only a few removes from the Greek, the dual is already dropped.

III. As all things must be one or more, so in the order of creation are they also male, or female, or devoid of sex altogether; and these distinctions of gender are termed MASCULINE, FEMININE and NEUTER. By what would seem an odd caprice, most nations, ancient and modern, have chosen to bestow a gender on things which in reality possess none: the English alone herein follow nature, and make all inanimate things and abstract ideas of the neuter gender.

IV. Whatever action is performed must be either done or suffered by some individual; unless indeed by a metaphor we attribute agency to an inanimate object: for we say that the knife cuts, although we very well know that if left untouched it can do nothing of the kind. This difference of action makes what is technically called a voicethat is, what the man does is expressed by the ACTIVE VOICE; what he suffers by the PASSIVE VOICE; a distinction retained in all languages: in many, other voices are

added, implying not only doing and suffering, but causing to do or suffer, &c., as in the Hebrew; or as sometimes in the Middle Voice of the Greek, and in the reflected verb of the French, signifying an action of the individual on himself.

V. Whatever action is performed must be performed in some time, and as relates to the speaker it must be either past, present, or future: and this distinction is universally found in the times or tenses of the verb, which are more or less complicated according to the genius of the different nations; but the broad distinction exists everywhere, with this slight variation, that some few do not acknowledge the present as a sufficiently durable time to be worthy of an especial expression. The Hebrew has only a past and a future time.

I

VI. As action cannot take place without an agent and patient, i. e., a person or thing undergoing the action, so by virtue of that action, the person or thing is placed in some peculiar relation to the other. Thus a thing belongs to, or is given to, or is taken from, a person, or it is subject to some action, or it is simply named as the agent; or it is called to; and if these varieties of situation are implied in the word itself, it is said to be in such and such a case; and this relation of things must always exist, though in some modern languages the distinction by an especial inflection is abandoned. For it is clear that when say I have sold my horse, I mean to imply a different relation between myself and the animal from that implied in, my horse has thrown me:-in the Latin, in the first example, the word horse would be in the accusative case with a distinct termination :-in the English and many modern languages the termination is the same; but as the relation between the man and the animal is still understood to be expressed in the substantive, without the aid of any preposition, it must be considered to be in the accusative case, albeit the inflection be wanting. In the second example, the horse is the agent, or nominative case, and the man is in the accusative; but here, even in the English, the csse has its peculiar form, for me is the accusative case of 1.

VII. As all qualities are found to exist in more or