ment, made of the hides of animals, was an invention of later times. Paper was not invented before the fourteenth century.

STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE.

THE common divifion of Speech into eight parts,

nouns, pronouns, verbs, participles, adverbs, prepofitions, interjections, and conjunctions, is not very accurate; fince under the general term of nouns it comprehends both substantives and adjectives, which are parts of fpeech effentially diftinct. Yet, as we are most accuf tomed to this divifion, and as logical exactness is not neceffary to our prefent defign; we fhall adopt these terms, which habit has made familiar to us.

Substantive nouns are the foundation of Grammar, and the most antient part of fpeech. When men had advanced beyond fimple interjections or exclamations of paffion, and had begun to communicate their ideas to each other; they would be obliged to affign names to objects, by which they were furrounded. Wherever a favage looked, he beheld forefts and trees. To diftinguifh each by a feparate name would have been endless. Their common qualities; fuch, as fpringing from a root, and bearing branches and leaves, would fuggeft a general idea and a general name. The genus, tree, was afterward fubdivided into its feveral fpecies of oak, elm, afh, &c. upon experience and obfervation.

Still however only general terms were used in speech. For oak, elm, and afh were names of whole claffes of objects, each of which comprehended an immenfe number of undiftinguifhed individuals. Thus, when the nouns man, lion, or tree, were mentioned in converfation, it could not be known, which man, lion, or tree was meant among the multitude, comprehended under one name. Hence arofe a very useful contrivance for determining the individual object intended by mean of that part of speech, called the Article. In English we have two articles, a and the ; a is more general, the more definite. The Greeks had but one, which agrees with our definite article the. They fupplied the place of our article a by the abfence of their article; thus Averos fignifies a man; Aviews the man. The Latins had no article; but in the room of it used the pronouns hic, ille, ifte. This however feems a defect in their language; fince articles certainly contribute much to perfpicuity and precision.

To preceive the truth of this remark, obferve the different imports of the following expreffions; "The fon "of a king, the son of the king, a fon of the king's." Each of these three phrafes has a feparate meaning, too obvious to be misunderstood. But in Latin "filius re"gis" is entirely undetermined; it may bear either of the three fenfes mentioned.

Beside this quality of being defined by the article

three affections belong to nouns, number, gender and cafe, which deferve to be confidered.

NUMBER, as it makes a noun fignificant of one or more, is fingular or plural; a distinction found in all tongues; which must have been coeval with the origin of language fince there were few things, which men had more frequent neceffity of expreffing, than the dif tinction between one and more. In the Hebrew, Greek,. and fome other antient languages, we find not only a plural, but a dual number; the origin of which may very naturally be accounted for, as feparate terms of numbering were yet undiscovered, and one, two, and many were all, or at leaft the principal numeral diftinct, ions, which men at firft had any occafion to make.

GENDER, which is founded on the diftinction of the two fexes, can with propriety be applied to the names of living creatures only. All other nouns ought to be of the neuter gender. Yet in moft languages the fame diftinction is applied to a great number of inanimate objects. Thus in the Latin tongue enfis, a fword, is mafculine'; fagitta, an arrow, is feminine; and this af fignation of fex to inanimate objects often appears entirely capricious. In the Greek and Latin however all inanimate objects are not distributed into masculine and feminine ; but many of them are claffed, where all ought to be, under the neuter gender; as faxum, a rock ; mare, the fea. But in the French and Italian tongues.

the neuter gender is wholly unknown, all their names of inanimate objects being put upon the fame footing with those of living creatures, and diftributed without referve into mafculine and feminine. In the English language all nouns, literally used, that are not names of living creatures, are neuter; and ours is perhaps the only tongue (except the Chinese, which is said to resemble it in this particular) in which the diftinction of gender is philofophically applied.

CASE denotes the state or relation, which one object bears to another, by fome variation of the name of that object generally in the final letters, and by fome languages in the initial. All tongues however do not agree in this mode of expreffion. Declenfion is used by the Greek and Latin; but in the English, French, and Italian, it is not found; or at most it exists in a very imperfect state. These languages exprefs the relations of objects by prepofitions, which are the names of thofe relations prefixed to the names of objects. English nouns have no cafe, except a fort of genitive, commonly formed by adding the letters to the noun; as when we fay "Pope's Dunciad," meaning the Dunciad of Pope.

Whether the moderns have given beauty or utility to language by the abolition of cafes may perhaps be doubted. They have however certainly rendered it more fimple by removing that intricacy, which arofe from different forms of declenfion, and from the irregu

larities of the feveral declenfions. But in obtaining this fimplicity, it must be confeffed, we have filled language with a multitude of thofe little words, called prepofitions; which by perpetually occurring in every fentence encumber speech, and by rendering it more prolix enervate its force. The found of modern language is also lefs agreeable to the ear, being deprived of that variety and fweetness, which arose from the length of words, and the change of terminations, occafioned by cafes in the Greek and Latin. But perhaps the. greatest disadvantage, we sustain by the abolition of cafes, is the lofs of that liberty of transposition in the arrangement of words, which the antient languages enjoyed.

PRONOUNS are the reprefentatives of nouns, and are fubject to the fame modifications of number, gender, and cafe. We may obferve however, that the pronouns of the first and fecond perfon, I and thou, have no diftinc. tion of gender in any language; for, as they always re. fer to perfons prefent, their fex must be known, and therefore needs not to be marked by their pronouns. But, as the third perfon may be absent, or unknown, the diftinction of gender there becomes requifite; and accordingly in English it hath all the three genders, le, fie, it.

ADJECTIVES, as strong, weak, handsome, ugly, are the plaineft and moft fimple in that clafs of words, which