their want of specific terminations. The state in which each substantive exists in a sentence is more easily perceived when we are able to make use of the pronouns, most of which have three forms or cases. I, He and They, for example, are changed into Me, Him and Them to mark the accusative, or object, on which the action falls; and (by the help of the prepositions to, for, by, with, &c.) the same words supply the place of the Datives and Ablatives; while the Possessives, My, His and Their, perform, to a certain extent, the functions of the Genitives of the Latin tongue.

Though the English language has no regulated Dative case, there is, nevertheless, a form of construction (not generally attended to) which in a great degree supplies its place. When two substantives, or pronouns, are relative to the same transitive verb as accusative and dative, the latter is sufficiently marked, without a preposition, provided it is put immediately after the verb. Thus, we may write 'He gave Peter the book,' and 'I bought my boy a book,' instead of 'He gave the book to Peter,' and 'I bought a book for my boy.' Bring me my horse,'' Pay them their wages,'' I wrote him a letter,' &c. are every day expressions of the same kind. Neither is this form of construction confined to the lan

guage of common life; for examples might be cited from our most approved writers:

"Fetch me that flower: the herb I show'd thee once."

"And if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew."

Shakspeare.

Milton.

This twofold method of expressing the dative, by prepositive particles or by position, is peculiarly advantageous. It gives always a choice with regard to the harmony, and often directs the emphasis to the most effective part of the sentence,

Whatever may be the number of nouns, adjectives, participles, or other words, if there be only one verb, with its nominative, or nominatives, we should still call the whole a simple sentence. Such sentences, however, often contain several divisions, which, for the sake of clearness, requiring some mark of separation, are termed CLAUSES: because they are inclosed between commas, or other points. This combination of clauses is especially to be found in Poetry. The following, from Thomson, may serve as an in

stance:

66 For,-In her helpless years, deprived of all,
Of every stay, save innocence and Heaven,

She, with her widow'd mother, feeble, old,
And
poor, lived in a cottage, far retired
Amid the windings of a woody vale;
By solitude and deep surrounding shades,
But more by bashful modesty, conceal'd."

"She lived" is the assertion: all the rest are trappings and circumstances. The 'For,' at the beginning, does not belong to these verses, considered as a simple sentence. It is a reference to the preceding lines, and indeed only to one word, as the cause of her living in retirement:

'The lovely young Lavinia once had friends;
And fortune smiled, deceitful, on her birth:
For,-in her helpless years,' &c.

It would be no unprofitable exercise for students to mark the different arrangements of which the sentence is capable; not only by shifting the position of words, but by the transposition of entire clauses. Some of these inversions, which would be easy in prose, are prevented by reason of the versification, but others,-even whole lines,-may change places, with little injury, either to the music or the measure. To a writer like Thomson, such changes would seldom produce an improvement upon his first sketch, but young authors, and especially poets, would, ge

nerally, do well to study the arrangement of their lines before they give them to the world; for the purpose of chusing that which is most perspicuous and harmonious.

The place of a noun, whether it be in the nominative, accusative, or any other case, may be supplied by any number of words which we can conceive to be united, so as to denote a single real or imaginary being. Thus we may say :

The inevitable lot of all mankind is to die.' Lot, with its adjective inevitable, is the nominative, mankind is the genitive, and to die is the infinitive of a verb. It expresses the state of this Lot of mankind,' and is equivalent to the substantive death. We have said before that Infinitives do not differ from Nouns; and to die, for death, was once the usual mode of writing. So in Ben Jonson:

"And sculpture that can keepe thee from to dye."

And in Spenser:

"For not to have been dipp'd in Lethe's lake

Could save the son of Thetis from to dye.” These seem, in our day, to be peculiar applications of the verb; but such phrases as He deserves death,' and 'He deserves to die,' are of common occurrence and are accounted synonym

ous.

"The profound respect [which] I bear to the gracious Prince who governs this country, with no less honour to himself than with satisfaction to his subjects, and who restores you to your rank under his standard, will save you from a multitude of reproaches." Junius.

The nominative of the verb will save' is 'respect,' but it is respect of a particular kind, modified by the half-narrative which precedes the verb, and which might, if we pleased, be included in a parenthesis. You is the accusative, or person saved; and the dative, or thing from which he is saved, is a multitude of reproaches. In a few words:

Respect for my Sovereign will save you from a multitude of reproaches.'

When two, or more, simple sentences belong to one consequence, so as not to be separable without disjointing the general idea, and thereby rendering the subject incomplete, these subordinate assertions are conjoined into one COMPOUND SENTENCE. Thus:

'Peter loves Mary,'-and
'Mary is beautiful,'

are simple sentences; but:

'Peter loves Mary because she is beautiful,' is a compound of both sentences; and, in consequence of the conjunction because, expresses

F