the reach of common
capacities; and by all, cold, lifeless, and uninteresting, full of
doubts and perplexities, where the wisest have differed, and the firmest
often changed opinions.

All this difficulty originates, I apprehend, in the wrong view that is
taken of the subject. The most beautiful landscape may appear at great
disadvantage, if viewed from an unfavorable position. I would be slow to
believe that the means on which depends the whole business of the
community, the study of the sciences, all improvement upon the past, the
history of all nations in all ages of the world, social intercourse,
oral or written, and, in a great measure, the knowledge of God, and the
hopes of immortality, can be either unworthy of study, or, if rightly
explained, uninteresting in the acquisition. In fact, on the principles
I am about to advocate, I have seen the deepest interest manifested,
from the small child to the grey-headed sire, from the mere novice to
the statesman and philosopher, and all alike seemed to be edified and
improved by the attention bestowed upon the subject.

I confess, however, that with the mention of _grammar_, an association
of ideas are called up by no means agreeable. The mind involuntarily
reverts to the days of childhood, when we were compelled, at the risk of
our bodily safety, to commit to memory a set of arbitrary rules, which
we could neither understand nor apply in the correct use of language.
Formerly it was never dreamed that grammar depended on any higher
authority than the books put into our hands. And learners were not only
dissuaded, but strictly forbidden to go beyond the limits set them in
the etymological and syntactical rules of the authors to whom they were
referred. If a query ever arose in their minds, and they modestly
proposed a plain question as to the _why_ and _wherefore_ things were
thus, instead of giving an answer according to common sense, in a way to
be understood, the authorities were pondered over, till some rule or
remark could be found which would apply, and this settled the matter
with "proof as strong as holy writ." In this way an end may be put to
the inquiry; but the thinking mind will hardly be satisfied with the
mere opinion of another, who has no evidence to afford, save the
undisputed dignity of his station, or the authority of books. This
course is easily accounted for. Rather than expose his own ignorance,
the teacher quotes the printed ignorance of others, th