which is left upon the
mind, or, more properly, the _impression of which_, left on the mind,
_constitutes the idea_; and a vocabulary of words are learned, which
represent these ideas, from which it may select those best calculated
to express its meaning whenever a conversation is had with another.

You will readily perceive the correctness of our first proposition, that
all language depends on the fixed and unerring laws of nature. Things
exist. A knowledge of them produces ideas in the mind, and sounds or
signs are adopted as vehicles to convey these ideas from one to another.

It would be absurd and ridiculous to suppose that any person, however
great, or learned, or wise, could employ language correctly without a
knowledge of the things expressed by that language. No matter how chaste
his words, how lofty his phrases, how sweet the intonations, or mellow
the accents. It would avail him nothing if _ideas_ were not represented
thereby. It would all be an unknown tongue to the hearer or reader. It
would not be like the loud rolling thunder, for that tells the wondrous
power of God. It would not be like the soft zephyrs of evening, the
radiance of the sun, the twinkling of the stars; for they speak the
intelligible language of sublimity itself, and tell of the kindness and
protection of our Father who is in heaven. It would not be like the
sweet notes of the choral songsters of the grove, for they warble hymns
of gratitude to God; not like the boding of the distant owl, for that
tells the profound solemnity of night; not like the hungry lion roaring
for his prey, for that tells of death and plunder; not like the distant
notes of the clarion, for that tells of blood and carnage, of tears and
anguish, of widowhood and orphanage. It can be compared to nothing but a
Babel of confusion in which their own folly is worse confounded. And
yet, I am sorry to say it, the languages of all ages and nations have
been too frequently perverted, and compiled into a heterogeneous mass
of abstruse, metaphysical volumes, whose only recommendation is the
elegant bindings in which they are enclosed.

And grammars themselves, whose pretended object is to teach the rules of
speaking and writing correctly, form but a miserable exception to this
sweeping remark. I defy any grammarian, author, or teacher of the
numberless systems, which come, like the frogs of Egypt, all of one
genus, to cover the land, to give a reasonable explanation of even