compounded, and contracted, so as to keep pace with such advancement;
just as many simple parts of a machine, operating on perfect and
distinct principles, may be combined together and form a most
complicated, curious, and powerful engine, of astonishing power, and
great utility. In the adaptation of steam to locomotives, the principles
on which stationary engines operated were somewhat modified. Some
wheels, shafts, bands, screws, etc., were omitted, others of a different
kind were added, till the whole appeared in a new character, and the
engine, before fixed to a spot, was seen traversing the road with
immense rapidity. The principles of the former engine, so far from being
unessential, were indispensable to the construction of the new one, and
should be clearly understood by him who would build or _use_ the latter.
So, in the formation of language, simple _first_ principles must be
observed and traced thro all their ramifications, by those who would
obtain a clear and thoro knowledge of it, or "read and write it with
propriety."

In mathematics, the four simple rules, addition, subtraction,
multiplication, and division, form the basis on which that interesting
science depends. The modifications of these rules, according to their
various capabilities, will give a complete knowledge of all that can be
known of numbers, relations, and proportions, an acme to which all may
aspire, tho none have yet attained it. The principles of language are
equally simple, and, if correctly explained, may be as well understood.
But the difficulty under which we labor in this department of science,
is the paucity of _means_ to trace back to their original form and
meaning many words and phrases in common use among us. Language has been
employed as the vehicle of thought, for six thousand years, and in that
long space has undergone many and strange modifications. At the
dispersion from Babel, and the "confusion of tongues" occasioned
thereby, people were thrown upon their own resources, and left to pick
up by piecemeal such shreds as should afterwards be wove into a system,
and adopted by their respective nations. Wars, pestilence, and famine,
as well as commerce, enterprize, literature, and religion, brought the
different nations into intercourse with each other; and changes were
thus produced in the languages of such people. Whoever will take the
trouble to compare the idioms of speech adopted by those nations whose
affairs, civil, p