e depends. Distinct
impressions of sounds should be made on their minds, and the characters
which represent them should be inseparably associated with them. They
will then learn tunes from the compositions of those sounds, as
represented by notes. By dint of application, they will soon become
familiar with these principles, if possessed of a talent for song, and
may soon pass the acme with ease, accuracy, and rapidity. But there are
those who may sing very prettily, and tolerably correct, who have never
studied the first rudiments of music. But such can never become adepts
in the science.

So there are those who use language correctly, who never saw the inside
of a grammar book, and who never examined the principles on which it
depends. But this, by no means, proves that it is better to sing by
rote, than "with the understanding." These rudiments, however, should
form the business of the nursery, rather than the grammar school. Every
mother should labor to give distinct and forcible impressions of such
things as she learns her children to _name_. She should carefully
prevent them from employing words which have no meaning, and still more
strictly should she guard them against attaching a wrong meaning to
those they do use. In this way, the foundation for future knowledge and
eminence, would be laid broad and deep. But I wander.

We attach names to imaginary things; as ghosts, genii, imps.

To this class belong the thirty thousand gods of the ancients, who were
frequently represented by emblems significant of the characters attached
to them. We employ words to name these imaginary things, so that we read
and converse about them understandingly, tho our ideas may be
exceedingly various.

Nouns are also used to express negation, of which no idea can be formed.
In this case, the mind rests on what exists, and employs a word to
express what does not. We speak of _a hole_ in the paper. But we can
form no idea of _a hole_, separated from the surrounding substances.
Remove the parts of the paper till nothing is left, and then you may
look in vain for the hole. It is not there. It never was. In the same
way we use the words nothing, nobody, nonentity, vacuum, absence, space,
blank, annihilation, and oblivion. These are relative terms, to be
understood in reference to things which are known to exist. We must know
of _some_thing before we can talk of _no_thing, of an entity before we
can think of nonentity.

In a similar way