tical. The
former are professedly seventeen in number; but, many of them consisting of
two, three, or four distinct parts, their real number is more properly
thirty-four. The latter are reckoned forty-five; but if we count their
separate parts, they are fifty-six: and these with the others make
_ninety_. I shall not particularize their faults. All of them are
whimsically conceived and badly written. In short, had the author artfully
designed to turn English grammar into a subject of contempt and ridicule,
by as ugly a caricature of it as he could possibly invent, he could never
have hit the mark more exactly than he has done in this "_new
theory_"--this rash production, on which he so sincerely prides himself.
Alone as he is, in well-nigh all his opinions, behold how prettily he talks
of "COMMON SENSE, the only sure foundation of any theory!" and says, "On
this imperishable foundation--this rock of eternal endurance--I rear my
superstructure, _the edifice of scientific truth_, the temple of
Grammatical consistency!"--_Peirce's Preface_, p. 7.

OBS. 13.--For the teaching of different languages, it has been thought very
desirable to have "a Series of grammars, Greek, Latin, English, &c., all,
so far as general principles are concerned, upon the same plan, and as
nearly in the same words as the genius of the languages would permit."--See
_Bullions's Principles of E. Gram._, 2d Ed., pp. iv and vi. This scheme
necessarily demands a minute comparison not only of the several languages
themselves, but also of the various grammars in which their principles,
whether general or particular, are developed. For by no other means can it
be ascertained to what extent uniformity of this kind will be either
profitable to the learner, or consistent with truth. Some books have been
published, which, it is pretended, are thus accommodated to one an other,
and to the languages of which they treat. But, in view of the fact, that
the Latin or the Greek grammars now extant, (to say nothing of the French,
Spanish, and others,) are almost as various and as faulty as the English, I
am apprehensive that this is a desideratum not soon to be realized,--a
design more plausible in the prospectus, than feasible in the attempt. At
any rate, the grammars of different languages must needs differ as much as
do the languages themselves, otherwise some of their principles will of
course be false; and we have already seen that the nonobservance of this
has been