sister of English Saxon, it is a rule that under certain circumstances it shall be so placed; and in the racy, idiomatic language of our elder writers, it is frequently found to be so; though perhaps few discover why this style to our ears soundeth better and more forcible. Inclined to, -hoped for, and the like, are phrases of this nature, and as happily this old Saxon form retaineth its hold in the spoken, though it be losing it in the written language, we may peradventure hope that writers will at last find out that when addressing English ears, they should use the English tongue.

There is another fault heard frequently in common parlance, but not yet, as I think, written: videlicet, the use of the noun adjective like with a verb and its nominative; a position which it hath no claim to, in the room of the conjunction as. Thus we shall hear school boys and young college men say 'I did that like he did,' instead of-' as he did'—an error, which though it have not yet found its way into print, will do so ere long, unless this mode of speaking be corrected.

And so much may suffice for the errors in grammar of such as are by courtesy supposed well instructed on such points. But there is a

further error in books especially devoted to the science, which is of yet greater import, as it not unfrequently may vitiate the sense of a translation, and thus deceive the unlearned reader. Every foreigner who would learn English, knoweth to his cost, that if in the just use of shall, and will, lieth one of the main beauties of the language, so also doth its greatest difficulty: yet it is for him both sad and strange that no one hath clearly set it forth in any work of grammar. In such works I do constantly find the future tense of verbs written I shall or will, as though their use were indifferent: a fault which leadeth to many mistakes, and much mockery of strangers, by those, who, from long habit, have gained the true use of these words. Neither is this without ill effect in the most important of all writings; for in more than one passage in Holy Writ a careless putting of one word for the other by the translators, doth strangely confound our understanding thereof. For according to common usage, which in a living and spoken tongue is the best rule of signification, the simple future tense runneth thus,

and if any one will change this arrangement, he will perceive that he sayeth not what he meaneth to express; as is well seen in the oft repeated jest of the Frenchman in the water, exclaiming "I will be drowned-nobody shall help me," wherein by confounding the different persons of the simple future tense, an extraordinary perversion of sense is occasioned. Let us but reverse the order thus

and we shall find that in this form, which for distinction's sake I shall call the second future; it hath an imperative force not by any means belonging to the first. And though this distinction be wanting in those modern tongues which are derived from the Latin, which hath it not, yet we find it to exist in some measure in the Greek, which hath an imperative future; and in the Hebrew, which hath besides the simple active voice, and the future thereunto belonging, another voice which is causative; the future whereof partaketh of the nature of our second future, as above noted, and this voice the Rabbins are wont to call Hiphil. Now in that passage of the book of Genesis where the LORD

H

GOD is said to speak to Adam and his wife after their transgression, the tense used is not in Hiphil, but in the simple active future, notwithstanding which the translators have rendered it by thou shalt,' whereby the notions of the unlearned are much confounded, and they do rather see therein a stern judge condemning, than a good father telling his children the necessary consequences of what they had done; they having been forewarned that, according to the nature given them, such consequences must ensue. A serious evil resulting from a seemingly small grammatical fault!

It might well nigh be thought from the commonness of this confusion in books professing to treat on grammar, that the English nation was jealous of all others, and resolved by keeping the key of their language in a labyrinth, to prevent any but themselves from attaining to the use thereof: a great reproach to the people, were it true: but scarcely a less reproach is it, that there should be so general an ignorance of grammar rules as to render the right speaking our language a matter of custom only, no one being able to give any good reason therefor.

OF CERTAIN ERRORS CURRENT IN

REGARD TO DISEASE AND

MEDICINE.

N times past when a man fell sick, he was

IN

wont, if he were great enough to find that expense practicable, to send to some oracle for counsel; as Ahaziah, albeit he might have known better, seeing that he was of Israelitish blood, sent messengers unto Baal, the god of flies, at Ekron, to inquire concerning the disease he was suffering from: and if this habit infected even the people chosen to be the depositaries of the truth, we may well guess how prevalent it must have been among the heathen. To this succeeded the belief in particular shrines of Christian saints, and you shall even yet see, it may be, in some chapel of this kind in a remote place, where the ancient superstition surviveth merely under a change of name, as great a number of ex voto offerings of silver and waxen eyes, legs, arms, and the like, as ever covered the walls of the temple at Delphi. Now