THE Author has recently Revised these Books, and has condensed, simplified, and otherwise improved his System, which is now preferred by almost all the leading Teachers of the Country.

They form a connected Series; but each book is complete in itself, and may be used independently of the others. Their best recommendation is the fact that they are in general use as Text-Books throughout the United States.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by
SAMUEL & GREENE, LL.D.,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

WESTCOTT & THOMSON,

Stereotypers and Electrotypers, Phila.

E. DEACON.
Printers, Phila.

PREFACE.

To form a complete judgment of the merits of a sentence, something more than a knowledge of its outward form is necessary. A sentence is thought (sententia) as well as expression, or, rather, thought and expression in the most intimate union. This union is not mechanical, but vital-a union in which thought is life, and outward form a definite organism for its manifestation. As an external form, a sentence consists of words, phrases, and clauses variously classified and combined. As a thought, it is some judgment, opinion, command, inquiry, request, intimation, or sentiment of the speaker. No method of analysis is complete which does not recognize the sentence in both these aspects.

The external elements are the most conspicuous-in fact, the only ones that appeal to the senses. For this reason, and not because they are first in reality or first in importance, are they to be considered first. Yet even in the analysis of these we must not overlook the fact that language is a direct outgrowth of thought, and that its elements are directly responsive to the elements of thought—the substantive to the thought of substance, the attributive to that of attribute, and the relative to that of relation. No less true is it that the external combinations respond to the inward combinations of thought. In the predicative and attributive combinations, the substantive predominates and forms the leading term, in the objective and adverbial, the attributive. Yet in determining the grand divisions and the minor parts of the sentence, the grammarian, like the geologist, is guided not so much by the instant impulse of thought as by the lines and traces which it leaves behind.

Not so when thought assumes its rightful sway. Language becomes, at once, its servant, the organ and instrument for its manifestation to the senses. When language is thus subordinated and placed in its normal relation to thought, like the eye in seeing or the ear in hear