ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR. BY DANIEL MACINTOSH, F.E.I.S., MASTER OF MEADOWSIDE ACADEMY, DUNDEE. SUTHERLAND & KNOX, EDINBURGH. LEWIS SMITH, ABERDEEN. SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO., LONDON. 1852. 302. C. 69. CONTENTS. Language, Grammar, ORTHOGRAPHY.....Letters, Consonants, and Syllables, PREFACE. The following Elementary Treatise on Grammar owes its existence to a plan which the Author adopted several years since of reading carefully the best Works on Universal Grammar in the English Language. He had previously been dissatisfied with Lindley Murray's Grammar and Exercises, as Class Books, which he had used for many years; and he could not view without disfavour the petulance and dogmatism which disfigure some later Grammars, compiled in a great measure from Murray's Works. The spirit of self-sufficiency so largely infused in some of these Grammars has had an injurious effect on many Teachers themselves, in extinguishing the desire of obtaining further knowledge, from the persuasion that no more was needed. A perfect Treatise on English Grammar does not exist, because the language is itself mutable and progressive. All that a grammatical treatise can effect is to assist and induce the learner to study the English language for himself. The Teacher, in order to obtain a competent knowledge of his subject, must derive his information from every available source; he ought to commit his thoughts to writing,-by which he would soon learn to know how little can be |