intelligence contained in a proposition or sentence: and especially how these components of separate significations can become connected for such general and comprehensive meaning. It should be recollected that such is the amazing inclosure of language, that it comprehends all the living and inanimate materials of this world, all that perception can detect, memory recall, or thought elaborate. This exposition includes the present posture of human affairs, and the movements we observe:--much that has heretofore occurred, which the characters of language have preserved unfaded from dark and remote ages: and are competent to transmit to a distant posterity, with accumulated interest: all that experience has amassed, accompanied with the consoling promises of the future, which Revelation has unfolded. The extended empire of speech, and its perpetuating characters, embrace this prodigious range; but their comprehension is exclusively limited to the human race. When words can represent all that is evident and all that is conjectural--the works of Omnipotence, and the fabrications of man--we need to seek no further for the necessary materials of thought. The difficulty that has perplexed many persons respecting the compactness and unity of intelligence that a sentence contains, principally arises from their ignorance of the precise meaning of individual words. Etymologists would employ them in their original sense, and consider themselves justified by referring to their primitive import: others would use them according to their ordinary acceptation, which may be perverted; for in the currency of language, much is defective and counterfeit: but in general the authority of writers who are accredited, however they may disagree, is adopted. The intrinsic meaning of many words, especially the particles, will appear obscure; because they are disguised abbreviations of other words, and, in some instances, are sunk so deeply, that they cannot be fathomed. A protracted life might now be consumed in the investigation of these convenient and necessary particles, including the voluminous efforts of those illustrious grammarians who have terminated their discordant labours, without arriving at their primitive signification. The chemical elements of matter have undergone various reforms, and actual revolutions, and still await ulterior confusion.