our bodily safety, to commit to memory a set of arbitrary rules, which
we could neither understand nor apply in the correct use of language.
Formerly it was never dreamed that grammar depended on any higher
authority than the books put into our hands. And learners were not only
dissuaded, but strictly forbidden to go beyond the limits set them in
the etymological and syntactical rules of the authors to whom they were
referred. If a query ever arose in their minds, and they modestly
proposed a plain question as to the _why_ and _wherefore_ things were
thus, instead of giving an answer according to common sense, in a way to
be understood, the authorities were pondered over, till some rule or
remark could be found which would apply, and this settled the matter
with "proof as strong as holy writ." In this way an end may be put to
the inquiry; but the thinking mind will hardly be satisfied with the
mere opinion of another, who has no evidence to afford, save the
undisputed dignity of his station, or the authority of books. This
course is easily accounted for. Rather than expose his own ignorance,
the teacher quotes the printed ignorance of others, thinking, no doubt,
that folly and nonsense will appear better second-handed, than fresh
from his own responsibility. Or else on the more common score, that
"misery loves company."

Teachers have not unfrequently found themselves placed in an unenviable
position by the honest inquiries of some thinking urchin, who has
demanded why "_one noun governs_ another in the possessive case," as
"master's slave;" why there are more tenses than _three_; what is meant
by a _neuter_ verb, which "signifies neither action nor passion;" or an
"intransitive verb," which expresses the highest possible action, but
terminates on no object; a cause without an effect; why _that_ is
sometimes a pronoun, sometimes an adjective, and not unfrequently a
conjunction, &c. &c. They may have succeeded, by dint of official