nes be
the foundation of public pronunciation."--_Blair's Rhet._, p. 334. "A
_muslin_ flounce, made very full, would give a very agreeable _flirtation_
air."--POPE: _Priestley's Gram._, p. 79.

"Come, calm Content, serene and sweet,
O gently guide my _pilgrim_ feet
To find thy _hermit_ cell."--_Barbauld_.

OBS. 5.--Murray says, "Various nouns placed before other nouns assume the
nature of adjectives: as, sea fish, wine vessel, corn field, meadow ground,
&c."--_Octavo Gram._, p. 48. This is, certainly, very lame instruction. If
there is not palpable error in all his examples, the propriety of them all
is at least questionable; and, to adopt and follow out their principle,
would be, to tear apart some thousands of our most familiar compounds.
"_Meadow ground_" may perhaps be a correct phrase, since the ground is
meadow; it seems therefore preferable to the compound word meadow-ground.
What he meant by "_wine vessel_" is doubtful: that is, whether a ship or a
cask, a flagon or a decanter. If we turn to our dictionaries, Webster has
_sea-fish_ and _wine-cask_ with a hyphen, and _cornfield_ without; while
Johnson and others have _corn-field_ with a hyphen, and _seafish_ without.
According to the rules for the figure of words, we ought to write them
_seafish, winecask, cornfield_. What then becomes of the thousands of
"adjectives" embraced in the "&c." quoted above?

OBS. 6.--The pronouns _he_ and _she_, when placed before or prefixed to
nouns merely to denote their gender, appear to be used adjectively; as,
"The male or _he_ animals offered in sacrifice."--_Wood's Dict., w. Males_.
"The most usual term is _he_ or _she, male_ or _female_, employed as an
adjective: as, a _he bear_, a _she bear_; a _male elephant_, a _female
elephant_."--_Churchill's Gram._, p. 69. Most writers, however, think
proper to insert a hyphen in the terms here referred to: as, _he-bear,
she-bear_, the plurals of which are _he-bears_ and _she-bears_. And,
judging by the foregoing rule of predication, we must assume that this
practice only is right. In the first example, the word _he_ is useless; for
the term "_male animals_" is sufficiently clear without it. It has been
shown in the third chapter, that _he_ and _she_ are sometimes used as
nouns; and that, as such, they may take the regular declension of nouns,
making the plurals _hes_ and _shes_. But whenever these words are used
adjectively to denote gender, whether we choose to insert th