properest
means."--_Blair's Rhet._, p. 337.

"So hand in hand they pass'd, the loveliest pair
That ever since in love's embraces met."
--_Milton_, P. L., B., iv, l. 321.

"Aim at the high'est, without the high'est attain'd
Will be for thee no sitting, or not long."
--_Id._, P. R., B. iv, l. 106.

CHAPTER V.--PRONOUNS.

A Pronoun is a word used in stead of a noun: as, The boy loves _his_ book;
_he_ has long lessons, and _he_ learns _them_ well.

The pronouns in our language are twenty-four; and their variations are
thirty-two: so that the number of _words_ of this class, is fifty-six.

OBSERVATIONS.

OBS. 1.--The word for which a pronoun stands, is called its _antecedent_,
because it usually precedes the pronoun. But some have limited the term
_antecedent_ to the word represented by a _relative_ pronoun. There can be
no propriety in this, unless we will have every pronoun to be a relative,
when it stands for a noun which precedes it; and, if so, it should be
called something else, when the noun is to be found elsewhere. In the
example above, _his_ and _he_ represent _boy_, and _them_ represents
_lessons_; and these nouns are as truly the antecedents to the pronouns, as
any can be. Yet _his, he_, and _them_, in our most approved grammars, are
not called relative pronouns, but personal.

OBS. 2.--Every pronoun may be explained as standing for the _name_ of
something, for the _thing itself_ unnamed, or for a _former pronoun_; and,
with the noun, pronoun, or thing, for which it stands, every pronoun must
agree in person, number, and gender. The exceptions to this, whether
apparent or real, are very few; and, as their occurrence is unfrequent,
there will be little occasion to notice them till we come to syntax. But if
the student will observe the use and import of pronouns, he may easily see,
that some of them are put _substantively_, for nouns not previously
introduced; some, _relatively_, for nouns or pronouns going before; some,
_adjectively_, for nouns that must follow them in any explanation which can
be made of the sense. These three modes of substitution, are very
different, each from the others. Yet they do not serve for an accurate
division of the pronouns; because it often happens, that a substitute which
commonly represents the noun in one of these ways, will sometimes represent
it in an other.

OBS. 3.--The pronouns _I_ and _thou_, in their different modifications,