tor, "the PAST
PARTICIPLE with the verb TO BE _is not the present tense in the passive
voice of verbs thus used_; that is, this form does not express passively
the _doing_ of the act."--_Bullions's Analyt. and Pract. Grammar_, Ed. of
1849, p. 235. Thus far these two authors agree; except that Wright seems to
have avoided the incongruity of _calling_ that "_the present-passive_"
which he _denies_ to be such. But the Doctor, approving none of this
practitioner's "remedies," and being less solicitous to provide other
treatment than expulsion for the thousands of present passives which both
deem spurious, adds, as from the chair, this verdict: "These verbs either
_have no present-passive_, or it is made by annexing the participle in
_ing_, in its passive sense, to the verb _to be_; as, 'The house _is
building_.'"--_Ib._, p. 236.

OBS. 17.--It would seem, that Dr. Bullions thinks, and in reality Wright
also, that nothing can be a present passive, but what "_expresses passively
the_ DOING _of the act_." This is about as wise, as to try to imagine every
active verb to _express actively the receiving of an act_! It borders
exceedingly hard upon absurdity; it very much resembles the nonsense of
"_expressing receptively the giving of something_!" Besides, the word
"DOING," being used substantively, does not determine well what is here
meant; which is, I suppose, _continuance_, or an _unfinished state_ of the
act received--an idea which seems adapted to the participle in _ing_, but
which it is certainly no fault of a participle ending in _d, t_, or _n_,
not to suggest. To "_express passively the doing of the act_," if the
language means any thing rational, may be, simply to say, that the act _is_
or _was done_. For "_doings_" are, as often as any-wise, "_things done_,"
as _buildings_ are _fabrics built_; and "_is built_," and "_am smitten_,"
the gentlemen's choice examples of _false passives_, and of "_actions
finished_,"--though neither of them necessarily intimates either
continuance or cessation of the act suffered, or, if it did, would be the
less or the more passive or present,--may, in such a sense, "express _the
doing_ of the act," if any passives can:--nay, the "finished act" has such
completion as may be stated with degrees of progress or of frequency; as,
"The house _is partly built_."--"I _am oftener smitten_." There is,
undoubtedly, some difference between the assertions, "The house _is
building_,"--and, "The house _is