arners in the principles of etymology and syntax,
this author had been less fortunate than the generality of his fellows. Not
only is it implied, that parsing is no critical analysis, but even what is
set _in opposition_ to the "mechanical routine," may very well serve for _a
definition_ of Syntactical Parsing--"_the practice of explaining the
various relations and offices of words in a sentence_!" If this "practice,"
well ordered, can be at once interesting and profitable to the learner, so
may parsing. Nor, after all, is even this author's mode of parsing,
defective though it is in several respects, less "important" to the users
of his book, or less valued by teachers, than the analysis which he sets
above it.

OBS. 9.--S. S. Greene, a public teacher in Boston, who, in answer to a
supposed "demand for a _more philosophical plan_ of teaching the English
language," has entered in earnest upon the "Analysis of Sentences," having
devoted to one method of it more than the space of two hundred duodecimo
pages, speaks of analysis and of parsing, thus: "The resolving of a
sentence into its elements, or of any complex element into the parts which
compose it, is called _analysis_."--_Greene's Analysis_, p. 14. "Parsing
consists in naming a part of speech, giving its modifications, relation,
agreement or dependence, and the rule for its construction. _Analysis_
consists in pointing out the words or groups of words which constitute the
elements of a sentence. Analysis _should precede_ parsing."--_Ib._, p. 26.
"A large proportion of the elements of sentences are not single words, but
combinations or groups of words. These groups perform the office of the
_substantive_, the _adjective_, or the _adverb_, and, in some one of these
relations, enter in as the component parts of a sentence. The pupil who
learns to determine the elements of a sentence, _must, therefore, learn the
force of these combinations before_ he separates them into the single words
which compose them. _This advantage_ is wholly lost in the ordinary methods
of parsing."--_Ib._, p. 3.

OBS. 10.--On these passages, it may be remarked in the first place, that
the distinction attempted between analysis and parsing is by no means
clear, or well drawn. Nor indeed could it be; because parsing is a species
of analysis. The first assertion would be just as true as it is now, were
the former word substituted for the latter: thus, "The resolving of a
sentence into its elements