e spoken of as the
canvassers, haranguers, and mobbers, or as being canvassed, harangued, and
mobbed. If the prolixity and multiplicity of these observations transcend
the reader's patience, let him consider that the questions at issue cannot
be settled by the brief enunciation of loose individual opinions, but must
be examined in the light of _all the analogies and facts_ that bear upon
them. So considerable are the difficulties of properly distinguishing the
participle from the verbal adjective in French, that that indefatigable
grammarian, Girault Du Vivier, after completing his _Grammaire des
Grammaires_ in two large octavo volumes, thought proper to _enlarge_ his
instructions on this head, and to publish them in a separate book, (_Traite
des Participes_,) though we have it on his own authority, that the rule for
participles had already given rise to a greater number of dissertations and
particular treatises than any other point in French grammar.

OBS. 24.--A participle construed after the nominative or the objective
case, is not in general equivalent to a verbal noun governing the
possessive. There is sometimes a nice distinction to be observed in the
application of these two constructions. For the leading word in sense,
should not be made the adjunct in construction. The following sentences
exhibit a disregard to this principle, and are both inaccurate: "He felt
his _strength's_ declining."--"He was sensible of his _strength_
declining." In the former sentence, the noun _strength_ should be in the
objective case, governed by _felt_; and in the latter, it should rather be
in the possessive, governed by _declining_. Thus: "He felt his _strength_
declining;" i.e., "_felt it decline_."--"He was sensible of his
_strength's_ declining;" i.e., "_of its decline_." These two sentences
state the same fact, but, in construction, they are very different; nor
does it appear, that where there is no difference of meaning, the two
constructions are properly interchangeable. This point has already been
briefly noticed in Obs. 12th and 13th on Rule 4th. But the false and
discordant instructions which our grammarians deliver respecting
possessives before participles; their strange neglect of this plain
principle of reason, that the leading word in sense ought to be made the
leading or governing word in the construction; and the difficulties which
they and other writers are continually falling into, by talking their
choice between tw