te expression
for _revenues_,) is not two words, but one. Nor are _gaming_ and
_squandering_, to be here called participles, but nouns. Yet, among all his
rules and annotations, I do not find that Churchill any where teaches that
participles _become nouns_ when they are used substantively. The following
example he exhibits for the express purpose of showing that the nominatives
to "_is_" and "_may be_" are not nouns, but participles: "_Walking is_ the
best exercise, though riding _may be_ more pleasant."--_Ib._, p. 141. And,
what is far worse, though his book is professedly an amplification of
Lowth's brief grammar, he so completely annuls the advice of Lowth
concerning the distinguishing of participles from participial nouns, that
he not only misnames the latter when they are used correctly, but approves
and adopts well-nigh all the various forms of error, with which the mixed
and irregular construction of participles has filled our language: of these
forms, there are, I think, not fewer than a dozen.

OBS. 26.--Allen's account of the participle is no better than
Churchill's--and no worse than what the reader may find in many an English
Grammar now in use. This author's fault is not so much a lack of learning
or of comprehension, as of order and discrimination. We see in him, that it
is possible for a man to be well acquainted with English authors, ancient
as well as modern, and to read Greek and Latin, French and Saxon, and yet
to falter miserably in describing the nature and uses of the English
participle. Like many others, he does not acknowledge this sort of words to
be one of the parts of speech; but commences his account of it by the
following absurdity: "The participles _are adjectives_ derived from the
verb; as, _pursuing, pursued, having pursued_."--_Elements of E. Gram._, p.
62. This definition not only confounds the participle with the participial
adjective, but merges the whole of the former species in a part of speech
of which he had not even recognized the latter as a subdivision: "An
adjective shows the _quality_ of a thing. Adjectives may be reduced to five
classes: 1. Common--2. Proper--3. Numeral--4. Pronominal--5.
Compound."--_Ib._, p. 47. Now, if "participles are adjectives," to which of
these five classes do they belong? But there are participial or verbal
adjectives, very many; a sixth class, without which this distribution is
false and incomplete: as, "a _loving_ father; an _approved_ copy." The
p