e _object_ of an _action_,
the article and the preposition _of_ must be _omitted_; as, 'In _hearing_
the philosopher.'"--_Ib._, p. 94. If this principle is right, my second
note below, and most of the corrections under it, are wrong. But I am
persuaded that the adopters of this rule did not observe how common is the
phraseology which it condemns; as, "For if _the casting-away of them_ be
_the reconciling of the world_, what shall _the receiving of them_ be, but
life from the dead?"--_Rom._, xi, 15. Finally, this author rejects the _of_
which most critics insert when a possessive precedes the verbal noun;
justifies and prefers the mixed or double construction of the participle;
and, consequently, neither wishes nor attempts to distinguish the
participle from the verbal noun. Yet he does not fail to repeat, with some
additional inaccuracy, the notion, that, "What do you think of my _horse's
running_? is different _to_ [say _from_,] What do you think of my _horse
running_?"--_Ib._, p. 94.

OBS. 47.--That English books in general, and the style of even our best
writers, should seldom be found exempt from errors in the construction of
participles, will not be thought wonderful, when we consider the
multiplicity of uses to which words of this sort are put, and the strange
inconsistencies into which all our grammarians have fallen in treating this
part of syntax. It is useless, and worse than useless, to teach for grammar
any thing that is not true; and no doctrine can be true of which one part
palpably oversets an other. What has been taught on the present topic, has
led me into a multitude of critical remarks, designed both for the
refutation of the principles which I reject, and for the elucidation and
defence of those which are presently to be summed up in notes, or special
rules, for the correction of false syntax. If my decisions do not agree
with the teaching of our common grammarians, it is chiefly because these
authors contradict themselves. Of this sort of teaching I shall here offer
but one example more, and then bring these strictures to a close: "When
present participles are preceded by an article, or pronoun adjective, they
become nouns, and must not be followed by objective pronouns, or nouns
without a preposition; as, _the reading of many books wastes the health_.
But such nouns, like all others, may be used without an article, being
sufficiently discovered by the following preposition; as, _he was sent to
prepa