is, or what _it_ was
then."--_N. P. Rogers's Writings_, p. 154.

[161] There is the same reason for doubling the _t_ in _cittess_, as for
doubling the _d_ in _goddess_. See Rule 3d for Spelling. Yet Johnson, Todd,
Webster, Bolles, Worcester, and others, spell it _citess_, with one _t_.

"Cits and _citesses_ raise a joyful strain."--DRYDEN: _Joh. Dict._

[162] "But in the _English_ we have _no Genders_, as has been seen in the
foregoing Notes. The same may be said of _Cases_."--_Brightland's Gram._,
Seventh Edition, Lond., 1746, p. 85.

[163] The Rev. David Blair so palpably contradicts himself in respect to
this matter, that I know not which he favours most, two cases or three. In
his main text, he adopts no objective, but says: "According to the _sense_
or _relation_ in which nouns are used, they are in the NOMINATIVE or [the]
POSSESSIVE CASE, thus, _nom._ man; _poss._ man's." To this he adds the
following marginal note: "In the English language, the distinction of the
objective case is observable only in the pronouns. _Cases_ being nothing
but _inflections_, where inflections do not exist, there can be no
grammatical distinction of cases, for the terms _inflection_ and _case_ are
_perfectly synonymous_ and _convertible_. As the English noun has _only one
change_ of termination, _so no other case_ is here adopted. The _objective_
case is noticed in the _pronouns_; and _in parsing nouns_ it is easy to
distinguish _subjects_ from _objects_. A noun which _governs the verb_ may
be described as in the _nominative_ case, and one governed by the verb, or
following a preposition, as in the _objective_ case."--_Blair's Practical
Gram., Seventh Edition_, London, 1815, p. 11. The terms _inflection_ and
_case_ are not practically synonymous, and never were so in the grammars of
the language from which they are derived. The man who rejects the objective
case of English nouns, because it has not a form peculiar to itself alone,
must reject the accusative and the vocative of all neuter nouns in Latin,
for the same reason; and the ablative, too, must in general be discarded on
the same principle. In some other parts of his book, Blair speaks of the
objective case of nouns as familiarly as do other authors!

[164] This author says, "We choose to use the term _subjective_ rather than
_nominative_, because it is shorter, and because it conveys its meaning by
its sound, whereas the latter word means, indeed, little or nothing in
i