verb
agrees with its nominative case in number and person."--_Elements of E.
Gram._, p. 131. This is in no wise the syntax of _Nouns_, but rather that
of _the Verb_. Again: "SYNTAX OF VERBS. 405. Active Verbs govern the
accusative case; as, I love _him_. We saw _them_. God rules the
_world_."--_Ib._, p. 161. This is not properly the syntax of _Verbs_, but
rather that of _Nouns_ or _Pronouns_ in the accusative or objective case.
Any one who has but the least sense of order, must see the propriety of
referring the rule to that sort of words to which it is applied in parsing,
and not some other. Verbs are never parsed or construed by the latter of
these rules nor nouns by the former.

[329] What "the Series of Grammars, English, Latin, and Greek, ON THE SAME
PLAN," will ultimately be,--how many treatises for each or any of the
languages it will probably contain,--what uniformity will be found in the
distribution of their several sorts and sizes,--or what _sameness_ they
will have, except that which is bestowed by the binders,--cannot yet be
stated with any certainty. It appears now, in 1850, that the scheme has
thus far resulted in the production of _three remarkably different
grammars_, for the English part of the series, and two more, a Latin
grammar and a Greek, which resemble each other, or any of these, as little.
In these works, abound changes and discrepances, sometimes indicating a
great _unsettlement_ of "principles" or "plan," and often exciting our
wonder at the extraordinary _variety_ of teaching, which has been claimed
to be, "as nearly in the same words as the as the _genius of the languages_
would permit!" In what _should_ have been uniform, and easily _might_ have
been so, these grammars are rather remarkably diverse! Uniformity in the
order, number, or phraseology of the Rules of Syntax, even for our own
language, seems scarcely yet to have entered this "SAME PLAN" at all! The
"onward progress of English grammar," or, rather, of the author's studies
therein, has already, within "fifteen years," greatly varied, from the
_first model_ of the "_Series_," his own idea of a good grammar; and,
though such changes bar consistency, a future progress, real or imaginary,
may likewise, with as good reason, vary it yet as much more. In the preface
to the work of 1840, it is said: "This, though _not essentially different_
from the former, is yet in some respects a new work. It has been almost
_entirely rewritten_." And