definition that had been given to him, a general idea
of the nature of a pronoun, and at all events he exercised his
understanding upon the affair, which is the principal point we ought
to have in view.

An interjection is a part of speech familiar to children. Mr. Horne
Tooke is bitter in his contempt for it, and will scarcely admit it
into civilized company. "The brutish inarticulate interjection, which
has nothing to do with speech, and is only the miserable refuge of the
speechless, has been permitted to usurp a place amongst words,
&c."--"The neighing of a horse, the lowing of a cow, the barking of a
dog, the purring of a cat; sneezing, coughing, groaning, shrieking,
and every other involuntary convulsion with oral sound, have almost as
good a title to be called parts of speech, as interjections have."

Mr. Horne Tooke would have been pleased with the sagacity of a child
of five years old (S----) who called _laughing_ an interjection. Mr.
---- gave S----a slight pinch, in order to produce "an involuntary
convulsion with oral sound." And when the interjection Oh! was uttered
by the boy, he was told by his father, that the word was an
interjection; and, that "any word or noise, that expresses a sudden
feeling of the mind, may be called an interjection." S----immediately
said, "is laughing an interjection, then?" We hope that the candid
reader will not imagine, that we produce these _sayings_ of children
of four or five years old, without some sense of the danger of
ridicule; but we wish to give some idea of the sort of simple answers
which children are likely to make in their first grammatical lessons.
If too much is expected from them, the disappointment, which must be
quickly felt, and will be quickly shown by the preceptor, will
discourage the pupil. We must repeat, that the first steps should be
frequently retraced: a child should be _for some weeks_ accustomed to
distinguish an active verb, and its agent, or nominative case, from
every other word in a sentence, before we attempt to advance. The
objects of actions are the next class of words that should be
selected.

The fanciful, or at least what appears to the moderns fanciful,
arrangement of the cases amongst grammarians, may be dispensed with
for the present. The idea, that the nominative is a direct, upright
_case_, and that the genitive declines with the smallest obliquity
from it; the dative, accusative, and ablative, falling further and
further from t