meanings is
inevitable. However precise the primitive signification of words may
have been, imagination, passion, or feeling would readily train them to
deflect from their original import, under the effusions of the "poet,
the lunatic, or the lover." A correct etymology would unfold the rude
and simple origin of many words, that our Anglo-saxon, and Norman
ancestors have bequeathed to us; although we are now but little sensible
of the legacy; as the great mass feels no inclination to revert to the
source of derivation. Many have been distorted by corruption, and these
are the most difficult to trace: to which may be added, that the terms
we now employ to express our feelings and passions, and all that depicts
mind and its operations, are of a figurative or metaphorical origin.
Instead of any word being insignificant, there is no one but may become
the keystone in a sentence; and therefore a word blotted out in a
perspicuous, that is, a properly constructed sentence, would render it
unintelligible. To the composition of a sentence, whatever may be the
thought, certain words are absolutely necessary, each containing an
individual meaning; which, like a sum in addition, composed of different
units, each possessing a separate and intrinsic value, may, when added
together, produce the total. To those who have not attentively
considered the subject, there is considerable difficulty in
understanding how a determinate number of words can include the
intelligence contained in a proposition or sentence: and especially how
these components of separate significations can become connected for
such general and comprehensive meaning. It should be recollected that
such is the amazing inclosure of language, that it comprehends all the
living and inanimate materials of this world, all that perception can
detect, memory recall, or thought elaborate. This exposition includes
the present posture of human affairs, and the movements we
observe:--much that has heretofore occurred, which the characters of
language have preserved unfaded from dark and remote ages: and are
competent to transmit to a distant posterity, with accumulated interest:
all that experience has amassed, accompanied with the consoling
promises of the future, which Revelation has unfolded. The extended
empire of speech, and its perpetuating characters, embrace this
prodigious range; but their comprehension is exclusively limited to the
human race. When words can represent all