damp the sound much more than hard ones.”—­Ib. “The hail was very destructive.  Hail, virtue! source of every good.  We hail you as friends.”—­Ib., p. 6.  “Much money makes no man happy.  Think much, and speak little.  He has seen much of the world.”—­See ib. “Every being loves its like.  We must make a like space between the lines.  Behave like men.  We are apt to like pernicious company.”—­Ib. “Give me more love, or more disdain.”—­Carew.  “He loved Rachel more than Leah.”—­Genesis.  “But how much that more is; he hath no distinct notion.”—­Locke.

   “And my more having would be as a sauce
    To make me hunger more.”—­Shakspeare.

CHAPTER II.—­ARTICLES.

An Article is the word the, an, or a, which we put before nouns to limit their signification:  as, The air, the stars; an island, a ship.

An and a, being equivalent in meaning, are commonly reckoned one and the same article. An is used in preference to a, whenever the following word begins with a vowel sound; as, An art, an end, an heir, an inch, an ounce, an hour, an urn. A is used in preference to an, whenever the following word begins with a consonant sound; as, A man, a house, a wonder, a one, a yew, a use, a ewer.  Thus the consonant sounds of w and y, even when expressed by other letters, require a and not an before them.

A common noun, when taken in its widest sense, usually admits no article:  as, “A candid temper is proper for man; that is, for all mankind.”—­Murray.

In English, nouns without any article, or other definitive, are often used in a sense indefinitely partitive:  as, “He took bread, and gave thanks.”—­Acts.  That is, “some bread.”  “To buy food are thy servants come.”—­Genesis.  That is, “some food.”  “There are fishes that have wings, and are not strangers to the airy region.”—­Locke’s Essay, p. 322.  That is, “some fishes.”

“Words in which nothing but the mere being of any thing is implied, are used without articles:  as, ‘This is not beer, but water;’ ’This is not brass, but steel.’”—­See Dr. Johnson’s Gram., p. 5.

An or a before the genus, may refer to a whole species; and the before the species, may denote that whole species emphatically:  as, “A certain bird is termed the cuckoo, from the sound which it emits.”—­Blair.

But an or a is commonly used to denote individuals as unknown, or as not specially distinguished from others:  as, “I see an object pass by, which I never saw till now; and I say, ’There goes a beggar with a long beard.’”—­Harris.