to the noun horse; but, in the phrase, “A man off his guard,” off is a preposition, showing the relation between man and guard, and governing the latter.  The following are other examples:  “From the above speculations.”—­Harris’s Hermes, p. 194.  “An after period of life.”—­MARSHALL:  in Web.  Dict. “With some other of the after Judaical rites.”—­Right of Tythes, p. 86.  “Whom this beneath world doth embrace and hug.”—­Shak. “Especially is over exertion made.”—­Journal of Lit.  Conv., p. 119.  “To both the under worlds.”—­Hudibras.  “Please to pay to A. B. the amount of the within bill.”  Whether properly used or not, the words above, after, beneath, over, under, and within, are here unquestionably made adjectives; yet every scholar knows, that they are generally prepositions, though sometimes adverbs.

CLASSES.

Adjectives may be divided into six classes; namely, common, proper, numeral, pronominal, participial, and compound.

I. A common adjective is any ordinary epithet, or adjective denoting quality or situation; as, Good, bad, peaceful, warlike—­eastern, western, outer, inner.

II.  A proper adjective is an adjective formed from a proper name; as, American, English, Platonic, Genoese.

III.  A numeral adjective is an adjective that expresses a definite number; as, One, two, three, four, five, six, &c.

IV.  A pronominal adjective is a definitive word which may either accompany its noun, or represent it understood; as, “All join to guard what each desires to gain.”—­Pope.  That is, “All men join to guard what each man desires to gain.”

V. A participial adjective is one that has the form of a participle, but differs from it by rejecting the idea of time; as, “An amusing story,”—­“A lying divination.”

VI.  A compound adjective is one that consists of two or more words joined together, either by the hyphen or solidly:  as, Nut-brown, laughter-loving, four-footed; threefold, lordlike, lovesick.

OBSERVATIONS.

OBS. 1.—­This distribution of the adjectives is no less easy to be applied, than necessary to a proper explanation in parsing.  How many adjectives there are in the language, it is difficult to say; none of our dictionaries profess to exhibit all that are embraced in some of the foregoing classes.  Of the Common Adjectives, there are probably not fewer than six thousand, exclusive of the common nouns which we refer to this class when they are used adjectively.  Walker’s Rhyming Dictionary contains five thousand or more, the greater part of which may be readily distinguished by their peculiar endings.  Of those