to have assumed other properties, such as belong to “the thing possessed!” In the example, “Your house is on the plain, ours is on the hill,” he supposes ours to be of the third person, singular number, neuter gender, and nominative case; and not, as it plainly is, of the first person, plural number, masculine gender, and possessive case.  Such parsing should condemn forever any book that teaches it.

[209] This word should have been numerals, for two or three reasons.  The author speaks of the numeral adjectives; and to say “the numbers must agree in number with their substantives,” is tautological—­G.  Brown.

[210] Cardell assails the common doctrine of the grammarians on this point, with similar assertions, and still more earnestness.  See his Essay on Language, p. 80.  The notion that “these pretended possessives [are] uniformly used as nominatives or objectives”—­though demonstrably absurd, and confessedly repugnant to what is “usually considered” to be their true explanation—­was adopted by Jaudon, in 1812; and has recently found several new advocates; among whom are Davis, Felch, Goodenow, Hazen, Smart, Weld, and Wells.  There is, however, much diversity, as well as much inaccuracy, in their several expositions of the matter.  Smart inserts in his declensions, as the only forms of the possessive case, the words of which he afterwards speaks thus:  “The following possessive cases of the personal pronouns, (See page vii,) must be called PERSONAL PRONOUNS POSSESSIVE:  mine, thine, his, hers, ours, yours, theirs.  For these words are always used substantively, so as to include the meaning of some noun in the third person singular or plural, in the nominative or the objective ease.  Thus, if we are speaking of books, and say [,] ‘Mine are here,’ mine means my books, [Fist] and it must be deemed a personal pronoun possessive in the third person plural, and nominative to the verb are.”—­Smart’s Accidence, p. xxii.  If to say, these “possessive cases must be called a class of pronouns, used substantively, and deemed nominatives or objectives,” is not absurd, then nothing can be.  Nor is any thing in grammar more certain, than that the pronoun “mine” can only be used by the speaker or writer, to denote himself or herself as the owner of something.  It is therefore of the first person, singular number, masculine (or feminine) gender, and possessive case; being governed by the name of the thing or things possessed.  This name is, of course, always known; and, if known and not expressed, it is “understood.”  For sometimes a word is repeated to the mind, and clearly understood, where “it cannot properly be” expressed; as, “And he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none.”—­Luke,