is not always clear.  But however these latter may differ in nature, the construction of them both is the same; and grammar is not so much concerned with their real, as with their grammatical properties.”—­Lowth’s Gram; p. 30.  But are not “TRUTH, NATURE, and REALITY,” worthy to be preferred to any instructions that contradict them?  If they are, the good doctor and his worthy copyist have here made an ill choice.  It is not only for the sake of these properties, that I retain a distinction which these grammarians, and others above named, reject; but for the sake of avoiding the untruth, confusion, and absurdity, into which one must fall by calling all active-intransitive verbs neuter.  The distinction of active verbs, as being either transitive or intransitive, is also necessarily retained.  But the suggestion, that this distinction is more “easy and obvious” than the other, is altogether an error.  The really neuter verbs, being very few, occasion little or no difficulty.  But very many active verbs, perhaps a large majority, are sometimes used intransitively; and of those which our lexicographers record as being always transitive, not a few are occasionally found without any object, either expressed or clearly suggested:  as, “He convinces, but he does not elevate nor animate,”—­Blair’s Rhet., p. 242.  “The child imitates, and commits to memory; whilst the riper age digests, and thinks independently.”—­Dr. Lieber, Lit.  Conv., p. 313.  Of examples like these, three different views maybe taken; and it is very questionable which is the right one:  First, that these verbs are here intransitive, though they are not commonly so; Second, that they are transitive, and have objects understood; Third, that they are used improperly, because no determinate objects are given them.  If we assume the second opinion or the last, the full or the correct expressions may be these:  “He convinces the judgement, but he does not elevate the imagination, or animate the feelings.”—­“The child imitates others, and commits words to memory; whilst the riper age digests facts or truths, and thinks independently.”  These verbs are here transitive, but are they so above?  Those grammarians who, supposing no other distinction important, make of verbs but two classes, transitive and intransitive, are still as much at variance, and as much at fault, as others, (and often more so,) when they come to draw the line of this distinction.  To “require” an objective, to “govern” an objective, to “admit” an objective, and to “have” an objective, are criterions considerably different.  Then it is questionable, whether infinitives, participles, or sentences, must or can have the effect of objectives.  One author says, “If a verb has any objective case expressed, it is transitive:  if it