Key to Murray’s Exercises in Parsing,” the following example is thus expounded:  “The smooth stream, the serene atmosphere, [and] the mild zephyr, are the proper emblems of a gentle temper, and a peaceful life.”—­Murray’s Exercises, p. 8. “The smooth stream, the serene atmosphere, the mild zephyr, is part of a sentence, which is the nominative case to the verb ‘are.’ Are is an irregular verb neuter, in the indicative mood, the present tense, the third person plural, and agrees with the aforementioned part of a sentence, as its nominative case.”—­Introduction to English Parsing, p. 137.  On this principle of analysis, all the rules that speak of the nominatives or antecedents connected by conjunctions, may be dispensed with, as useless; and the doctrine, that a verb which has a phrase or sentence for its subject, must be singular, is palpably contradicted, and supposed erroneous!

[389] “No Relative can become a Nominative to a Verb.”—­Joseph W. Wright’s Philosophical Grammar, p. 162.  “A personal pronoun becomes a nominative, though a relative does not.”—­Ib., p. 152.  This teacher is criticised by the other as follows:  “Wright says that ’Personal pronouns may be in the nominative case,’ and that ’relative pronouns can not be.  Yet he declines his relatives thus:  ’Nominative case, who; possessive, whose; objective, whom!”—­Oliver B. Peirce’s Grammar, p. 331.  This latter author here sees the palpable inconsistency of the former, and accordingly treats who, which, what, whatever, &c., as relative pronouns of the nominative case—­or, as he calls them, “connective substitutes in the subjective form;” but when what or whatever precedes its noun, or when as is preferred to who or which, he refers both verbs to the noun itself, and adopts the very principle by which Cobbet and Wright erroneously parse the verbs which belong to the relatives, who, which, and that:  as, “Whatever man will adhere to strict principles of honesty, will find his reward in himself.”—­Peirce’s Gram., p. 55.  Here Peirce considers whatever to be a mere adjective, and man the subject of will adhere and will find.  “Such persons as write grammar, should themselves be grammarians.”—­Ib., p. 330.  Here he declares as to be no pronoun, but “a modifying connective,” i.e., conjunction; and supposes persons to be the direct subject of write as well as of should be:  as if a conjunction could connect a verb and its nominative!