So wide from the mark is that notion of a letter, which the popularity of Dr.Lowth and his copyists has made a hundred-fold more common than any other![67] According to an other erroneous definition given by these same gentlemen, "_Words_ are articulate _sounds_, used by common consent, as signs of our ideas."-- _Murray's Gram._, p.

22; _Kirkham's_, 20; _Ingersoll's_, 7; _Alger's_, 12; _Russell's_, 7; _Merchant's_, 9; _Fisk's_, 11; _Greenleaf's_, 20; and many others.

See _Lowth's Gram._, p.

6; from which almost all authors have taken the notion, that words consist of "_sounds_" only.

But letters are no principles or parts of _sounds_ at all; unless you will either have visible marks to be sounds, or the sign to be a principle or part of the thing signified.