But it is manifestly much easier to raise even plausible objections against this system, than to invent an other less objectionable.

Such attempts have generally met the reception they deserved.

Their history will give no encouragement to future innovators.
18.

Again: While some have thus wasted their energies in eccentric flights, vainly supposing that the learning of ages would give place to their whimsical theories; others, with more success, not better deserved, have multiplied grammars almost innumerably, by abridging or modifying the books they had used in childhood.

So that they who are at all acquainted with the origin and character of the various compends thus introduced into our schools, cannot but desire to see them all displaced by some abler and better work, more honourable to its author and more useful to the public, more intelligible to students and more helpful to teachers.