the rules and the exceptions to them while reading any French work; and to young scholars, who ought to study it in the following manner. The arrangement we have adopted gives equal facility to these three classes of students.

The young pupil should commence by translating the Alfred, and parsing the lesson from the grammatical dictionary, and his parent or tutor should ask him to look for the genders of every noun substantive that he meets with, and give the rules and the number of exceptions there are.

When the pupil has translated and re-translated the Alfred in this manner from one end to the other, he will be able to translate into French the exercises which will be found at the end. Every sentence is so constructed, that a masculine or a feminine article, a numeral adjective, or an adjective not common, must be affixed to the substantive given in the phrase as an example, and applied to the rule. And to prevent any confusion with regard to the English word which corresponds to the principal French one, the latter is printed in italics immediately after the former.

In order to avoid the faults which others have committed, and to give to the work a stamp of accuracy, we have abstained from constructing the phrases ourselves. They are principally taken from the best French dictionaries, grammars, and classical authors, and, with a few exceptions, they will all be found in the Dictionary of the French

Academy, which is, to the present day, the only acknowledged one in France.

To those words which we could not easily introduce into a regular phrase, we have given an article which shows their gender directly. Many phrases and some remarks were given to us by friends who are most eminent French teachers, and to whom we submitted our work before sending it to the press.

We have divided the exercises into four distinct sections, to facilitate the study and the classification of them.

First-Masculine words without exceptions. Second-Masculine terminations with exceptions. Third-Feminine words without exceptions. Fourth-Feminine terminations with exceptions. The second and fourth sections having but a few exceptions to each rule, the pupil, after having completed the phrase found in the exercises, must repeat from memory to his teacher the words forming the exceptions, which will be found in the dictionary. They are not given with the rule for the exercises, in order that, by the having to search for them, they may be better impressed on the mind; for it is only by frequent practice that a proper knowledge of the genders can be obtained.

We shall, in this place, avail ourselves of the principal portion of Levizac's treatise on the genders, which, to the present day, is unrivalled. This most eminent scholar did not think proper to give

rules in detail for the substantives ending in e mute; the fact is, that it requires years of research to bring such rules to a proper state of accuracy.

We could without doubt have compressed our treatise within the limits of a dozen rules, and of a few pages; but every one will allow, who has taken any interest in essays on this subject, that the hundreds of exceptions, placed under such rules, renders the learning of them impracticable.

GENERAL RULE.

All words masculine and neuter in Latin, are masculine in French; as all words feminine in Latin, are feminine in French. Those derived from the Latin admit but of few exceptions, such as arbor, avis, dolor, fons, os, and a few others.*

"Gender, in all languages, marks the distinction of sex; and as there are only two of these, the French, agreeably to this view, have but two genders, the masculine and feminine: the neuter they do not admit. The masculine gender denotes the male kind, as un homme, a man; un lion, a lion.

* We do not pretend to give in this place all the exceptions; it does not form a part of our plan. They will be found in our Treatise on the Latin Genders, which we hope to publish in the course of the next year.

"The feminine gender expresses the female kind, as une femme, a woman; une lionne, a lioness.

"The gender of nouns, in-inanimate objects, is generally expressed by their termination; thus, the final e mute is the distinctive mark of the feminine gender, every other final letter is the sign of the masculine. This would be an excellent rule, were it universal; but this is far from being the case, from the number of the exceptions: and it is with the intention of affording the learner a tolerable clue on this head that we have here laid down the following concise rules, which will clear up some of the chief difficulties.

66 SUBSTANTIVES DENOTING SPECIES,

"Which have a fixed gender independently of

termination.

"1st. God, his angels, cherubim and seraphim, are of the masculine gender.

"2nd. All terms seeming to constitute an appellation, and all proper names of men and women, are of the gender of the sex to which they respectively belong, as are likewise all names of animals, when the male is distinguished from the female by a different denomination; but when the same name is used for both male and female, as un éléphant, un zèbre, une panthère, un vautour, un cygne, une caille, une perdrix, un barbeau, une traite, un congre, its gender must then, like that of any

inanimate object, be determined by its termination. Here the only difficulty respects substantives ending in e mute, all the rest being of the masculine gender, with such exceptions as will be seen hereafter.

"3rd. All diminutives of animals, when there is but one common denomination for both sexes, are of the masculine gender, whatever may be the gender of the original from which they are derived, as un lionceau, un souriceau, un perdreau, un corcornillas, un carpillon, un couleuvreau, un vipéreau, un bécasseau, &c., except bécassine; but these two latter, although derived from the word bécasse, and belonging to the genus, are not of the same species. In other cases the diminutives follow the gender their sex indicates, as, un poulain, une pouliche, un cochet, une poulette.

"4th. Diminutives of inanimate objects more generally follow the gender of their root, as batelet, maisonnette, globule, from bateau, maison, globe, &c.; however, corbillon, soliveau, cruchon, savonnette, trousseau, from corbeille, solive, cruche, savon, and trousse, and many others, do not.

"5th. All the names of the days, months, and seasons of the year are of the masculine gender, except automne, which is of both genders; when, however, the diminutive mi (half) is prefixed to the name of a month, the compound word then takes the feminine gender, as la mi-Mai, la miAoût, la mi-Septembre, &c., except also la micarême, and saint days, as la Saint-John, la Toussaint, &c.