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2dly, We employ it in expressing objects of repeated perception, or subjects of previous conversation. I borrow an example from Harris. If I see, for the first time, a man with a long beard, I say, “there goes a man with a long beard.” If I see him again, I say, “there goes the man with the long beard.” Were the word that substituted for the, the same observation would be applicable as in the preceding examples.

3dly, Mr. Harris has said, that the article a is used to express objects of primary perception, and the employed to denote those only of secondary perception. This opinion is controverted by the author of the article Grammar in the Encyclopedia Britannica, Ed. 3d. who gives the following example to disprove its truth. “I am in company, and finding the room warm, I say to the servant, Request the gentleman in the window seat (to whom I am an entire stranger) to draw down the sash.” The example is apposite, and is sufficient to overturn the hypothesis of Mr. Harris. There can be no question but the is frequently employed to denote objects of primary perception; and merely particularizes, by some discriminating circumstance, an individual whose character, person, or distinctive qualities, were previously unknown. In the example now quoted, that may be substituted for the, if we say, “who is in the window seat.”