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God puts our prayers like rose-leaves between the leaves of his book of remembrance, and when the volume is opened at last, there shall be a precious fragrance springing from them.-Spurgeon.

Life is not as idle ore,

But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And batter'd with the shocks of doom,
To shape and use.-Tennyson.

The placing of the words in a sentence resembles, in some degree, the disposition of the figures in a historic piece. As the principal figure ought to have that situation in the picture which will, at the first glance, fix the eye of the spectator, so the emphatical word ought to have that place in the sentence which will give it the greatest advantage for fixing the attention of the hearer.—Dr. Campbell.

Climax is a symbol of cumulation, and cumulation is force. Contrast, besides saving words, is intrinsically energetic. Of two contrasted ideas, each is a mirror to the other, and a mirror gives vision. Few simple expedients are so effective as Interrogation, which, inviting silent rejoinder, makes the hearer active in the reception of truth. Did you never see lips move or heads nod or shake in answer to a speaker's question? Hyperbole is a favorite figure among energetic writers. The life-giving power of the figure of Vision is splendidly illustrated in some of the sacred prophecies. A Boston preacher once electrified an assembly by apostrophising Voltaire as being in the world of the lost: What think you, what think you, Voltaire, of Christianity now?' Soliloquy is of the nature of apostrophe, and both are employed by the most passionate forms of eloquence. Massillon, preaching on the text, 'Are there few that be saved?' after seeming to restrict to a narrow, a narrower, and the narrowest limit the number of the elect, broke out with, 'O God, where are thine elect?' The whole audience are said to have sprung to their feet,

EXERCISES.

Criticise and amend:

1. It is the vividness of the ideas presented which arouse emotion, and thus carry over conviction into persuasion.—Dr. Bascom.

2. Violations of simplicity, whatever the type, show either that the mind of the writer is tainted with affectation, or else that an effort is making to conceal conscious poverty of sentiment, under loftiness of expression.'-Dr. Townsend.

3. Redundancy is sometimes permissible for the surer conveyance of meaning, for emphasis, and in the language of poetic embellishment.2-Alfred Ayres.

4. I find several noteworthy examples of bad diction in an article in a recent number of an Australian magazine.—Ibid.

5. Indeed, the impartial critic who will take the trouble to examine any of Mr. Emerson's essays at all carefully, is quite sure to come to the conclusion that Mr. Emerson has seen everything he has ever made the subjects of his essays very much as London is from the top of Saint Paul's in a fog.-Ibid.

(The fog, it will occur to most, is before the eyes of Mr. Ayres.) 6. Be this objection valid, or be it not, cultured' having but two syllables, while its synonym cultivated' has four, it is likely to find favor with those who employ short words when they convey their meaning as well as long ones.-Ibid.

7. I do not trumpet water as an infallible nostrum as a universal panacea for all the ills that flesh is heir to.—J. S. Blackie. 8. It was almost intolerable to be borne.-Hawthorne.

9. We are both agreed that the sentence was wrong.—Buckle. 10. His first appearance in the fashionable world at London, from whence he came lately to Bath.-Smollet.

11. Perhaps we might venture to add that it is hardly explicable, except as a portrait drawn by a skillful hand guided by love, and by love intensified by the consciousness of some impassable barrier.— Leslie Stephen.

12. Our sight is the most perfect, and most delightful of all our senses.-Addison.

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13. A monarchy, limited like ours, may be placed, for aught I know, as it has been often represented, just in the middle point, from whence a deviation leads, on the one hand, to tyranny, and on the other, to anarchy.-Bolingbroke.

14. Though the work was prepared for pupils of an advanced grade, and has been written in a style adapted to their comprehension, yet it was deemed of primary importance to set forth every point perspicuously and intelligibly.-Quackenbos.

15. Beauty does not afford the imagination so high a degree of pleasure as sublimity; but, characterizing a greater variety of objects than the latter quality, it is a more fruitful source of gratification to that faculty.-Ibid.

16. That people, after they had once begun, pursued the business vigorously, and with all imaginable contempt of the government; and though in the hubbub of the first day there appeared nobody of name and reckoning, but the actors were really of the dregs of the people, yet they discovered by the countenance of that day that few men of rank were forward to engage themselves on behalf of the bishops, whereupon more considerable persons every day appeared against them as heretofore in the case of St. Paul- Acts xiii, 50: The Jews stirred up devout and honorable women,'— the women and ladies of the best quality declared themselves of the party, and, with all the reproaches imaginable, made war upon the bishops as introducers of popery and superstition, against which they avowed themselves to be irreconcilable enemies, and their husbands did not long defer the owning of the same spirit, insomuch that within a few days the bishops durst not appear in the streets, nor in any courts or houses, but were in danger of their lives; and such of the lords as durst be in their company, or seemed to desire to rescue them from violence, had their persons assaulted, insomuch that they were glad to send for some of those great men who did, indeed, govern the rabble, though they appeared not in it, who readily came, and redeemed them out of their hands, so that by the time new orders came from England there was scarce a bishop left in Edinburgh, and not a minister who durst read the Liturgy in any church.-Lord Clarendon.

CHAPTER VI.

METHODS OF EXPRESSION-ELEGANCE.

The flowers of rhetoric are only acceptable when backed by the evergreens of truth and sense.-MACAULAY.

Rhythm in prose should be cultivated not only for the sake of embellishment, but also for the sake of perspicuity. - BULWER.

Words have a separate effect on the mind abstracted from their signification and from their imitative power: they are more or less agreeable to the ear, by the fulness, sweetness, faintness, or roughness of their tones.-KAMES.

LEGANCE is in discourse what refinement is in

ELE

manners, or carriage and dress in the figure of a woman of fashion. It is opposed to the vulgar and the trivial, the clumsy and the awkward. It is that quality which gives pleasure, as distinguished from that which gives instruction or impressiveness or force. Though less important than either perspicuity or energy, it is not to be disregarded. Minds are influenced by what is agreeable, as well as by what is reasonable; and in proportion as those addressed have richness and delicacy of feeling, matter and manner must combine to make the product beautiful. Elegance of expression implies refinement in the choice and arrangement of words. It depends upon:

1. Euphony, the use of pleasant-sounding words— words, generally speaking, in which there is either a preponderance of vowels and liquids or a due intermixture of vowels and consonants; hence words that are easily pronounced. Compare lowlily, inexplicableness, soothedst, stretched, barefacedness with merrily, demeanor, celerity, bridal, alternative, degree, repent,

wonderful, impetuosity. The following are examples of euphonic beauty:

And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever disse ver my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.-Poe.

Airs, vernal airs,

Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune
The trembling leaves, while universal Pan,

Knit with the graces and the hours in dance,
Led on the eternal spring.-Milton.

The voice within us is more distinctly audible in the stillness of the place; and the gentler affections of our nature spring up more freshly in its tranquillity and sunshine - nurtured by the healthy principle which we inhale with the pure air, and invigorated by the genial influences which descend into the heart from the quiet of the sylvan solitude around, and the soft serenity of the sky above.— Longfellow.

2. Rhythm, the regular recurrence of accents and pauses at such intervals as shall produce an agreeable rise and fall of tone. It is a principle of proportion introduced into language, according to which words are so chosen and arranged as not only to express the meaning, but also to appeal to the musical sensibility. The 'rests,' in particular, should be so distributed as neither to exhaust the breath by their distance from each other, nor to require constant cessations of voice by their frequency. What is easy to the organs of speech will, as a rule, be delightful to the ear. It is desirable, moreover, that the sound should grow to the last, the longest members and the most sonorous terms being, in general, retained for the close. Herein the requirements of energy and melody agree. Observe, in the following passages, how the sense is reinforced by the rhythmical flow. In parts, as will be indicated, the movement becomes metrical:

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