Or ever the silver cord be loosed-or the golden bowl be broken or the pitcher broken at the fountain-or the wheel broken at the cistern.

Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.-Bible.

The boat reappeared, but brother and sister had gone down in an embrace never to be parted; living through again, in one supreme moment, the days when they had clásped their little hands in love; and roamed the dáisied fields together.-George Eliot.

3. Harmony, from the Greek, signifying to fit together; the just adaptation of one thing to another. Thus defined, it comprehends the general appropriateness of diction to the subject and end of discourse; the similar construction of corresponding parts, as in balanced and antithetical sentences; the right relation of parts to each other and to the whole. Low comedy must not take the place of sober discussion; nor pompous assertion, of simple statement. A letter should not be written in the

stately manner of an oration. The grave, the gay, the solemn, the merry, the sublime, the pleasant, should each be brought forth in its own specific features and coloring. Where, also, members are coördinate and have a common dependence; where either resemblance or opposition is intended to be expressed, there should be a resemblance in construction, in language, or in both. The skilful handling of every part, again, so that there may be neither excess nor deficiency of treatment, is essential to success; but the management of the theme as a whole the steady working out of the main idea — is even a more requisite excellence, while it is a more costly one. Finally, it is occasionally possible-in prose less often than in poetry-to assist the meaning and to heighten the pleasure by making the sound an echo to the sense. Observe how Milton imitates the grating noise of the opening of hell-gates:

On a sudden, open fly

With impetuous recoil and jarring sound,

The infernal doors; and on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder.

Contrast with this the opening of heaven's doors:

Heaven opened wide

Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound,
On golden hinges turning.

Melancholy and gloomy subjects naturally express themselves in long words and slow measures:

In those deep solitudes and awful cells,

Where heavenly pensive contemplation dweils.—Pope.

Thus

A combination difficult to pronounce is suited to the
description of labored movement, while an opposite ar-
rangement corresponds to rapidity of motion.
Homer and his English translators suggest, by a succes-
sion of aspirates, the labor of Sisyphus:

With many a weary step, and many a groan,
Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone.

Then the descent:

The huge round stone, resulting with a bound, Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground. Heaviness and stupidity are similarly indicated:

Just writes to make his barrenness appear,

And strains from hard-bound brains six lines a year.-Pope. The uproar of battle is thus described:

Arms on armor clashing bray'd

Horrible discord, and the madding wheels
Of brazen chariots rag'd; dire was the noise
Of conflict; overhead the dismal hiss

Of fiery darts in flaming volleys flew.-Milton.

Poe's Song of the Bells is full of onomatopoetic words, all illustrative of harmony. One almost sees and hears the

Tennyson thus happily suggests the varying sounds of a flowing brook:

I chatter over stony ways

In little sharps and trebles;

I bubble into eddying bays,

I babble at the pebbles.

I chatter, chatter, as I go

To join the brimming river;

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

How exquisitely does the same poet, in Lotos-Eaters, represent the dreamy haze of the enchanted land, and the sleepiness, the glutted weariness, of those who feed upon the lotos. Every stanza is a symbol of satiety.

4. Variety. In the works of nature, as in flowers and landscapes, and in the works of art which are intended to please, this is the prevailing characteristic. Perpetual sameness leads to monotony, and monotony is painful. To have only one tune or measure is little better than to have none. Subject to the more important considerations of meaning and force, the diction should be varied; there should be a due alternation of phrases with clauses; of long members and sentences with short ones; of the natural order with the inverted; of emphatic with unemphatic words; of abrupt with swelling terminations.

5. Imagery. Figures of speech nearly all tend to embellishment, as well as to illustration or emphasis. This effect is manifested chiefly, however, by comparison,

allusion, and metaphor. But sentiment and thought constitute the real and lasting merit of a production. Figurative language, in order to be beautiful, must rise from the subject, of its own accord, and must not be used too frequently. Nothing is more surfeiting than redundant ornaments of any kind.

6. Quotation. Discourse can be made clearer, stronger, and more attractive, by the proper use of anecdotes and sayings, of historical and literary allusions, and of extracts from reputable authors. The following are examples:

Devoured by worms, like Herod, was the town,
Because, like Herod, it had ruthlessly

Slaughtered the Innocents.'-Longfellow.

The main secret of Macaulay's success lay in this, that to extraordinary fluency and facility he united patient, minute, and persistent diligence. He well knew, as Chaucer knew before him, that,— There is na workeman

That can bothe worken wel and hastilie.

This must be done at leisure parfaitlie.

If his method of composition ever comes into fashion, books probably will be better, and undoubtedly will be shorter.-Trevelyan.

Some of the offences against elegance are:

1. The needless use of words that are hard to pronounce; such, for example, as contain a cumulation of consonants, or recurrence of the same sound, or a succession of short unaccented syllables.

2. The commencing of successive words with the same letter or syllable.

The rules of emphasis come in in interruption of your supposed general law of position.-Dean Alford.

3. The careless repetition of words at short intervals; an offence from which the best writers are not altogether

1Of a tract of country troubled with insects because the people had killed the birds.

free, and which those who write hastily can seldom avoid:

A large supply of mules was obtained to supply the great destruction of those useful animals.-Sir Archibald Alison.

Every morning setting a worthy example to his men by setting fire, with his own monster hands, to the house where he had slept last night.-Dickens.

Pronouns and synonyms may be employed to vary the language. Where any given word, however, is best adapted to convey the meaning, it should be used. The variation should not seem forced, as it does in the following example:

He was just one of those men that the country can't afford to lose, and whom it is so very hard to replace.-Anthony Trollope.

4. The splitting of particles, as the separation of a preposition from the noun which it governs:

I have often spoken to you upon matters kindred to, or at any rate not distantly connected with, my subject for Easter.-Helps. We may here call attention to the inelegance, and the solecism as well, of inserting an adverb between the components of an infinitive:

He's not the man to tamely acquiesce.—Browning.

To fairly understand this, consider the minor poetry of our own times.-E. C. Stedman.

5. The purposeless change of phraseology or construction where the parts are coördinate, contrasted, or responsive. This conflicts with symmetry, causes an unpleasant jar, and thus diverts attention.

We could see the lake over the woods, two or three miles ahead, and that the river made an abrupt turn southward.-Thoreau.

The laughers will be for those who have most wit; the serious part of mankind, for those who have most reason on their side.Bolingbroke.