exceedingly loose, while not wanting in other qualities of an elegant diction: "And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves, Over the unreturning brave, - alas! Ere evening to be trodden like the grass Which now beneath them, but above shall grow In its next verdure, when this fiery mass Of living valor rolling on the foe, And burning with high hope, shall molder cold and low." "To this succeeded that licentiousness which entered with the Restoration; and, from infecting our religion and morals, fell to corrupt our language; which last was not like to be much improved by those who at that time made up the court of King Charles the Second; either such who had followed him in his banishment, or who had been altogether conversant in the dialect of those fanatic times; or young men, who had been educated in the same company; so that the court, which used to be the standard of propriety and correctness of speech, was then, and I think hath ever since continued, the worst school in England for that accomplishment; and so will remain till better care be taken in the education of our young nobility, that they may set out into the world with some foundation of literature, in order to qualify them for patterns of politeness." — Swift. "The first could not end his learned treatise without a panegyric of modern learning and knowledge in comparison of the ancient; and the other falls so grossly into the censure of the old poetry and preference of the new, that I could not read either of these strains without indignation, which no quality among men is so apt to raise in one as self-sufficiency, the worst composition out of the pride and ignorance of mankind." Temple. § 270. An antithetic structure, so far as it is periodic, is peculiarly favorable to this kind of melody. Where the main member of the antithesis, or that to which the writer wishes to give peculiar prominence, is placed last, the antithesis is periodic, and so far melodious. Where this order is reversed, the melody is marred or destroyed. The following extract has this quality in a high degree, although the members are too uniformly short to give it the highest melodious effect: : "If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they felt assured they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them.” Macaulay. § 271. Parenthetical sentences are opposed to melody, when the parentheses are of excessive length, or when parentheses are included within other parentheses. The reason of this is that when the parenthetical part is long, a great part of the sentence must be pronounced with an abatement of the voice; and when parentheses are included within parentheses, the voice, in the endeavor to express the relations correctly, sinks too far for melodious effect. The following sentences are faulty in this respect : — "For we here see, that before God took any people to be peculiar to him, from the rest of men, the reason which he gives, why his Spirit should not always strive with man, in common (after an intimation of his contemptible meanness, and his own indulgence toward him notwithstanding, and instance given of his abounding wickedness in those days) was because 'all the imaginations of the thoughts of his heart were only evil continually.'"- John Howe: Living Temple. "Yet because it may be grateful when we are persuaded that things are so, to fortify (as much as we can) that persuasion, and because our persuasion concerning those attributes of God will be still liable to assault unless we acknowledge him everywhere present; (nor can it well be conceivable otherwise, how the influence of his knowledge, power, and goodness can be so universal as will be thought necessary to infer a universal obligation to religion;) it will be therefore requisite to add somewhat concerning his omnipresence, or because some, that love to be very strictly critical, will be apt to think that term restrictive of his presence to the universe, (as supposing to be present is relative to somewhat one may be said present unto, whereas they will say without the universe is nothing,) we will rather choose to call it immensity.” — Ibid. A very common variety of faults of this class occurs where, by the interposition of a long parenthetical clause, a just reading must throw an excessive stress on a portion of the sentence. Thus in the following sentences, the subjects they, which, who, being separated from their respective verbs, require a heavy accent followed by a pause which destroys the melody. They, going about to work a righteousness of their own, are not wise. Which, as it standeth with Christian duty in some cases, so in common affairs to require it were most unfit. Who, aiming only at the height of greatness and sensuality, hath in tract of time reduced so great and goodly a part of the world to that lamentable distress and servitude, under which, to the astonishment of the understanding beholders, it now faints and groans.. EXERCISES ON THE ORAL PROPERTIES OF STYLE. Name and correct the faults in the following extracts: They conducted themselves wilily. Tranquillity, regularity, and magnanimity reside with the religious and resigned man. Were really radically opposed. Usually falsely assigned. Usually specifically called. Extremely nearly. Giving being to abstractions. It was almost equally generally admitted. It is generally sufficiently palpable. A most arbitrary requisition. Tediousness is the most fatal of all faults. Throughout it there is an air of matured power. Thou act'st the fool as it were natural to thee. He, though we must ever keep in mind that he does not represent exactly the language of his time, affecting a certain archaism both in words and forms, continually uses it. Andrès, with a partiality to the Saracens of Spain, whom, by an old blunder, he takes for his own countrymen, manifested in every page, does not fail to urge this. The Greeks and Romans certainly normally articulated the Grecian rough breathing and the Latin H. As the people were carrying by, down below in the street, an old man fast asleep, into whose strongly marked face the setting sun cast fire and life, and who was, in short, a corpse borne uncovered, after the Italian custom, suddenly, in a wild and hurried tone, he asked his friends: "Does my father look thus?" "But the power of Greek radiance Goethe could give to his handling of Nature, and nobly too, as any one who will read his 'Wanderer' - the poem in which a wanderer falls in with a peasant woman and her child, by their hut, built out of the ruins of a temple near Cuma -may see." CHAPTER VII. OF THE SUGGESTIVE PROPERTIES OF STYLE. § 272. THE SUGGESTIVE PROPERTIES of style include those that are founded on the relationship between the sound and the thought, and those that are founded on the relationship between the object that represents the thought and the thought. The former may be denominated the Imitative, the latter, the Symbolical Properties of style. It was observed, in treating of the nature of language, § 245, that language is representative or suggestive in its nature in a twofold respect. In the first place, a sensible object is taken to represent the thought, if abstract, and in the second place, a sound or word is applied as indicative of that object, or of the mental state itself. Hence the ground of distinguishing these two varieties of suggestive properties. § 273. The functions of voice on which the Imitative Properties of style are founded, are those of quality and time; pitch and force, except as the latter is connected with accent, not admitting any consideration in this department of style. § 274. Words regarded as sounds are imitative of three different classes of thoughts: (1.) Sensations of sounds; (2.) Other sensations analogous to those of sound; (3.) Mental states analogous to these sensations. § 275. All languages contain words which, in their |