has recorded, "He that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things.'

3. The immortal Edwards, too, repeatedly records his own experience of the happy effect of strict temperance both on the mind and body. And the recent reformations from moderate drinking, in different parts of the land, have revealed numerous examples of renovated health and spirits in consequence of the change.

4. In the full persuasion of the excellency of our government, let us shun those vices which tend to its subversion, and cultivate those virtues which will render it permanent, and transmit it in full vigor to all succeeding ages. Let not the haggard forms of intemperance and luxury ever lift their destroying visages in this happy country. Let economy, frugality, moderation and justice, at home and abroad, mark the conduct of all our citizens. Let it be our constant care to diffuse knowledge and goodness through all ranks of society.

In No. 1, it will be readily observed, that the part beginning with jurists and the part beginning with metaphysicians, bear precisely the same relation to the succeeding conjunction but a sufficient reason surely against the insertion of the period after war.

In Nos. 2, 3, for the reason that the parts are allied in thought, and connected as propositions by the connective and, the semicolon should have been used.

In No. 4, we have the same connection with the connective understood. The period therefore should give place to the colon.

V. THE DOUBLE PERIOD.

The double period is the pause which occurs at the end of a paragraph, or a series of sentences unfolding the same general thought. It has no sign of its own, but is represented by the common period. It is usually indicated by a break or blank space in the page. This, however, is not always the case; for neither speakers, writers, nor printers, are always accurate in marking the transition from one general thought to another; and when not, the reader must exercise his own judgment in marking it for himself.

The length of the double period, as the name implies, is relatively about double the length of the common period.

No examples are necessary to illustrate this pause; a bare reference to any book within reach, will be sufficient to satisfy the inquiring that this pause has a real existence in nature; and though hitherto unnoticed by writers on elocution, one of great importance to a correct, graceful, and impressive delivery. By neglecting to observe it, many speakers and readers, both at the bar and in the pulpit, as well as in less conspicuous positions, impair seriously the effect of what they speak and read on those who hear them. Many cases of this have fallen under my own observation.

DEVIATIONS FROM THE LEGITIMATE USE OF THE PAUSES WHICH MARK DIVISIONS OF SENSE.

I have said at the beginning of this chapter, "that every departure from the proper punctuation, by which the latter is brought in conflict with the delivery, should be systematic; that is to say,

should be for reasons which apply to all cases of the same kind; so that the design of the change in punctuation may be always obvious, and the proper delivery retained notwithstanding."

Unhappily, for the want of a sufficient number of pauses to meet all the exigencies of punctuation, such a departure is frequently necessary; and I now proceed to state the rules in conformity to which, it should uniformly take place. As I have hitherto introduced no rule, not founded in the nature of things, and sustained by abundant examples from the best practice of printers, (the leading practice, in fact, of all printers, but from which they are often seen capriciously wandering,) so here I shall lay down no principle which is not amply justified by the best punctuation in this country and Great Britain. I do not aim at originality, but simply to introduce system, where hitherto, it must be confessed, practice has often been incompatible with itself, often arbitrary, not seldom extremely slovenly, frequently and glaringly false, and, since confusion here must necessarily produce a corresponding confusion in the delivery, always more or less injurious.

I. When the parts (of a sentence) making imperfect sense, are not merely long, but comprise subdivisions which require separation by the comma, we may employ the semicolon to mark their limits, and distinguish them from these subdivisions;* and if, for the same reason, a remoter punctuation be necessary, we may employ the colon.

Examples.

1. The bounding of Satan over the walls of Paradise; his sitting in the shape of a cormorant upon the tree of life, which stood in the centre of it, and overtopped all the other trees in the garden; his alighting among the herd of animals, which are so beautifully represented as playing about Adam and Eve, together with his transforming himself into different shapes, in order to hear their conversation; are circumstances that give an agreeable surprise to the reader, and are devised with great art to connect that series of adventures, in which the poet has engaged this artifice of fraud.

2. That a man, to whom he was, in a great measure, beholden for his crown, and even for his life; a man, to whom, by every honor and favor, he had endeavored to express his gratitude; whose brother, the Earl of Derby, was his own father-in-law; to whom he had committed the trust of his person, by creating him lord chamberlain; that a man enjoying his full confidence and affection; not actuated by any motive of discontent or apprehension;

* When a sentence contains a succession of similar members making imperfect sense, and any one of them requires the semicolon for the reason assigned; all of them, for the sake of uniformity, may be punctuated in the same manner, though without subdivisions requiring the comma. The first and second examples are pertinent illustrations of this.

that this man should engage in a conspiracy against him, he deemed absolutely false and incredible.

3. Seeing then that the soul has many different faculties, or in other words, many different ways of acting; that it can be intensely pleased or made happy by all these different faculties or ways of acting; that it may be endowed with several latent faculties, which it is not at present in a condition to exert; that we cannot believe the soul is endowed with any faculty which is of no use to it; that whenever any one of these faculties is transcendently pleased, the soul is in a state of happiness; and, in the last place, considering that the happiness of another world is to be the happiness of the whole man; who can question but that there is an infinite variety in those pleasures we are speaking of; and that this fulness of joy will be made up of all those pleasures which the nature of the soul is capable of receiving?

4. Besides the ignorance of masters who teach the first rudiments of reading, and the want of skill or negligence in that article, of those who teach the learned languages; besides the erroneous manner, which the untutored pupils fall into, through the want of early attention in masters, to correct small faults in the beginning, which increase and gain strength with years; besides bad habits contracted from imitation of particular persons, or the contagion of example, from a general prevalence of a certain tone or cant in reading or reciting, peculiar to each school, and regularly transmitted from one generation of boys to another; besides all these, which are fruitful sources of vicious elocution, there is one fundamental error in the method universally used in teaching to read, which at first gives a wrong bias, and leads us ever after blindfold from the right path, under the guidance of a false rule.

5. As the middle, and the fairest, and the most conspicuous places in cities, are usually chosen for the erection of statues and monuments, dedicated to the memory of the most worthy men who have nobly deserved of their country; so should we in the heart and centre of our soul, in the best and highest apartment thereof, in the places most exposed to ordinary observation, and most secure from worldly care, erect lively representations, and lasting memorials of divine bounty.

6. When the gay and smiling aspect of things has begun to leave the passage to a man's heart thus thoughtlessly unguarded; when kind and caressing looks of every object without, that can flatter his senses, have conspired with the enemy within, to betray him, and put him off his defence; when music likewise hath lent her aid, and tried her power upon the passions; when the voice of singing men, and the voice of singing women, with the sound of the viol and the lute, have broke in upon his soul, and in some

tender notes have touched the secret springs of rapture; that moment let us dissect and look into his heart: see how vain, how weak, how empty a thing it is!

7. If, indeed, we desire to behold a literature like that which has sculptured with such energy of expression, which has painted so faithfully and vividly the crimes, the vices, the follies of ancient and modern Europe; if we desire that our land should furnish for the orator and the novelist, for the painter and the poet, age after age, the wild and romantic scenery of war; the glittering march of armies, and the revelry of the camp; the shrieks and blasphemies, and all the horrors of the battle field; the desolation of the harvest, and the burning cottage; the storm, the sack and the ruin of cities: if we desire to unchain the furious passions of jealousy and selfishness, hatred and revenge, those lions that now sleep harmless in their den; if we desire that the lake, the river, the ocean, should blush with the blood of brothers; that the winds should waft from the land to the sea, from the sea to the land, the roar and smoke of battle; that the very mountain-tops should become altars for the sacrifice of brothers: if we desire that these, and such things as these, (the elements, to an incredible extent, of the literature of the old world,) should be the elements of our literature; then, but then only, let us hurl from its pedestal, the majestic statue of our union, and scatter the fragments over all our land.

II. When the parts (of a sentence) making perfect sense, comprise sub-parts also making perfect sense, and both have the connectives expressed or understood at the same time, and hence both according to rule require the same punctuation; to mark their respective limits and distinguish them from one another, we may punctuate the sub-parts one degree lower than the principal parts; that is to say, if the principal parts require the colon, the subparts may be separated by the semicolon: if the principal parts require the semicolon, the sub-parts may be separated by the comma.

Examples.

1. They now heard of the exact accomplishment of obscure predictions of the punishment over which the justice of heaven had seemed to slumber of dreams; omens; warnings from the dead of princesses, for whom noble suitors contended in every generous exercise of strength and skill: of infants, strangely preserved from the dagger of the assassin, to fulfil high destinies.

2. Gratitude is of a fruitful and diffusive nature; of a free and communicative disposition; of an open and sociable temper: it will be imparting, discovering and propagating itself: it affects light, company and liberty: it cannot endure to be smothered in privacy and obscurity.

3. We swear to preserve the blessings which they toiled to gain; which they obtained by the incessant labors of eight distressful years: to transmit to our posterity our right undiminished, our honor untarnished, and our freedom unimpaired.

4. This was the gymnastic school, in which Washington was brought up; in which his quick glance was formed, destined to range hereafter across the battle-field, through clouds of smoke and bristling rows of bayonets: the school in which his senses, weaned from the tastes for those detestable indulgences miscalled pleasure, in which the flower of adolescence so often languishes and pines away, were early braced up to that sinewy manhood which became the

Lord of the Lion heart and eagle eye.

5. In the Book of Judges, we see the strength and weakness of Samson in that of Ruth, the plain-dealing and equity of Boaz: in those of Kings, the holiness of Samuel, of Elijah, and the other prophets; the reprobation of Saul; the fall and repentance of David, his mildness and patience; the wisdom of Solomon; the piety of Hezekiah and Josiah: in Esdras, the zeal for the law of God: in Tobit, the conduct of a holy family: in Judith, the power of grace: in Esther, prudence: in Job, a pattern of admirable patience.

In all of these sentences, the sub-parts are constructed precisely like the principal parts; and if they were pointed in the same manner, as in strict propriety they should be, they would be confounded. The sub-parts are therefore separated by the semicolon, to mark their subor dination. In No. 4, the sub-part, ending with bayonets, and in No. 5, the sub-part respecting David, have themselves sub-parts of the same construction. These, consequently, are separated by the comma.

SEC. II. PAUSES DENOTING THE NATURE OF THE SENTENCE.

These, accurately speaking, are not pauses, but the representatives of the pauses, already considered, which mark divisions of sense; and this representative character it is very important to remember; for otherwise we shall be constantly in danger of regarding, and in delivery treating, as distinct sentences, what are in fact but parts of the same sentence.

Being representatives, they have, of course, no time of their own, but adopt that of the pauses of sense for which they stand; and they stand indifferently for the comma, semicolon, colon or period.

I ought, perhaps, to enumerate the parenthesis among pauses that indicate the nature of the sentence, and have a representative character; but as modern practice usually associates the pause with it, as it indicates no peculiarity in the sentence itself, which it includes, but simply that, whatever the nature of the sentence may be, it is necessary neither to the general construction nor sense, and especially as it would lead to a repetition of the same mat ter in a subsequent part of this work, where the parenthesis is fully discussed, I deem it best to waive every thing in this place beyond this brief allusion.