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Bourbon. A bitter sense of humiliation, new to the proudest and bravest of nations, superseded every other feeling. The cry of all the counties and great towns of the realms was for a government which would retrieve the honor of the English

arms.

In the first passage, the coördinate clauses of the sentence italicized might very well, so far as they themselves are concerned, have been made separate sentences. The various assertions have not, as is the case with those of the preceding sentence, that intimate relation with each other which makes it impossible to disjoin them: they are not separate assertions with regard to one act, but assertions dealing with separate and distinct acts. Consequently, each might have been made an independent sentence. From the point of view of their relation to the topic of the paragraph, however, they ought obviously to be taken together; hence the writer has made a single sentence of them. Notice, now, the way in which he has treated a similar series of assertions in the second passage, the series italicized. The assertions in this series might properly enough have been grouped in one sentence. The first sentence states a general truth, the two following give illustrative particulars, and the fourth presents the consequence. All are closely related. But the writer's purpose in the paragraph is to bring out as strongly as he can the fact that the public mind of England was for a time violently excited in consequence of the conduct of the war; and to do this, he

emphasizes as much as possible the causes of the excitement by mentioning each in a separate sentence. The result is analogous to the cumulative effect of a series of blows delivered in rapid succession. 39. Length of the sentence. Just what the length of the average sentence should be, it is hard to say. It depends a little on the writer's individuality, though more, perhaps, on the nature of the subject. A rough calculation based on passages of about one thousand words each selected at random from Macaulay's Essay on Milton, Newman's Idea of a University, and Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy shows an average sentence length of about twenty-six, thirty, and thirty-nine words, respectively. The subjects treated here are similar in their nature, and the difference in sentence length is due mainly to the difference in the individuality of the writers, Macaulay being evidently much fonder of the short sentence than Matthew Arnold. Again, making a similar calculation from passages of the same length from two of Stevenson's works, Virginibus Puerisque, on the one hand, and Treasure Island, on the other, the results show an average sentence length of thirty-four and thirty words respectively. Here the difference is due solely to the nature of the subject.

As we should suppose, the long sentence is much more often used in discourses of a serious nature than in those of lighter character. The natural tendency of the long sentence is to give weight and strength to the style of a discourse; that of the short

sentence

provided it does not go to an extreme is to give lightness, ease, and flexibility. Notice, for example, the difference in style between the two following passages, the one from Darwin's Origin of Species, with its average of fifty-nine words to the sentence, the other from Stevenson's Treasure Island, with its average of only twenty-two words to the sen

tence:

On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, why should specific characters, or those by which the species of the same genus differ from each other, be more variable than generic characters in which they all agree? Why, for instance, should the color of a flower be more likely to vary in any one species of a genus, if the other species possess differently colored flowers, than if all possessed the same colored flowers? If species are only well-marked varieties, of which the characters have become in a high degree permanent, we can understand this fact; for they have already varied sin e they branched off from a common progenitor in certain characters, by which they have come to be specifi ally different from each other; therefore these same characters would be more likely again to vary than the generic characters which have been inherited without change for an immense period. It i inexplicable on the theory of creation why a part developed in a very unusual manner in one species alone of a genus, and therefore, as we may naturally infer, of great importance to that speci s, should be eminently liable to variation; but, on our view, this part has undergone, since the several species branched off from a common progenitor, an unusual amount of variability and modification, and therefore we might expect the part generally to be still variable. But a part may be developed in the most unusual manner, like the wing of a bat, and yet not be more variable than any other

structure, if the part be common to many subordinate forms, that is, if it has been inherited for a very long period; for in this case it will have been rendered constant by long-continued natural selection.1

At last I came right down upon the borders of the clearing. The western end was already steeped in moonshine; the rest, and the block-house itself, still lay in a black shadow, checkered with long, silvery streaks of light. On the other side of the house an immense fire had burned itself into clear embers, and shed a steady, red reverberation, contrasted strongly with the mellow paleness of the moon. There was not a soul stirring, nor a sound beside the noises of the breeze.

I stopped, with much wonder in my heart, and perhaps a little terror also. It had not been our way to build great fires; we were, indeed, by the captain's orders, somewhat niggardly of firewood; and I began to fear that something had gone wrong while I was absent.

I stole round by the eastern end, keeping close in shadow, and at a convenient place, where the darkness was thickest, crossed the palisade.

To make assurance surer, I got upon my hands and knees, and crawled, without a sound, toward the corner of the house. As I drew nearer, my heart was suddenly and greatly lightened. It was not a pleasant noise in itself, and I have often complained of it at other times; but just then it was like music to hear my friends snoring together so loud and peaceful in their sleep. The sea-cry of the watch, that beautiful "All's well," never fell more reassuringly on my ear.2

As a rule, the beginner will do well to avoid trying to put very much into one sentence. Long sentences are apt to be lacking somewhat in unity. In any 1 From Darwin's Origin of Species. 2 From Stevenson's Treasure Island.

case, they are much more difficult to handle than sentences of a medium length. Where there may be legitimate doubt as to whether a number of assertions should be grouped together in one sentence or kept separate, the safer plan for the beginner to follow will be to keep them separate. Above all things, aimless wandering on through an endless series of clauses should be avoided. Scarcely anything is so irritating to a reader as a sentence that goes everywhere, takes in everything, and gets nowhere.

40. Coherence in the sentence. - Ordinarily, the problem of securing coherence in the sentence is not one that troubles the writer very much. Sentences, especially if they are short and comparatively simple in structure, tend to shape themselves. If the writer observes the rules of grammar, that fact settles, for perhaps the majority of his sentences, what part shall be joined to what other part and where each part shall be placed. Nevertheless, the beginner must not suppose, as too often he does, that he can dispense with all forethought in the matter.

Incoherence in the structure of the sentence may be due to errors in grammar, to loose construction, or to faulty punctuation.

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41. Grammatical errors. The correction of grammatical errors does not, in strictness, fall within the scope of this work; still, faults of a certain kind are so common that they deserve notice. Among these, one of the most common is the use of a wrong number or a wrong case when the verb and its subject or

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