barous and doubtful rules which have taught students to count, for a comma, one; for a semicolon, two; for a colon, three; and for a period, four-the invariable resource, even at the present day, of many pitifully ignorant preceptors.

To attempt something at least more substantial, the author offers the following as a rule of general application for the semicolon:

432. As the Connecting Word is frequently superseded by the Comma, so, in cases of omission, the Comma is often displaced by the Semicolon.

"Potentates and people have their rise and fall, and cities and families their trines and sextiles, and their quartiles and oppositions."

"Potentates and people have their rise and fall; cities and families their trines and sextiles; their quartiles and oppositions."

"I wrote one page, and John, two.”

"I wrote one page; John, two."

433. You may clearly perceive that the two; ; in the latter passage, are a supersedure of the two,, and the two ands in the former. They are also preferable, because omitting the ands imports a beauty and precision, the lack of which is otherwise felt.

434. It may be in place now, for one moment, to introduce the directions of a recent grammarian on divisions of sentences. They will serve to shew what singular notions unsubstantial grammarians can openly propagate.

"Sentences," says he, “are divided by points or stops. Those parts of a sentence which are separated by commas, are called clauses; and those separated by semicolons, are called members."

435. A more glaring instance of unmeaning and impracticable teaching perhaps never escaped the pen of a grammarian. Were each point used but for one purpose, and did each person punctuate with perfect uniformity, a rule like the above might at least be excusable, if not necessary. But otherwise the rule is incomplete, and the student should have been cautioned by its framer against the fatal error of relying for the guidance of his judgment

upon passages of faulty punctuation, such as the teacher's own unhappy rule. For his express directions contain, on his own plan, four clauses and two members. But on disjoining" or stops" by the comma, as we ought properly to do, the four clauses may become five, and on displacing the semicolon by the comma, to render the punctuation correct in another particular, the two members may as readily become no members at all!

The rule, even if punctuated as follows, would be less exposed to criticism:

"Sentences are divided by points, or stops. Those parts of a sentence which are separated by commas are called clauses, and those separated by semicolons are called members."

436. You have already perceived that

The Semicolon implies remoter connection than the Comma.

437. Another useful rule may be, that

The Semicolon is employed in passages consisting of several sentences, similarly constructed, and all depending for the completeness of the sense on a preceding or concluding declaration.

This rule the author regrets is much longer than he was desirous it should be, but his apology must be the difficulty he experienced in meeting the whole case in fewer terms.

The following is an example :

"All who love the dramatic representations of actual life; all who have hearts to be gladdened by humour; all who are pleased with judicious and well-directed satire; all who are charmed with the ludicrous looks of popular folly; and all who can be moved with the pathos of human suffering; are admirers of Hogarth."

438. You will here observe the semicolon before are, which may, in some measure, surprise you, but it is only placed there to denote the equal dependance it has on each semicolon preceding. The same might be observed of the semicolon and and. It is quite requisite that some other point than the comma should be used in passages of this

nature.

Were not the semicolon employed in the extract

previonsly given from Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, it would convey anything but the meaning of the writer: "A lawyer is considered as a sordid wrangler, a physician, an inspector of filth and nastiness, and so on." No such thing is intended. A lawyer, everybody knows, is no physician!

439. Other examples:

"Nor does the character of any seem to have been more adapted for the various stations of human life than that of Alcibiades. In some, he had all the graces and vivacity of the gayest youth, and in others, all the gravity of old age; in Sparta, he was laborious, frugal and austere; in Ionia, enjoyment, idleness and pleasure, made up his whole life; in Thrace, he was always on horseback or carousing; and when he resided with Tissaphernes, the satrap, he exceeded all the magnificence of the Persians in luxury and profusion."

"Even by those who are miserably poor, it should be recollected, that misery is virtue's whetstone; that the poor shall not always be forgotten; that the Lord is a refuge to the oppressed, and a defence in the time of trouble; and that he who sows in tears shall reap in joy."

440. The semicolon will be found useful in many other cases, when either confusion or doubt would attend the mere comma.

441. It is common, with grammarians, to disjoin two or more examples by the semicolon, as :—

"A verb must agree with its nominative; as, I am ignorant; Thou art ostentatious; He is eccentric; They are despicable."

442. In these cases perhaps a period would be preferable.

443. Always guard against separating parenthetical and transposed words and sentences by the semicolon, and you will never mistake its use.

444. While we have the parenthesis in view, there is another particular to which your attention may be directed, and that is, the intervention of the semicolon, colon, or period, or all of them, between the beginning and end of an explanatory passage, as :

"When he had spoken these things, and a great many more, against King Agrippa, in order to provoke the peole to a revolt, he added, that this was the time for them

to take arms, and join with the Galileans as their confederates (whom," the Galileans, "they might command. They would now willingly assist them, out of the hatred they bare to the people of Sepphoris; because they preserved their fidelity to the Romans), and to gather a great number of forces, in order to punish them."

445. The author has taken this extract from Josephus, chiefly on account of being able to show you, that it is quite proper to punctuate what is contained within the parenthesis, as an independent sentence. You will find a period after command, and a semicolon after Sepphoris. The period is right, but the semicolon should be displaced by the comma, it being sufficient that a pause is indicated. The () begins at whom, and ends at Romans, and, notwithstanding the intervention of the period and semicolon, the), after Romans, are defensible. The () is, by good writers, generally substituted by the comma. As you

have before been told, when the () is not employed, a comma must be placed at the beginning of a parenthetical phrase, and when the () is employed, the same point must succeed which would be necessary were all the parenthetical portion of the sentence left out.

446. But there is a fault in the composition of this extract. It is rendered tedious by the introduction of an unhappy parenthesis. To avoid the scoffs of better informed minds, it is advisable to close a period with as few parenthetical phrases as possible, and, then, if any descriptiveness be required, it will be much more pleasing to give it in a separate sentence. If we postpone what is enclosed within the ( ), until we come to a period, without altering one word, we shall remove at once the tediousness of the translator of Josephus, thus:—

"When he had spoken these things, and a great many more, against King Agrippa, in order to provoke the people to a revolt, he added, that this was the time for them to take arms, and join with the Galileans as their confederates, and to gather a great number of forces, in order to punish them. The Galileans they might command. They would now willingly assist them, out of the hatred they bare to the people of Sepphoris, because they preserved their fidelity to the Romans."

447. You cannot too generally adopt this mode, in order to render your language smooth, easy, and intelligible.

THE COLON.

448. The Colon is the next point to the semicolon, in the remoteness of connection it implies.

449. To any one who delights to drag out to its utmost length every sentence he pens or utters, the colon is, properly speaking, of little or no service. He is certain always to have in requisition a number of small connecting words, such as for, because, but, and yet, with which he rarely fails to make his language drawling and feeble. The following are a few coloned passages :

"He is the reverse of his brother: he is mild and affable."

"He resembles not Cobbett: Cobbet was not irksome." "Men love darkness rather than light: hence arises the propagation of infidelity."

450. You have noticed the :- just above. The dash and colon there appear together, but when an example is introduced in the body of a paragraph, the dash should be rejected. We may hence mark out, as our first rule, that

451. The Colon should be employed when examples are introduced.

452. The colons succeeding brother, Cobbett, and light, seem to offer to the reader a kind of invitation to run over the annexed few words, in which reasons are supplied to bear out the affirmations "That he is the reverse of his brother; that he resembles not Cobbett; and that men love darkness rather than light."

453. The colons may be thus dispensed with :—

"He is the reverse of his brother, for (because) he is mild and affable."

"He resembles not Cobbett, for (because) Cobbett is not irksome.

"Men love darkness rather than light, and hence arises the propagation of infidelity."

454. We gather from the preceding, that

455. The Colon is often employed when a Connecting Word is omitted.

456. Although we cannot conclude that the omission