the clauses be properly arranged, and the leading subject be retained prominently before the mind. If too long or too frequent, the effect is to fatigue by the difficulty of perceiving clearly the connection of the several parts, and of taking in the whole at one view. The second, requiring less attention, and easier to understand, always suits a brisk and brilliant movement; but, wanting the cement of thought, the connections, the 'hooks-and-eyes of the memory,' they are not so easily remembered. 'Like idle morning visitors,' says Coleridge, 'the brisk and breathless periods hurry in and hurry off in quick and profitless succession; each indeed for the moment of its stay prevents the pain of vacancy, while it indulges the love of sloth; but all together they leave the mistress of the house (the soul, I mean) flat and exhausted, incapable of attending to her own concerns, and unfitted for the conversation of more rational guests.' The long sentence, full of additions or exceptions, clumsy and unwieldy, prevails in German literature; the short, in French. 'Kant,' says De Quincey, 'might naturally enough have written a book from beginning to end in one vast hyperbolical sentence.' But, 'A long, involved sentence could not be produced from French literature, though a sultan were to offer his daughter in marriage to the man who should find it.' Long sentences characterize the writings of Hooker, Sir Thomas Browne, Milton, Johnson, Gibbon, De Quincey; short ones, the essays of Bacon, the works of Addison, Lamb, Macaulay, Emerson. Some authors exhibit an equal proportion of both. The most pleasing effect, as a rule, calls for an intermixture of the two—the stately and the sprightly. The following are examples of each:

To

It is not hard to die. It is harder a thousand times to live. die is to be a man. To live is only to try to be one. To live is to see God through a glass darkly. To die is to see him face to face. To live is to be in the ore. To die is to be smelted and come out

pure gold. To live is to be in March and November. To die is to find midsummer where there is perfect harmony and perfect beauty. -Beecher.

Our immense extent of fertile territory opening an inexhaustible field for successful enterprise, thus assuring to industry a certain reward for its labors, and preserving the lands for centuries to come from the manifold evils of an overcrowded and consequently degraded population; our magnificent system of federated republics, carrying out and applying the principles of representative democracy to an extent never hoped or imagined in the boldest theories of the old speculative republican philosophers, the Harringtons, Sydneys, and Lockes of former times; the reaction of our political system upon our social and domestic concerns, bringing the influence of popular feeling and public opinion to bear upon all the affairs of life in a degree hitherto wholly unprecedented; the unconstrained range of freedom of opinion, of speech, and of the press, and the habitual and daring exercise of that liberty upon the highest subjects; the absence of all serious inequality of fortune and rank in the condition of our citizens; our divisions into innumerable religious sects, and the consequent co-existence, never before regarded as possible, of intense religious zeal with a degree of toleration in feeling and perfect equality of rights; our intimate connection with that elder world beyond the Atlantic, communicating to us, through the press and emigration, much of good and much of evil not our own; high science, refined art, and the best knowledge of old experience, as well as prejudices and luxuries, vices and crimes, such as could not have been expected to spring up in our soil for ages; all these, combined with numerous other peculiarities in the institutions, and in the moral, civil, and social condition of the American people, have given to our society, through all its relations, a character exclusively its own.-Choate.

I intrench myself in my books equally against sorrow and the weather. If the wind comes through a passage, I look about to see how I can fence it off by a better disposition of my movables. If a melancholy thought is importunate, I give another glance at my Spencer. When I speak of being in contact with my books, I mean it literally; I like to lean my head against them.-Hunt.

Whether long or short, sentences may be further classified into periodic and loose. The criterion of the former is, that the parts remain suspended in the mind till the

remain a more noble history than the child's story with which the book began.-Longfellow.

I realize that each generation is destined to confront new and peculiar perils to wrestle with temptations and seductions unknown to its predecessors; yet I trust that progress is a general law of our being, and that the ills and woes of our future shall be less crushing than those of the bloody and hateful past.-Greeley. Periodic

Fallen, fallen, is that great city Babylon.'

'Since nature is the art of God, all things are artificial.'

'We can no more live on our past reputation than we can be sustained on the food of which we have partaken days ago.'

"Then come either listless irresolutions and the inevitable reaction of despair, or the firm resolve to record upon the leaves that still remain a more noble history than the child's story with which the book began.'

'While I realize that each generation is destined to confront new and peculiar perils to wrestle with temptations and seductions unknown to its predecessors, I trust not only that progress is a general law of our being, but that the ills and woes of our future shall be less crushing than those of the bloody and hateful past.'

On comparing the two kinds of structure, periodic and loose, we find that each has its advantages and disadvantages. The former savours more of artifice and design, the latter seems more the result of pure Nature. The period is nevertheless more susceptible of vivacity and force; the loose sentence is apt, as it were, to languish and grow tiresome. The first is more adapted to the style of the writer; the second, to that of the speaker. But as that style is best, whether written or spoken, which hath a proper mixture of both, so there are some things in every species of discourse which require a looser, and some which require a preciser, manner. In general, the use of periods best suits the dignity of the historian, the political writer, and the philosopher. The other man

ner more befits the facility which ought to predominate in essays, dialogues, familiar letters, and moral tales.''

For an objectionable example of the period, objectionable because including a tiresome number of preliminary parts, the reader is referred to the preceding passage from Mr. Choate. The following are examples of the intermediate sort, neither wholly periodic nor wholly loose,a compromise between the two:

High on a throne of royal state which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,
Satan exalted sat, by merit raised

To that bad eminence.-Milton.

The granite statue, rough hewn though it be, is far more imposing in its simple and stern though rude proportions, than the plaster-cast, however elaborately wrought and gilded.—Macaulay.

The vibrations which produce the impression of red light are slower, and the ethereal waves which they generate are longer, than those which produce the impression of violet; while the other colors are excited by waves of an intermediate length.—Tyndall.

Sentences composed of successive clauses which are constructed on the same plan, and in which corresponding words occupy corresponding places, are said to be balanced. Frequently the balanced expressions have contrasted meanings. When not carried to excess, this structure is evidently agreeable to the ear, and helpful to the memory. The following are illustrations:

None knew thee but to love thee,

Nor named thee but to praise.-Halleck.

Charms by accepting, by submitting sways,

Yet has her humour most when she obeys.-Pope.

Not that I loved Cæsar less, but that I loved Rome more.-Shakespeare.

Contempt is the proper punishment of affectation, and detestation the just consequence of hypocrisy.-Johnson.

1 Lord Campbell.