advantage of the occasion to display its mysterious form, while Capella and Vega gazed with eyes wide open. Finally Orion reared his head majestically above the ocean, as if he would drive the spectre from the skies.

9. Tremont Temple presented yesterday afternoon a wonderful scene, filled, as it was, with an immense audience of men and women, gathered to hear Lady Henry Somerset, the flower of England's Christian womanhood, preach to the great dual convention of the World's and the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union its annual sermon.

10. "The representatives of the Republicans of the United States, assembled in general Convention on the shores of the Mississippi River, the everlasting bond of an indestructible republic, whose most glorious chapter of history is the record of the Republican party, congratulate their countrymen on the majestic march of the nation under the banners inscribed with the principles of our platform in 1888, vindicated by victory at the polls, and prosperity in our fields, workshops, and mines, and make the following declaration of principles." 1

II. The bar-room of the Commercial Hotel at an early hour yesterday morning was enlivened by as animated an event known as a "scrap" as has occurred in some time. One of the participants appreciated at the finish that a lemon-squeezer was a great deal harder than his head, which was generously cut, while the wielder of the aciduous weapon paid for amusing himself with it by getting adorned with a pair of woe-hued optics. The other casualties were unimportant, and no police court vengeance has been invoked.

1 Contrast the above, from a rhetorical point of view, with the following: "The representatives of the Democratic party of the United States, in National Convention assembled, do reaffirm their allegiance to the principles of the party as formulated by Jefferson, and exemplified by the long and illustrious line of his successors in Democratic leadership from Madison to Cleveland."

V. Examine several local daily newspapers with the purpose of discovering, if possible, one that is habitually written in a simple, uninflated style.

VI. Do you see any difference between (a) and (b) and between (c) and (d) in the use of specific or definite rather than general words?

(a) "We would have inward peace,
Yet will not look within;

We would have misery cease,

Yet will not cease from sin;

We want all pleasant ends, but will use no harsh means;

"We do not what we ought,

What we ought not, we do,

And lean upon the thought

That chance will bring us through;

But our own acts, for good or ill, are mightier powers.

"Yet, even when man forsakes

All sin, is just, is pure,

Abandons all which makes

His welfare insecure,

Other existences there are, that clash with ours."

– M. Arnold: “Empedocles on Etna."

(b) "Just for a handful of silver he left us,

Just for a riband to stick in his coat -
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others, she lets us devote;

They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
So much was theirs who so little allowed:

How all our copper had gone for his service!

Rags were they purple,- his heart had been proud!

We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him,

Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,

Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,
Made him our pattern to live and to die!
Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,

Burns, Shelley, were with us, they watch from
their graves!

He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,
He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!"
- R. Browning: "The Lost Leader."

(c) "Contemporaneously with the rise of the Communes and the reconsolidation of the Monarchy, the Papacy had reached the culminating point of its dogmatic development, and its tyrannical sway over the human conscience. The ambitious mind and powerful imagination of Hildebrand had conceived the idea of the absolute supremacy of the throne of St. Peter over all terrestrial and secular powers, without exception. In reality, such a claim rested upon the same foundation as that which Papal hierarchs had so long arrogated of prescribing all the beliefs, and authenticating all the knowledge and inquiry of Christendom. Once grant that a power deriving its existence and authority from Heaven is appointed to decree from an a priori standpoint all human convictions, and to regulate every department of human conduct, and the attempted. subjugation of all human faculties and sources of authority becomes the only logical deduction of such a claim." Owen: "The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance, p. 17.

(d) "That interview is surely one of the most memorable set down in human annals. On the one hand, Napoleon, a lion at bay, representing, in some fashion, a world-system destined to revolutionize Europe; on the other hand, Metternich, a fox, representing a world-system

which but recently seemed hopelessly stricken, and now seems on the point of resurrection,— these are the speakers in the dialogue. The Lion storms, threatens, coaxes: the Fox listens calmly, almost disdainfully, calculating the strength of the trap into which his foe must fall. It is an eight-hours' parley between the Present, still confident of its superiority, and the Past, unexpectedly come back to life, and covetous of its former power. The Lion roars, but the Fox does not tremble: time was when the King of Beasts did not roar but strike, and now sound and fury signify nothing. Napoleon leads Metternich into an inner room, and shows him the map of Europe: Austria, he declares, shall have this compensation and that, if she but hold true to France; for France and Austria together may laugh at coalitions. Metternich is evasive, he promises nothing; he is already thinking how long it will take his army in Bohemia to march over to the allied camp. Napoleon appeals to the pride of the Hapsburgs: was it for nothing that he wedded the Austrian archduchess? Metternich replies that family considerations cannot interfere with his master's duty to his State. Napoleon in wrath flings his hat on the floor; Metternich, leaning imperturbably against a cabinet, does not condescend to pick it up; the Old Régime no longer fears the Revolution.” — Thayer: "The Dawn of Italian Independence," pp. 127, 128.

CHAPTER VI.

SENTENCES: PUNCTUATION; SOLECISMS.

We now leave the study of single Words and begin the study of words as combined in Sentences, the next higher unit of form which we are to take up. We must first notice two points in which the principle of "good use" applies to the sentence.1 The first is Punctuation; the second is Grammar.

Punctuation, an orderly system of pointing off sentences so as to make the meaning clearer, seems to have been developed slowly, by common consent. If you doubt its utility or its necessity, try to read a long and complex sentence that is not punctuated at all. The main principles of the art of punctuation can best be learned from Wilson's treatise on the subject, a work which has long been standard, but which is chiefly valuable to the young student as a book of reference; from Bigelow's "Handbook of Punctuation" (Boston: Lee & Shepard), a small volume, valuable also as a convenient book of reference; or from Professor A. S. Hill's "General Rules of Punctuation " (Cambridge: Charles W. Sever), to which you are referred as a text-book. You will be

1 For its application to Words, see above, pp. 9-11.