either of the religious faith, or the superstitious credulity of the country wherein he lives; so as to give an air of probability to events which are most contrary to the common course of nature.

234.* It is not only in the school-room, that attention should be given to your books: there is a place, one not like a school-room; I mean your own chamber: where you can find many opportunities of acquiring knowledge.

234. It is not only in the sacred fane that homage should be paid to the Most High: there is a temple, one not made with hands; the vaulted firmament: far in the woods, almost beyond the sound of city-chime, at intervals heard through the breezeless air.

235. As we perceive the shadow to have moved along the dial, but did not perceive its moving; and it appears that the grass has grown, though nobody ever saw it grow: so the advances we make in knowledge, as they consist of such minute steps, are perceivable only by the distance gone over.

236. When the proud steed shall know why man restrains his fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains; when the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod, is now a victim, and now Egypt's god: then shall man's pride and dulness. comprehend his actions', passions', being's use and end.

237. Jehovah, God of hosts, hath sworn, saying: Surely as I have devised, so shall it be; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand.

238. That day he wore a riding coat, but not a whit the warmer he another was on Thursday brought, and ere the Sabbath he had three.

239. George, you must not laugh at me; I will not bear You forget what you are about when you ridicule me : I know more than you do about the lessons.

it.

239. Brutus, bay not me; I'll not endure it. You forget yourself, to hedge me in: I am a soldier, older in practice, abler than yourself to make conditions.

240. I never heard a word about it before, said George, yesterday: who told you about it, Charles?

240. I never heard one word of it before, said my uncle Toby, hastily: how came he there, Trim?

241. Thou shalt pronounce this parable upon the king of Babylon; and shalt say: How hath the oppressor ceased?

* See note on page 33.

LESSON XVI.

THE PARENTHESIS, CROTCHETS, AND

BRACKETS.

A Parenthesis is a sentence, or part of a sentence, enclosed between two curved lines like these ( )

The curved lines in which the parenthesis is enclosed are called Crotchets.

The parenthesis, with the crotchets which enclose it, is generally inserted between the words of another sentence, and may be omitted without injuring the sense.

The parenthesis should generally be read in a quicker and lower tone of voice than the other parts of the sentence in which it stands.

Sometimes a sentence is enclosed in marks like these [ ] which are called Brackets.*

Sentences which are included within crotchets or brackets, should generally be read in a quicker and lower tone of voice.

EXAMPLES.

242. I asked my eldest son (a boy who never was guilty of a falsehood) to give me a correct account of the matter. 243. The master told me that the lesson (which was a very difficult one) was recited correctly by every pupil in the class.

244. When they were both turned of forty, (an age in which, according to Mr. Cowley, there is no dallying with life,) they determined to retire, and pass the remainder of their days in the country.

245. Notwithstanding all this care of Cicero, history informs us, that Marcus proved a mere blockhead; and that nature (who, it seems, was even with the son for her

* Although the crotchet and the bracket are sometimes indiscriminately used, the following difference in their use may generally be noticed: Crotchets are used to enclose a sentence, or part of a sentence, which is inserted between the parts of another sentence: brackets are generally used to separate two subjects, or to enclose an explanation, note, or observation, standing by itself. When a parenthesis occurs within another parenthesis, brackets enclose the former, and crotchets enclose the latter. See No. 263, and also Parker and Fox's Grammar, Part III., page 30.

prodigality to the father) rendered him incapable of improving, by all the rules of eloquence, the precepts of philosophy, his own endeavors, and the most refined conversation in Athens.

246. Natural historians observe (for whilst I am in the country I must fetch my allusions from thence) that only the male birds have voices; that their songs begin a little before breeding-time, and end a little after.

247. Dr. Clark has observed, that Homer is more perspicuous than any other author; but if he is so, (which yet may be questioned,) the perspicuity arises from his subject, and not from the language itself in which he writes.

248. The many letters which come to me from persons of the best sense of both sexes (for I may pronounce their characters from their way of writing) do not a little encourage me in the prosecution of this my undertaking.

249. It is this sense which furnishes the imagination with its ideas; so that by the pleasures of the imagination, or fancy, (terms which I shall use promiscuously,) I here mean such as arise from visible objects.

250. The stomach (cramm'd from every dish, a tomb of boiled and roast, and flesh and fish, where bile, and wind, and phlegm, and acid, jar, and all the man is one intestine war) remembers oft the school-boy's simple fare, the temperate sleeps, and spirits light as air.

251. William Penn was distinguished from his companions by wearing a blue sash of silk network, (which it seems is still preserved by Mr. Kett of Seething-hall, near Norwich,) and by having in his hand a roll of parchment, on which was engrossed the confirmation of the treaty of purchase and amity.

252. Again, would your worship a moment suppose, ('tis a case that has happened, and may be again,) that the visage or countenance had not a nose, pray who would, or who could, wear spectacles then?

253. Upon this the dial-plate (if we may credit the fable) changed countenance with alarm.

254. To speak of nothing else, the arrival of the English in her father's dominions must have appeared (as indeed it turned out to be) a most portentous phenomenon.

255. Surely, in this age of invention something may be struck out to obviate the necessity (if such necessity exists) of so tasking the human intellect.

256. I compassionate the unfortunates now, (at this very

moment, perhaps,) screwed up perpendicularly in the sea! of torture, having in the right hand a fresh-nibbed patent pen, dipped ever and anon into the ink-bottle, as if to hook up ideas, and under the outspread palm of the left hand a fair sheet of best Bath post, (ready to receive thoughts yet unhatched,) on which their eyes are rivetted with a stare of disconsolate perplexity, infinitely touching to a feeling mind. 257. Oh the unspeakable relief (could such a machine be invented) of having only to grind an answer to one of one's dear five hundred friends!

258. Have I not groaned under similar horrors, from the hour when I was first shut up (under lock and key, I believe) to indite a dutiful epistle to an honored aunt?

259. To such unhappy persons, then, I would fain offer a few hints, (the fruit of long experience,) which may prove serviceable in the hour of emergency.

260. If ever you should come to Modena, (where, among other relics, you may see Tassoni's bucket,) stop at a palace near the Reggio gate, dwelt in of old by one of the Donati.

261. My father and my uncle Toby (clever soul) were sitting by the fire with Dr. Slop; and Corporal Trim (a brave and honest fellow) was reading a sermon to them. — As the sermon contains many parentheses, and affords an opportunity also of showing you a sentence in brackets, (you will observe that all the previous parentheses in this lesson are enclosed in crotchets,) I shall insert some parts of it in the following numbers. [See No. 262, 263, &c.]

262. To have the fear of God before our eyes, and in our mutual dealings with each other, to govern our actions by the eternal measures of right and wrong: the first of these will comprehend the duties of religion; the second those of morality, which are so inseparably connected together, that you cannot divide these two tables, even in imagination, (though the attempt is often made in practice,) without breaking and mutually destroying them both. [Here my father observed that Dr. Slop was fast asleep.] I said the attempt is often made; and so it is; there being nothing more common than to see a man who has no sense at all of religion, and, indeed, has so much honesty as to pretend to none, who would take it as the bitterest affront, should you but hint at a suspicion of his moral character, or imagine he was not conscientiously just and scrupulous to the uttermost mite.*

* See Parker and Fox's Grammar, Part III., page 30.

263. I know the banker I deal with, or the physician I usually call in, [There is no need, cried Dr. Slop (waking) to call in any physician in this case,] to be neither of them men of much religion.

264. For a general proof of this, examine the history of the Romish Church: [Well, what can you make of that? cried Dr. Slop:] see what scenes of cruelty, murder, rapine, bloodshed, [They may thank their own obstinacy, cried Dr. Slop,] have all been sanctified by religion not strictly governed by morality.

265. Experienced schoolmasters may quickly make a grammar of boys' natures, and reduce them all (saving some few exceptions) to certain general rules.

266. Ingenious boys, who are idle, think, with the hare in the fable, that, running with snails, (so they count the rest of their school-fellows,) they shall come soon enough to the post; though sleeping a good while before their starting.

The dash is sometimes used to express a sudden stop, or change in the subject.

Sometimes the dash requires a pause no longer than a comma, and sometimes a longer pause than a period.

The dash is frequently used instead of crotchets or brackets, and a parenthesis is thus placed between two dashes. [See Number 281.]

The dash is sometimes used to precede something_unexpected; as when a sentence beginning seriously ends humorously. [See Numbers 311 to 318.]

In the following sentences the dash expresses a sudden stop. or change of the subject.

EXAMPLES.

267. If you will give me your attention, I will show you but stop, I do not know that you wish to see.