(a) You could give us no commission to wrong or oppress, or even to suffer any kind of oppression or wrong, on any grounds whatsoever: not on political, as in the affairs of America; not on commercial, as in those of Ireland; not in civil, as in the laws for debt; not in religious, as in the statutes against Protestant or Catholic dissenters.

(a) They forget that, in England, not one shilling of paper-money of any description is received but of choice; that the whole has had its origin in cash actually deposited; and that it is convertible, at pleasure, in an instant, and without the smallest loss, into cash again.

(a) In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood: binding up the Constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable, and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our State, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.

(b) The ground strowed with the dead and the dying; the impetuous charge; the steady and successful repulse; the loud call to repeated assault; the summmoning of all that is manly to repeated resistance; a thousand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death;—all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no more.

(b) How we have fared since then-what woful variety of schemes have been adopted; what enforcing, and what repealing; what doing and undoing; what shiftings, and changings, and jumblings of all kinds of men at home, which left no possibility of order, consistency, or vigor-it is a tedious task

to recount.

XI.

SUCCESSIVE SHORT SENTENCES

Either semicolons or colons may be used to connect in form successive short sentences which are, though but slightly, connected in sense. Semicolons are usually preferred where the connection of thought is close (a); colons, where it is not very close (b).

(a) The united fleet rode unmolested by the British; Sir Charles Hardy either did not or would not see them.

(a) Such was our situation: and such a satisfaction was necessary to prevent recourse to arms; it was necessary toward laying them down; it will be necessary to prevent the taking them up again and again.

(a) Mark the destiny of crime. It is ever obliged to resort to such subter

fuges; it trembles in the broad light; it betrays itself in seeking conceal

ment.

(a) The women are generally pretty; few of them are brunettes; many of them are discreet, and a good number are lazy.

(a) He takes things as they are; he submits to them all, as far as they go; he recognizes the lines of demarcation which run between subject and subject. (b) Very few faults of architecture are mistakes of honest choice: they are almost all hypocrisies.

(b) The same may be said of the classical writers: Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, and Seneca, as far as I recollect, are silent on the subject.

(b) Compute your gains: see what is got by those extravagant and presumptuous speculations which have taught your leaders to despise all their predecessors.

(b), (a) The professors of science who threw out the general principle have gained a rich harvest from the seed they sowed: they gave the principle; they got back from the practical telegrapher accurate standards of measurement.'

XII.

COMPOUND SENTENCES

Colons are used between two members of a sentence, one or both of which are composed of two or more clauses separated by semicolons (a); semicolons, or very rarely colons, between clauses, one or both of which are subdivided by a number of commas (b). The relations which the several parts of the sentence bear to one another are thus clearly indicated.

(a) Early reformations are amicable arrangements with a friend in power; late reformations are terms imposed upon a conquered enemy: early refor mations are made in cool blood; late reformations are made under a state of inflammation.

(a) We are seldom tiresome to ourselves: and the act of composition fills and delights the mind with change of language and succession of images: every couplet when produced is new; and novelty is the great source of pleasure.

(a) There seems to have been an Indian path; for this was the ordinary route of the Mohawk and Oneida war-parties: but the path was narrow, broken, full of gullies and pitfalls, crossed by streams, and in one place interrupted by a lake which they passed on rafts.2

1 See also XII. (a), below.

See also IX. (c), and XI. (b), (a), pp. 343, 344.

(b) He was courteous, not cringing, to superiors; affable, not familiar, to equals; and kind, but not condescending or supercilious, to inferiors.

(b) Death is there associated, not, as in Westminster Abbey and Saint Paul's, with genius and virtue, with public veneration and with imperishable renown; not, as in our humblest churches and churchyards, with everything that is most endearing in social and domestic charities; but with whatever is darkest in human nature and in human destiny.

(b) Therefore they look out for the day when they shall have put down religion, not by shutting its schools, but by emptying them; not by disputing its tenets, but by the superior weight and persuasiveness of their own.

XIII.

FORMAL STATEMENTS; QUOTATIONS

The colon is used before particulars formally stated (a). The colon (b), the comma (c), or the dash combined with the colon (d) or with the comma (e), is used before quotations indicated by marks of quotation [""].' The dash is generally used before a quoted passage which forms a new paragraph; it is joined with the comma when the quotation is short, with the colon when it is long. If the quotation depends directly on a preceding word, no stop is required (ƒ).

(a) So, then, these are the two virtues of building: first, the signs of man's own good work; secondly, the expression of man's delight in work better than his own.

(a) Again: this argument is unsound because it is unfounded in fact. The facts are such as sustain the opposite conclusion, as I will prove in a very few words.

(b) Towards the end of your letter, you are pleased to observe: "The rejection of a treaty, duly negotiated, is a serious question, to be avoided whenever it can be without too great a sacrifice. Though the national faith is not actually committed, still it is more or less engaged."

(c) When the repast was about to commence, the major-domo, or steward, suddenly raising his wand, said aloud, "Forbear!-Place for the Lady Rowena."

(d) Alice folded her hands, and began:—

"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your hair is uncommonly white.. "

1 See XVII., p. 348.

(e) Shakspere wrote the line,

"The evil that men do lives after them."

(f) The common people raised the cry of " Down with the bishops." (f) It declares that "war exists by the act of Mexico."

XIV.

THE DASH

The dash, either alone or combined with other stops, is used where the construction or the sense is suddenly changed or suspended (a); where a sentence terminates abruptly (b); for rhetorical emphasis (c); in rapid discourse (d); where words, letters, or figures are omitted (e); and between a title and the subject-matter (ƒ), or the subject-matter and the authority for it (g), when both are in the same paragraph.

(a) The man-it is his system: we do not try a solitary word or act, but his habit.

(a) Consider the Epistle to the Hebrews-where is there any composition more carefully, more artificially, written?

(a) Rome,-what was Rome?

(a) To let loose hussars and to bring up artillery, to govern with lighted matches, and to cut and push and prime,-I call this, not vigor, but the sloth of cruelty and ignorance.

(b) "Long, long will I remember your features, and bless God that I leave my noble deliverer united with "—

She stopped short.

(c) I cannot forget that we are men by a more sacred bond than we are citizens, that we are children of a common Father more than we are Ameri

cans.

(c) What shall become of the poor,—the increasing Standing Army of the poor?

(d) Hollo! ho! the whole world's asleep!-bring out the horses,-grease the wheels,-tie on the mail.

(e) In the first place, I presume you will have no difficulty in breaking your word with Mrs. C

(e) 1874-76.

-y.

(†), (g) Di-á-na. The usual pronunciation is Di-án-a.-SMART.

(9) The Eastern and the Western imagination coincide.-STANLEY.

XV.

PERIOD, NOTE OF INTERROGATION, AND NOTE OF EXCLAMATION

At the end of every complete sentence, a period [] is put if the sentence affirms or denies; a note of interrogation [?], if the sentence asks a direct question; a note of exclamation [!], if the sentence is exclamatory. Interrogation or exclamation points are also used in the body of a sentence when two or more interrogations (a) or exclamations (b) are closely connected.

(a) For what is a body but an aggregate of individuals? and what new right can be conveyed by a mere change of name? (b) How he could trot! how he could run!

XVI.

ABBREVIATIONS AND HEADINGS

Periods are used after abbreviations (a), and after headings and sub-headings (b). Commas are used before every three figures, counted from the right, when there are more than three (c), except in dates (d).

(a) If gold were depreciated one-half, 31. would be worth no more than 17. 10s. is now.

(a) To retain such a lump in such an orbit requires a pull of 1 lb. 6 oz. 51 grs. (b) WORDS DEFINED BY USAGE.

(c), (d) The amount of stock issued by the several States, for each period of five years since 1820, is as follows, viz. :

From 1820-1825 somewhat over $12,000,000.

Expessions in the language of another require marks of quotation [""] (a). Single quotation points [''] mark a quota