So in rhetoric. While rhetoric is based upon principles as changeless as the mind which thinks and imparts thought, in that department of its work which is concerned with expression it has only usage as authority for what it teaches the usage of the best writers and speakers. And this is variable, changing from generation to generation. While, for example, it must always be true that a thought should be expressed clearly, it is not true that an expression of it, clear to one generation, will necessarily be so to the next. Many words narrow in meaning, many widen, others completely change, and some words drop out of the vocabulary. Then, too, an arrangement of words customary at one time is not at another. A use of imagery suited to the taste of one age surfeits the next; indeed, what was imagery once is accounted plain language now. Conceits and turns of expression current in Sidney's day grate harshly upon our ears; and who would not, in the matter of style, appeal from Shakespeare in "Love's Labor Lost," to Shakespeare in "As You Like It"?

Style, then, is fluid and shifting. Its highest standard in any era is the prevailing usage of that era. What this usage is cannot always be easily determined; but, as soon as it is ascertained for our period, we must bow to it as the supreme authority.

VALUE OF RHETORIC.-I. Dealing with invention, the finding of the thought, or subject-matter, rhetoric compels us to think; and thinking is the highest act of which the intellect is capable.

2. Dealing with expression, about which, as we have seen, there may be a question, and large freedom of choice, rhetoric stimulates inquiry, provokes the stu

dont to cilant and to onen disputatio compels to a bal

ancing of reasons, and so develops an independent judgment. This discipline is eminently wholesome, and prepares one for the affairs of life.

3. Rhetoric gives a command of the vocabulary. Next to having something to say is the ability to impart it in apt words fitly arranged in the sentences, in sentences happily marshalled in the paragraph, in paragraphs standing to each other in their natural order.

4. Rhetoric lays literature under tribute. Based, as rhetoric is, upon the writings of the great, living and dead, it opens our eyes to see, and educates our taste to enjoy, the treasures of thought, and the graces of style lavished upon them. Of all the arts none outranks literature. Rhetoric opens this to our possession and enjoyment, and aims to make us artists in it.

No valid objection lies against the study of rhetoric. It allows us all the freedom great writers and speakers have used, acquaints us with that which makes their productions classic, and bars our straying away into paths they have shunned,-paths which lead to harm. It checks license, but not liberty. Only a false rhetoric, narrowing good usage by forbidding what this allows; that enforces a bookish diction, and puts under ban the idioms of conversation; insists upon an arrangement, stiff and unnatural; and gives such emphasis . to manner as to withdraw proper attention from the subject-matter;-only such a rhetoric could be hurt

ful.

Let us add that, were rhetoric to end with simply teaching the pupil how things should be done, its study would not be fruitless. Rhetoric bears its full fruit, however, only when, in addition to this, it leads the pupil to do them as they should be done. Not rhetoric in the

has worked its way down into the tongue and into the fingers, enabling one to speak well and write well, is what the pupil needs.

To the Teacher.-See to it, before you proceed, that the pupils understand what rhetoric is, and how it is related to kindred studies, and yet differs from them.

Allow us here, on the very threshold of the study, to say that a large part of the pupil's work in the preparation of his lessons will be composition. This is that to which everything else required will be made subordinate. Whatever, then, is slurred, do not allow this to be.

INVENTION.

LESSON 2.

SIMPLE SENTENCES.

WHAT INVENTION IS.-Thought is communicated by means of words. They are its instrument, its servant. The thought determines the expression-the worthy thought prompting to a worthy expression, the worthless thought allowing a poor expression. Both in time and in importance, then, the thought stands first, and deserves the special attention of the pupil. As a department of rhetoric,

Invention is that which treats of the finding of thought for single sentences and for continued discourse.

WHAT IT IS TO THINK, AND WHAT A THOUGHT IS. - By means of our bodily senses the mind comes face to face

the mind sees, hears, feels, tastes, and smells-in short, perceives. Through the senses it receives and brings into itself and stores away in the memory impressions, images, or pictures, of the things perceived. It gets these pictures, too, by reading, and by hearing people speak-the written or the oral word presenting these pictures to the mind. These impressions, or images, or pictures, of things we shall call ideas.

That the mind does receive and store away these ideas is proved by the fact that we can bring them up out of the memory, look at them with what we may call the "mind's eye,” and through them perceive again, as it were, the things long ago seen, heard, felt, tasted, or smelt. This bringing up the ideas and through them perceiving the things again is remembering, recollecting. And without the bodily senses the mind can perceive it can perceive its own acts, facts, thoughts, feelings. These are already in the mind, and so need no bodily sense to bring them into it.

The things perceived stand in some relation to each other. They agree or they disagree with each other, and so the ideas we get of them through our senses

must.

To think is to detect an agreement or a disagreement between our mental pictures, or ideas, and to unite them. The result of these two acts of detecting and uniting is a thought. The writer or speaker detects this relation between his ideas, puts them together, and then expresses the result in words. In reading him or listening to him we receive these ideas in the form of thought. By our own observation we get them as single and detached ideas. We can ourselves convert them into thought immediately, or can lay them away in memory, recall them

at any time afterward and fuse them into thought

Tin

combined, they are the raw material out of which thoughts are to be manufactured.

If these ideas are united in the relation which the things they picture actually hold to each other, the thought is true; if in some other relation, the thought is untrue or false He who first detects the relation subsisting between certain ideas and unites them creates an absolutely original thought; if he is ignorant that another has done it before him, the thought is only original with himself.

A thought is produced by the fusion of at least two ideas. Birds fly = Birds are flying. Here the idea denoted by birds and that denoted by flying are brought together, and in the sentence are coupled by the copula are, and thus one is affirmed of the other. Birds, naming the things and our idea of the things of which something is to be affirmed, is the subject of the sentence; and are flying, denoting what is affirmed and affirming it, is the predicate.

A simple sentence is one that contains but one subject and one predicate, either of which may be compound.

Other words may be brought into the sentence and grouped about the subject and the predicate. The words so used are (1) adjectives expressing ideas (a) assumed; as, Industrious people can be found; and (¿) asserted; as, The Chinese are industrious; are (2) adverbs; as, The Gulf Stream flows rapidly; are (3) nouns used as complements; as, Can I become an orator? Practice makes an orator, What orators practice has made some men! are (4) nouns used as adjective modifiers, (a) possessive; as, Last came Joy's ecstatic trial; (5) explanatory; as, Edw. VI., Tudor, preceded Mary; are (5) words used independently; as, O Sir, can you help me?