drinking cups frequently occur. Many of these are formed so as not to admit of their being set down unless when empty, and have been thought to furnish a curious illustration of the habits of our Saxon forefathers, among whom the vice of hard drinking is known to have been so common. Pottery, arms, and implements of various descriptions, are all frequently found among the contents of the Anglo-Saxon barrows; but perhaps the most interesting class of relics belonging to this period is the personal ornaments, which include enamelled and jewelled fibulæ, rings, necklaces, crosses, &c. The most characteristic ornament of this period is the Runic Knot, a species of interlaced ornament, which continued in use, with slight variations, till the twelfth century, and is frequently found among the decorations on the earliest ecclesiastical edifices belonging to what are commonly styled the Saxon and Norman, or Byzantine, Periods of Architecture. The introduction of the cross among the personal ornaments of the Saxons points to the remarkable change effected by the introduction of Christianity. The Roman missionary and the Roman monk succeeded to the conquests of the Roman legions, and triumphantly planted the cross where the imperial eagle had only gained a temporary and disputed possession. Thenceforth the influence of the creed and of the ecclesiastical polity of the Christian missionaries manifested itself in every phase of social life, and revolutionised the arts no less than the morals and manners of the Anglo-Saxons. One counteracting influence, however, long continued to hold them in check. The Danish and Norse rovers, who won to themselves the name of the Sea-Kings by the daring hardihood with which they steered across the ocean, and enriched themselves with spoils gathered along the whole northern and western coasts of Europe, made frequent descents on the eastern shores of England and Ireland. Many relics of these barbarous invaders have been met with from time to time, contrasting with the more familiar productions of native art and skill. Several long and straight swords, with hilts altogether differing in form and ornaments from those usually ascribed to the Anglo-Saxons or native Irish, are preserved in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, and are regarded by most intelligent antiquaries as relics of these Norse invaders. Ancient Chessmen. Another and very characteristic class of relics of the Sea-Kings, is the dice and draughtsmen frequently found along with more warlike remains, and serving to illustrate the love of gambling for which these wild Norsemen were notorious. They are exceedingly common in Denmark, and have been frequently found in Ireland, generally consisting of a conical-shaped bone, with a hole in the bottom, designed, as is presumed, for use on shipboard, to beguile the tedium of their long sea-voyages, the hole being intended to fit on to a pin, so as to keep them from slipping with the motion of the vessel. Of the same class, though belonging to a later period, are the ancient chessmen, wrought of the teeth of the walrus. Large sets of these have occasionally been discovered, possessing great value from the illustrations they afford of ancient costume. The frequent occurrence of the bishop among these latter figures, fixes them as belonging to a period subsequent to the introduction of Christianity. In the year 1831 a number of these ancient chessmen, beautifully carved with a rich variety of ornaments, were discovered in the island of Lewis, buried fifteen feet under a bank of sand. They were purchased by the trustees of the British Museum, and now form a part of that valuable national collection. In the Guide to Northern Archæology,' published by the Society of Northern Antiquaries of Copenhagen, woodcuts are given of specimens of sets of ancient chessmen found in Denmark; exactly similar in character to those so recently discovered in the islands of Scotland. The arts, the arms and implements, and the architecture of the mediaval Christian era, all come within the province of the archeologist; but they demand a much larger space for their consideration than a popular sketch of the science can possibly include. (See Nos. 28 and 58.) One class of antiquities, though not the most pleasing, may be selected from these, as peculiarly illustrative of the manners and the degree of civilisation of the period-that is, the Engines of Torture, &c. The use of torture as a means of obtaining judicial evidence cannot be regarded as a creation of the Middle Ages, seeing that it was in use both among the Greeks and Romans. Torture was used, according to the Athenian laws, in eliciting evidence from slaves, and is affirmed by Cicero to have been legally applicable to Athenian citizens. It is doubtful if it was used by the Romans during the period of the Republic, but it had come fully into use in the time of the early emperors, and was subjected to scarcely any other restraint than the will of the despotic rulers of Rome during the later era of the Empire. Among the northern nations, however, whose manners and early civilisation have been traced through the remote eras to which archæologists give the names of the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Periods, the use of torture in judicial proceedings appears to have been unknown. This cannot be ascribed to any superiority of the northern races in refinement or humanity when compared with the polished Greeks and Romans. The barbarous cruelties of the Sea-Kings especially are only to be equalled by the proceedings of the savages of Polynesia or North America. But among the whole northern races, the Teutonic and feudal appeal to ordeal or battle, appear to have existed under some modified form, from the earliest times, as judicial tests, which were rendered infallible by their supernatural character. So long as this judicia Dei, or judginent of God, as it was termed, continued in use, we have no evidence of torture being resorted to; and among the Germans more especially, where the Teutonic customs and influences were most strongly rooted, judicial torture appears to have been unknown till the close of the fourteenth century. The engines employed in the infliction of torture have been as various as the inventive ingenuity of man is fertile in device. The monks, under the influence of a misdirected zeal for the attainment of a holy life, and securing a claim to heaven by their own good works, devised penances, mortifications, and austerities, which were directed only against themselves. In the thirteenth century we find the first traces of the use of torture for inquisition of heresy introduced into ecclesiastical law. While the Church exercised so beneficial an influence in softening the barbarism of the northern races, and ameliorating the condition of the people under the lawless tyranny of the feudal system, she appears as the introducer of this barbarous practice at a period when civil institutions and equal laws were rapidly displacing the ruder customs of feudal supremacy. In the great struggle between the PopeClement V.-and the Templars in 1310, inquisitors were appointed to examine the knights charged with heresy. The Archbishop of York, one of the inquisitors, hesitated to make use of torture in the investigation; and in consequence of his doubts, Edward II. refused to permit its application to the accused. On learning of this interference, Clement wrote a letter of remonstrance to the king; and after considerable hesitation he submitted, by advice of his council, and a precept was issued to the sheriffs of London, who had the accused in charge, to suffer the inquisitors to examine them by torture. From this it is obvious that until the fourteenth century torture was unknown in England, either as a royal prerogative or an instrument of judicial inquiry. Edward II., the wretched king who thus first sanctioned the use of this terrible engine of inquisition in England, himself perished by torture in 1327, by the hands of two ruffians to whom his own queen, Isabella, the She-Wolf of France,' had consigned him for that purpose. The iron cage was an instrument of torture in frequent use by the cruel and superstitious Louis XI. of France. In this the wretched captive could neither stand up nor lie down at full length, and yet some of the victims of the tyrant survived for years in this horrid durance. Somewhat analogous to this were the irons frequently used by ecclesiastical inquisitors, and which formed part of the missionary furniture of the Spanish Armada, by means of which the sufferer was bound with his neck, arms, and knees drawn together. It is a curious fact that this same dreadful posture of enforced constraint was resorted to by the pilgrim fathers of New England as the readiest mode of judicial punishment. The award to the earliest culprits of that settlement is to be bound neck and heels together, and to be left in that state without any food for twenty-four hours. The culprits had been convicted of fighting a duel, and the verdict was put in force; but their sufferings were so great, that they were released after having borne only a portion of their appointed punishment. The rack was the commonest engine of torture throughout Europe, both in ecclesiastical and civil investigations. It is said to have been introduced into the Tower of London by the Duke of Exeter in the reign of Henry VI., and thence obtained the name of the Duke of Exeter's daughter. This device was improved upon for its horrible purpose in the reign of Henry VIII., by Sir William Skevington, lieutenant of the Tower; and it is by a popular corruption of his name that the most dreadful engine of this kind ever used in England obtained its familiar title of the Scavenger's Daughter. It was discovered by a committee of the House of Commons, who had been appointed in the year 1604 to investigate some parts of the Tower, and especially the ancient dungeon of torture called Little Ease.' Besides the rack, a variety of instruments of torture were used in England, such as the gag, thumbscrews, pincers, manacles, fetters, &c.; to which list may be added the mutilations and the pillory of the Star Chamber and High Commission Court of the Stuarts. Both in English and Scottish history many examples occur of the use of torture, as a barbarous means of revenge either on a captive enemy or a great criminal; and some relics of this are still found in the punishment which the English law awards to the crime of high treason. In 1438 the murderers of James I. of Scotland were put to death at the Cross of Edinburgh with the cruellest tortures that the ingenuity of a barbarous age could devise. The Earl of Athol, after having his flesh lacerated with pincers, and torn with heated irons, was elevated on a high pillar in sight of the people, and crowned in derision as the king of traitors with a red-hot iron crown. The use of torture in judicial investigations was continued in Scotland long after it had been abandoned in England; and James II. acquired peculiar infamy for the use he made of this dreadful means of oppression against the Scottish Presbyterians during his government of Scotland under Charles II. The instruments chiefly employed for this purpose were the 'boots'-which consisted of an iron case drawn over the leg, between which and the flesh wedges were driven in with a hammer-and the thumbkins, which were applied to the thumbs, and tightened by screws, sometimes till the bones were crushed under the merciless infliction. Along with the relics of a barbarous age just described, the instruments anciently in use for capital punishment may be classed. The guillotine, which has acquired for its improver-Joseph Ignace Guillotin, a physician of France an unenviable celebrity, was in use long before, under other names, in Germany, Bohemia, Italy, England, and Scotland. In Germany it bore the characteristic name of Falbiel, or the Falling Hatchet; in Scotland it was known by the singular title of the Maiden. Tradition assigns the introduction of this instrument into Scotland to the Regent Morton, who was one of its early victims; but it is proved to have been in use some time before his regency. The origi- | nal instrument of capital punishment, by which many of the most eminent men in Scotland were beheaded, is still preserved in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, at Edinburgh. It consists of two upright beams, with a groove in each, between which an iron axe, loaded with lead, is moved up and down by means of a rope passing over a pulley at the top; a third beam projects behind, to which an iron trigger is attached. On this the rope was secured by a loop, and the executioner released it by a stroke of a mallet, and let it fall by its own weight on the neck of the criminal. Halifax in Yorkshire was the only place in England where a similar instrument was ever used; though the scenes of butchery frequently enacted on Tower Hill and elsewhere, through the tremor or inefficiency of the executioner, prove that the guillotine was a merciful improvement on the axe of the headsman. In France, the improved instrument of its ingenious physician still remains in use for the execution of criminals. It would be an excessive refinement of criticism to pronounce it a more barbarous engine of death than the gallows and the halter, though its terrible associations with the victims of the Reign of Terror might furnish a very sufficient reason for its disuse in the most polished nation of modern Europe. AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES. The antiquities of the New World occupy a place in the investigations of the archæologist altogether apart from every other branch of his studies, though the very recent date of the discovery of the great continents of North and South America only renders more interesting whatever is calculated to throw light on their previous history. America has its Stone Period as well as Europe and Asia. Tumuli, the burial mounds of ancient races, are found in many parts of North America, containing spear-heads and adzes of flint and stone, and urns of rudely-baked clay, not greatly dissimilar to those found in the barrows of Wiltshire or in Denmark and Brittany. This, however, can hardly be regarded as furnishing conclusive evidence of early intercourse or a common origin, since it only exhibits the relics of that primitive stage of society through which the most civilised nations of antiquity appear to have passed. The Society of Northern Antiquaries of Copenhagen published in 1837 a work of great learning and research, entitled 'Antiquitates Americanæ,' designed to furnish evidence of the discovery of the American continent by the Norsemen several centuries before the voyages of Columbus. In one of the communications furnished to the antiquaries of Copenhagen by the secretary of the Rhode-Island Historical Society, it is remarked:- In the western parts of our country may still be seen numerous and extensive mounds, similar to the tumuli met with in Scandinavia, Tartary, and Russia; also the remains of fortifications that must have required for their construction a degree of industry, labour, and skill, as well as an advancement in the arts, that never characterised any of the Indian tribes. Various articles of pottery are found in them, with the method of manufacturing which they were entirely unacquainted. But, above all, many rocks inscribed with unknown characters, apparently of very ancient origin, have been discovered, scattered through different parts of the country, such as it was impossible so to engrave without the aid of iron or other hard metallic instruments.' Of several of these rocks engravings are given; and while some are in rude and unknown characters and hieroglyphics, others are unquestionably engraved in Runic characters, corresponding to the ancient monuments of Northern Europe. It is in the southern parts of the North American continent, however, that the most interesting evidences of ancient manners and the arts of civilisation are to be found. Allusion has already been made to the pyramids of Mexico; but besides these, ruins of great extent and considerable variety of design still attest the magnificence of the ancient kingdom of Montezuma. Many of the older and more important monuments re maining in Mexico are regarded as the work of a still earlier race than that which gave way before the fierce soldiers of Cortez-probably of the Toltecans-but the inquiry is still involved in considerable obscurity, and would require to be discussed at considerable length with any hope of further elucidation. Much new interest has been conferred on the subject of Mexican antiquities by the publication of Stephens's Incidents of Travel in Yucatan.' This enterprising traveller, after exploring many new regions of Central America, had his attention drawn to Yucatan by accounts he received of ancient ruins of great extent which lay buried in the vast forests with which nearly the whole of that country is covered. On exploring these his highest expectations were gratified. In the narrative of his travels he gives an account of visits made to forty-four ruined cities, many of them containing extensive remains of temples and palaces still covered with sculptures, and frequently adorned both with paintings and hieroglyphics. Mr Stephens's work possesses a further value from being adorned with numerous engravings of these gigantic memorials of an ancient race-engravings from which we reduce the annexed illustration exhibiting the front and back of a stone idol found at Copan. In their mode of structure or the details of their decoration, there is nothing which suggests any resemblance to the ancient monuments of any people of the old world. They appear to have been the unaided creations of national genius among the ancient Indian races; and Mr Stephens considers-notwithstanding the degradation to which the Indian natives of Yucatan have been reduced under the domination of their Spanish conquerors and priests-there is no reason to doubt that they are the descendants of the builders of Uxmal and Kabah, though no tradition has survived to connect them with so honourable an ancestry. A very large portion of the country lying between the Bay of Honduras and the Gulf of Mexico still remains unexplored. Considerable parts of Central America, and a great proportion of the southern continent, are equally unknown. Beyond the intricate forcsts that bound the known regions of Yucatan, or even within their recesses, vaster and far more interesting ruins may lie buried, nor is it at all impossible that Indian cities may still remain in the possession of their native occupants, and temples exist there where the ancient idols of Mexico and Yucatan are still worshipped by races who only know of the existence of the white man by some vague and uncertain tradition, borne to them by a stray wanderer from the regions conquered by the early adventurers of Spain. It is worthy of notice, that among the sites of the ancient temples and ruined cities of Mexico and Yucatan, tumuli occur of the same character as those which in other places of the world indicate to us the primitive habits of the human race, ere the arts of civilisation have modified this character into the manifold peculiarities of distinct nationalities. During the visit of Mr Stephens and his companions to the village of Chemax, while travelling through Yucatan, the cura informed them that at some leagues distant, nearer the coast, were several mounds or tumuli. The Indians had been employed shortly before in digging and excavating in the neighbourhood of them for stones for building; and on chancing to dig into one of the tumuli, they uncovered three skeletons, all in a state of extreme decay, which, according to the cura, were those of a man, woman, and child. At the heads of the skeletons were two large vases of terra cotta, with covers of the same material. In one of these was a large collection of Indian ornaments-beads, stones, and two carved shells. The other vase was filled to the top with arrow-heads, made of obsidian, most probably the work of the ancient Mexicans, in whose country volcanic regions abound. Besides these, Mr Stephens was struck by being shown a penknife found in the same tumulus, and which he regarded with peculiar interest as a memorial of the European discoverers of Yucatan, and an evidence of the probable date of the tumulus. Speculation and ingenuity,' says he, may assign other causes; but in my opinion the inference is reasonable, if not irresistible, that at the time of the conquest, and afterwards, the Indians were actually living in and occupying those very cities on whose great ruins we now gaze with wonder. A penknife-one of the petty presents distributed by the Spaniardsreached the hands of a cacique, who, far removed from the capital, died in his native town, and was buried with the rites and ceremonies transmitted by his fathers.' The accounts of the Spanish conquerors describe the Indians as opposing them with wooden swords, and the like imperfect and primitive weapons of war. Among them, therefore, the spear and arrow-heads of flint and obsidian are likely to have been in use; but such instruments would be utterly inefficient as tools for sculpturing the temples and palaces of Yucatan; and we must therefore either regard the latter, like those of Mexico, as the works of an older and superior race, or question the inference which derives from the discovery of the knife-evidence of the tumulus being contemporaneous with the era of the Spanish invasion. In the course of the preceding sketch, the reader can hardly fail to be struck with the uniform characteristics which are found to belong to the human race in the primitive stages of society. In Egypt, on the banks of the Euxine, along the shores of the Mediterranean, and throughout the whole northern regions of Europe, we discover evidences of a primitive state of society, through which the races occupying these different localities have passed to higher states of civilisation. In the new world the same tokens of this rudimentary stage of social life meet us, alike in the forest regions of the Red Indian savage, and in the southern parts of the same great continent, where the Spaniards found cities and temples that gave evidence of high civilisation and considerable progress in the useful and ornamental arts. Modern voyagers have found the natives of the South Sea Islands living in the state of society to which these memorials of extinct races point. By such comparisons, therefore, archæological studies open up to us a most interesting and instructive chapter in the history of man. They disclose to us an era hitherto almost unknown to the historian; and, enabling us to start from a well-defined stage of life in the infancy of the social state, they lead us, by a satisfactory chain of evidence, to the period when complete and trustworthy historic records render the investigations of the antiquary and the inductions of the archeologist no longer necessary for the discovery of truth. RHETORIC AND BELLES LETTRES. RHETORIC is a branch of knowledge and practice having reference to spoken and written compositions, and to the means of employing language so as to produce its greatest possible effect on the minds of men. While the rules of grammar are intended to secure correctness and uniformity in inflecting words, and in joining together the parts of speech in sentences, according to the established usages of each separate language, Rhetoric considers the meaning and form of the composition, and the total effect upon the persons addressed. Belles Lettres, or Polite Literature, expresses a class of literary productions whose subjects are the principal matters of human interest occurring in the world, and which are adorned with the utmost elegance and polish of style and treatment. They correspond to what is universally interesting the conversation of the most cultivated classes of society. The chief works contained under this branch of composition are the productions of the poetic art, together with prose narrations, expositions, and criticisms, in reference to nature and human life; including histories, annals, and biographies; discussions of the doctrines bearing on human welfare; criticisms and judgments of the characters, works, and ways of men, calling forth the attendant emotions of reverence, admiration, esteem, love or hatred, sympathy or antipathy. The greater portion of our periodical literature comes under this head. Such productions are contrasted with works of science; for these are supposed to inform us, once for all, on some branch of nature; whereas works of literature are intended to supply an undying appetite for intellectual and emotional excitement. 1. The simple forms of establishing a common understanding between man and man; the word of command, the phraseology of direction, intreaty, question, answer, acquiescence, refusal, co-operation, resistance, concurrence, opposition, and the like. 2. The communication of thought, information, ideas, and sentiments, or of the more permanent products of intellect which are comprehended under the terms knowledge and science. 3. Persuasion, or the means of inducing men to act as we wish, not by external compulsion, but through their own dispositions and impulses. 4. The productions of poetic and literary art. 5. The giving vent or expression to individual feelings, for the relief or gratification of the inward states of our being. 6. The modes of cultivated address employed in the refined intercourse of life. Before touching in detail upon these various heads, it may be convenient to discriminate and discuss THE ATTRIBUTES OF STYLE IN GENERAL. The leading attributes of style that are of a Rhetorical kind may be set forth under the following heads; it being assumed that grammatical and idiomatic purity and correctness have been previously secured by the appropriate means:— Simplicity. By Simplicity we are to understand what is easily comprehended, or what is level to the ordinary capacity of men. It is opposed not so much to the complex as to the abstruse; and implies a mode of address that does not require severe effort, or a special training for its comprehension. The possibility of being simple in this sense will of course depend much upon the subject No. 94. matter; but we can nevertheless consider, in general, what things are requisite to bring out the quality. Simplicity is twofold-simplicity of terms, and simplicity of structure. Terms are simple, in opposition to abstruse, on various grounds : 1. They may be the names of common and familiar objects and actions, instead of such as are rare or remote. He that doeth these sayings is like to a man that buildeth his house upon a rock;' in this sentence every one of the terms has the simplicity that attaches to meanings common and familiar. Objects of a technical description, or such as come under the notice of only limited classes of people, cannot enter into simple composition. 2. The terms may relate to things that are in their nature palpable and conceivable, rather than obscure or invisible. The world is partly made up of objects of a kind to act upon all our senses, such as the solid masses that support and surround us; and partly of subtle and impalpable agents, like electricity, or the mysterious attractions and repulsions that keep up the activity of the sensible masses. Now, all references to the one class of things is universally intelligible, while allusions to the others are understood only by such as have received the artificial training necessary to grasp them. The common objects of the landscape are simple in this sense: the discussions about gaseous bodies, gravity, elasticity, vitality, and the like, are necessarily abstruse. 3. What are called concrete terms are, in general, more intelligible than the names of abstractions. Α concrete object is a thing as it exists in nature, with all its parts and peculiarities-such as a mountain, a river, a metal; while an abstraction is some property of these artificially conceived apart from the rest-such as height, density, velocity, liquidity, lustre, specific gravity. Now the gross object is usually more conceivable by the mind than its separate properties; hence although this abstract mode of viewing things is essential to the thorough comprehension of the world, yet for popular composition the terms of the other class are more suitable. There is, however, the greatest possible difference in the intelligibility of abstractions: while some are within the reach of the least cultivated minds, others, such as the subtlest ideas of mathematics, chemistry, and physiology, presuppose a long course of laborious studies. Height, depth, strength, whiteness, virtue, are popular abstractions; polarity, infinitesimal, ellipsoidal, express notions that can never enter into popular composition. 4. Of abstractions, some are fictitious and untrue to the nature of things, being the premature efforts of men to get at the secrets of nature; while others are sound and valid generalisations, and are therefore likely to coincide better with our experience. In general, the ill-formed abstractions will be the most difficult to comprehend. The epicycle orbs of the planets were less conceivable than the ellipses which are their accurate path. The imaginary element phlogiston' gave a far less clear and simple idea than is now possessed of the action of burning. But, on the other hand, shallow explanations of natural phenomena may be more conceivable than the true. Descartes's whirlpools of ether rendered the account of the heavenly bodies more level to the popular understanding than did Newton's centripetal and centrifugal forces. The progress of accurate thinking necessarily leads to a corresponding improvement in the simple and accurate composition. Simplicity of structure means such an arrangement of terms in clauses, and of clauses in sentences, as renders the meaning comprehensible without severe attention 689 The most difficult variety of style under this head is what is called soaring or taking a flight, which must be carefully managed, so as to avoid a break, a fall, or, technically-a balhos. Our greatest poets and prose writers have furnished successful instances of this quality: it is also a frequent accompaniment of the higher kinds of oratory. or special study. When the clauses succeed one an- | be surpassed, it is a sustained peculiarity in the writings other in the exact order in which the ideas can be best of the author of Paradise Lost.' English literature apprehended; when what is necessary to complete a abounds with energetic compositions: the well-known meaning is not too long delayed, nor interrupted by names of Barrow, Bacon, Dryden, Pope, will present other distracting meanings; when only a moderate num- themselves to most readers. ber of particulars is required to make up one complete Liveliness, vivacity, animation, express a mode of statement; and when no circumstances are present to strength or energy, and depend in the very same manproduce complexity, distortion, confusion, or overload-ner upon the choice and arrangement of terms. ing the structure is likely to be simple. The difficulty of attaining simplicity of structure arises from the nature of the subject: the stream of composition can consist of only one thread, whereas it may be desirable to narrate a complex tissue of events, or to represent a number of things all happening at once, as in historical composition. In such cases the skill and art of the writer are shown by his being able to embody his matter in a series of clauses and sentences where the particulars are arranged without perplexity. Short sentences are necessarily simple; long sentences 'One might figure a futurity that never ceases to may be either simple or not. Some writers, such as Ad-flow, and which has no termination; but who can climb dison, Bolingbroke, Johnson, Hall, who use long sentences, construct them nevertheless with great simplicity of arrangement; others, of whom Milton is the most remarkable example, delight in a highly-involved and complex kind of composition. Clearness. This attribute is opposed to indistinctness, faintness of meaning, vagueness, ambiguity, uncertainty. It implies that the forms and images presented to the view shall be sharp, clear, and unmistakeable. It is a merit that cannot belong to the style, if not first possessed by the thought; but it possible that the clear thoughts of one man may not be clearly conveyed to another man. As already observed on simplicity, clearness depends partly on the terms and partly on the structure. Not only must terms be used that express well-ascertained and certain ideas, but they must be so joined that the result shall indicate only one meaning. Since many words have more than one sense, it belongs to the composition to join them together, so that every interpretation shall be excluded except the one intended. To effect this, in treating difficult subjects, is nearly the hardest task that occurs in composition. In poetry, Homer and Dante are remarkable for the surpassing clearness of their images. In prose exposition, Hobbes is a pre-eminent example. Strength. Strength, vigour, and force are attributes of style, as well as of every other form of human activity. This quality must mainly depend upon making choice of such terms as by their sounds, or by the images associated with them, echo the powerful objects and actions of nature or of human life. The effect of employing, as illustrations, the mighty agencies of the thunder, of the ocean, the cataract, the wild beast, and the like, is known to every one. Strength is likewise produced by the use of language strongly suggestive of the circumstance and detail of actions and events, in place of their weak generalities. Thus, when we speak of killing or taking away life, the effect is very feeble; but when the specific act of violence is alluded to, as 'The men whose daggers stabbed Cæsar!' a far stronger impression is conveyed. Apart from the choice of terms, the quality of strength is brought out by peculiarities of structure and arrangement. The placing of the forcible word of a sentence in the position of natural emphasis adds to the effectas Great is Diana of the Ephesians.' The figure of interrogation has also a striking effect- Breathes there a man?' and so forth. In general, brevity is a feature of strength; it is hardly possible, by a diffuse verbosity, to give an energetic impression, whatever other beauties may be embodied upon that kind of style. Milton is perhaps the greatest example of the quality of strength that the English language presents; for although Shakspeare produces strokes that could hardly The following passage from Dr Chalmers, on the past eternity, is a good illustration of a lofty flight powerfully sustained : his ascending way among the obscurities of that infinite which is behind him? Who can travel in thought along the track of generations gone by, till he has overtaken the eternity which lies in that direction? Who can look across the millions of ages which have elapsed, and from an ulterior post of observation look again to another and another succession of centuries; and at each farther extremity in this series of retrospects, stretch backward his regards on an antiquity as remote and indefinite as ever? Could we by any number of successive strides over these mighty intervals, at length reach the fountain-head of duration, our spirits might be at rest. But to think of duration as having no fountain-head; to think of time with no beginning; to uplift the imagination along the heights of an antiquity which has positively no summit; to soar these upward steeps till, dizzied by the altitude, we can keep no longer on the wing; for the mind to make these repeated flights from one pinnacle to another, and instead of scaling the mysterious elevation, to lie baffled at its foot, or lose itself among the far, the long-withdrawing recesses of that primeval distance, which at length merges away into a fathomless unknown; this is an exercise utterly discomfiting to the puny faculties of man.' Feeling. This term is used here in a restricted sense, to express the quality of touching the warm feelings, affections, and tenderness of humanity. It involves the use of phrases to suggest genial and homefelt attachments and associations-family, country, friends, and all the force of sentiment that is wound up in the sociability of our nature. There are a certain number of the relationships of life founded upon natural tenderness, and the terms expressing them naturally come to excite a certain glow of this feeling when they are properly used. Child, parent, fatherland, native country, are all terms suggesting tender emotion; and there are an infinity of occurrences in life that involve this class of phrases; and according as they are employed with skill and keeping, in any kind of composition or address, the style is said to possess feeling. The addresses of the pulpit usually aim at this peculiarity, which serves both to gratify the hearers with warm emotion, and to act as a stimulus to a certain course of conduct. The closing words of the twenty-third Psalm are singularly replete with feeling: Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.' It necessarily happens that the native terms of the English language, which were formed and fashioned by the native English heart, are more impressive than the phraseology of foreign natures and remote climates, such as the Latin, Greek, and French portion of our language. But the cultivation of our schools and colleges has made foreign idioms, and the associations and history of ancient and distant nations, as full of tenderness and warmth to the educated classes as any of |