Every kind of argument is used in this oration. One would look long for a treasury better supplied with illustrations. The great conclusions are reached by the certain methods of elimination and deduction. In establishing the minor points Burke has used arguments from sign, cause, example, and induction. He calls in testimony; he quotes authority; he illustrates. Not any device of sound argument that a man honest in his search for truth may use has been omitted. It is worthy of patient study.

In conclusion, the student of argument should learn well the value of different kinds of argument; he should exercise the most careful scrutiny in selecting his material, without any hesitation rejecting irrelevant matter; he should state the proposition so that it cannot be misunderstood; he must consider his readers, guiding his course wisely with regard for all the conditions under which he produces his argument; he should remember that the law in argument is climax, and that coherence should be sought with infinite pains. Above all, the man who takes up a debate must be fair and honest; only so will he win favor from his readers, and gain what is worth more than victory,—the distinction of being a servant of truth.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS

QUESTIONS.

MACAULAY'S ESSAY ON MILTON. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 103.)

Put into a syllogism, Macaulay's opponents said, "An educated man living in an enlightened age has better facilities for writing poetry than an uneducated man at the dawn of civilization. Milton was an educated man, living in an enlightened age; therefore Macaulay had better facilities," etc.

Which premise does Macaulay attack? Does he demolish it?

What value is there in an analogy between experimental sciences and imitative arts? Between poetry and a magic-lantern? Is either an argument that is convincing? Are both effective in the essay?

What do you think of Macaulay's estimate of Wordsworth? Granting that this estimate is true, what kind of a proof is it of the proposition that "his very talents will be a hindrance to him"?

Is it a uniform phenomenon that as civilization advances, poetry declines? Name some instances that prove it.

Name some instances that disprove it. What method of proof have you used in both?

Is an uncivilized state of society the cause of good poetry, or only an attendant circumstance?

What method of proof is adopted on pages 34 and 35?

Granting that you cannot conceive "a good man and an unnatural father," does that prove anything about the first sentence at the bottom of page 55?

Does the example of the prisoner on page 60 prove anything?

BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 100.)

What argument does Burke use to prove that hedging in the population is not practicable?

When he says that they will occupy territory because they have done so, is that an inductive or deductive argument, or is it an argument from sign?

If it is deductive, what is the suppressed premise?

Are the arguments from 48 to 64 more in the nature of direct or indirect proofs?

What value is there in an indirect argument?

"Americans speak the English language, therefore they are English." Is the argument good? Where is the fault? Look for the suppressed premise.

Is paragraph 55 direct or indirect argument?

Does he prove that criminal procedure against the colonies would fail, by sign or by deduction?

Do the four precedents which he cites of Ireland, Wales, Durham, and Chester prove that his plan will work in America?

Upon what general principle do all arguments from example depend?

Is paragraph 79 in itself exposition or argument?

What method is adopted in paragraph 88 to prove that the principle of concession is applicable to America?

How does he prove that Americans were grieved by taxes?

How does he establish the competence of the colony assemblies?

How could the arguments have made "the conclusion irresistible"? (Paragraph 112.)

What principle of argument is stated in paragraph 114?

In paragraph 127 is the one example cited enough to prove the rule?

Find an example of argument from sign. Is it a relation of cause and effect? Is it conclusive?

In paragraph 129 what does Burke mention as arguments of value?

What kind of arguments in paragraphs 128 to 136? What is the conclusion?

Whenever Burke states a general truth it forms a part of what? Supply the other premise in five cases, and derive a conclusion.

Does he ever use an argument from cause to establish a probability? To establish a fact?

Does he use deduction more frequently than sign?

Does he seek for a climax in the arrangement of the parts of his brief?

* * * * *

CHAPTER VII

PARAGRAPHS

Definition.

So far we have been dealing with whole compositions; we now take up the study of paragraphs, sentences, and words. A paragraph in many respects resembles a whole composition. It may be narrative, descriptive, expositive, or argumentative. It must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It is constructed with regard to Unity, Mass, and Coherence. And as a whole composition treats a single theme, so a paragraph treats one division of a theme. It has been defined as a composition in miniature. A paragraph is a sentence or a group of sentences serving a single purpose in the development of a theme. The purpose may be simply to announce the theme-subject, to make a conclusion, to indicate a transition; but in the great majority of cases its purpose is to treat a single topic. So true is this that many authors, with good reason, define a paragraph as a group of sentences treating a single topic.

Long and Short Paragraphs.

Nobody would have trouble in telling where on a page a paragraph began and where it ended. The indention at the beginning, and usually the incomplete line at the end, mark its visible limits. Unfortunately there is no specified length after which the writer is to make a break in the lines and begin a new paragraph. The length of a paragraph depends on something deeper than appearances; as the topic requires a lengthy or but a short treatment, as the paragraph may be a long summary or a short transition, the length of a paragraph varies. Yet there is one circumstance which should counsel an author to keep his paragraphs within certain bounds: he should always have regard for his readers. Readers shirk heavy labor. If a book or an article looks hard, it is passed by; if it looks easy, it is read. If the paragraphs be long and the page solid, the composition looks difficult; if the paragraphs be short and the page broken, the piece looks easy. This fact should advise a writer to make the page attractive by using short paragraphs; provided, and the provision is important, he can so make real paragraphs, divisions of composition that fully treat one topic. These divisions may in reality be but one sentence, and they may just as unquestionably be two pages of hard reading.

Successive paragraphs, each more than a page of ordinary print in length, repel as too hard; and a series of paragraphs of less than a quarter of a page impresses a reader as scrappy, and the work seems to lack the authority of complete treatment. An author will serve his readers and himself best by so subdividing his subject that the paragraphs are within these limits.

The following paragraph is much too long and can with no difficulty be subdivided. The paragraphs in the next group are too short, and they are incomplete.

"Keating rode up now, and the transaction became more complicated. It ended in the purchase of the horse by Bryce for a hundred and twenty, to be paid on the delivery of Wildfire, safe and sound, at the Batherley stables. It did occur to Dunsey that it might be wise for him to give up the day's hunting, proceed at once to Batherley, and, having waited for Bryce's return, hire a horse to carry him home with the money in his pocket. But the inclination for a run, encouraged by confidence in his luck, and by a draught of brandy from his pocket-pistol at the conclusion of the bargain, was not easy to overcome, especially with a horse under him that would take the fences to the admiration of the field. Dunstan, however, took one fence too many, and got his horse pierced with a hedge-stake. His own ill-favored person, which was quite unmarketable, escaped without injury; but poor Wildfire, unconscious of his price, turned on his flank, and painfully panted his last. It happened that Dunstan, a short time before, having had to get down to arrange his stirrup, had muttered a good many curses at this interruption, which had thrown him in the rear of the hunt near the moment of glory, and under this exasperation had taken the fences more blindly. He would soon have been up with the hounds again, when the fatal accident happened; and hence he was between eager riders in advance, not troubling themselves about what happened behind them, and far-off stragglers, who were as likely as not to pass quite aloof from the line of road in which Wildfire had fallen. Dunstan, whose nature it was to care more for immediate annoyances than for remote consequences, no sooner recovered his legs, and saw that it was all over with Wildfire, than he felt a satisfaction at the absence of witnesses to a position which no swaggering could make enviable. Reinforcing himself, after his shake, with a little brandy and much swearing, he walked as fast as he could to a coppice on his right hand, through which it occurred to him that he could make his way to Batherley without danger of encountering any member of the hunt. His first intention was to hire a horse there and ride home forthwith, for to walk many miles without a gun in his hand, and along an ordinary road, was as much out of the question to him as to other spirited young men of his kind. He did not much mind about taking the bad news to Godfrey, for he had to offer him at the same time the resource of Marner's money; and if Godfrey kicked, as he always did, at the notion of making a fresh debt, from which he himself got the smallest share of advantage, why, he wouldn't kick long: Dunstan felt sure he could worry Godfrey into anything. The idea of Marner's money kept growing in vividness, now the want of it had become immediate; the prospect of having to make his appearance with the muddy boots of a pedestrian at Batherley, and to encounter the grinning queries of stablemen, stood unpleasantly in the way of his impatience to be back at Raveloe and carry out his felicitous plan; and a casual visitation of his waistcoat-pocket, as he was ruminating, awakened his memory to the fact that the two or three small coins his fore-finger encountered there were of too pale a color to cover that small debt, without payment of which the stable-keeper had declared he would never do any more business with Dunsey Cass. After all, according to the direction in which the run had brought him, he was not so very much farther from home than he was from Batherley; but Dunsey, not being remarkable for clearness of head, was only led to this conclusion by the gradual perception that there were other reasons for choosing the unprecedented course of walking home. It was now nearly four o'clock, and a mist was gathering: the sooner he got into the road the better. He remembered having crossed the road and seen the finger-post only a little while before Wildfire broke down; so, buttoning his coat, twisting the lash of his hunting-whip compactly round the handle, and rapping the tops of his boots with a self-possessed air, as if to assure himself that he was not at all taken by surprise, he set off with the sense that he was undertaking a remarkable feat of bodily exertion, which somehow, and at some time, he should be able to dress up and magnify to the admiration of a select circle at the Rainbow. When a young gentleman like Dunsey is reduced to so exceptional a mode of locomotion as walking, a whip in his hand is a desirable corrective to a too bewildering dreamy sense of unwontedness in his position; and Dunstan, as he went along through the gathering mist, was always rapping his whip somewhere. It was Godfrey's whip, which he had chosen to take without leave because it had a gold handle; of course no one could see, when Dunstan held it, that the name Godfrey Cass was cut in deep letters on that gold handle—they could only see that it was a very handsome whip. Dunsey was not without fear that he might meet some acquaintance in whose eyes he would cut a pitiable figure, for mist is no screen when people get close to each other; but when he at last found himself in the well-known Raveloe lanes without having met a soul, he silently remarked that that was part of his usual good luck. But now the mist, helped by the evening darkness, was more of a screen than he desired, for it hid the ruts into which his feet were liable to slip—hid everything, so that he had to guide his steps by dragging his whip along the low bushes in advance of the hedgerow. He must soon, he thought, be getting near the opening at the Stone-pits: he should find it out by the break in the hedgerow. He found it out, however, by another circumstance which he had not expected—namely, by certain gleams of light, which he presently guessed to proceed from Silas Marner's cottage. That cottage and the money hidden within it had been in his mind continually during his walk, and he had been imagining ways of cajoling and tempting the weaver to part with the immediate possession of his money for the sake of receiving interest. Dunstan felt as if there must be a little frightening added to the cajolery, for his own arithmetical convictions were not clear enough to afford him any forcible demonstration as to the advantages of interest; and as for security, he regarded it vaguely as a means of cheating a man by making him believe that he would be paid. Altogether, the operation on the miser's mind was a task that Godfrey would be sure to hand over to his more daring and cunning brother: Dunstan had made up his mind to that; and by the time he saw the light gleaming through the chinks of Marner's shutters, the idea of a dialogue with the weaver had become so familiar to him, that it occurred to him as quite a natural thing to make the acquaintance forthwith. There might be several conveniences attending this course: the weaver had possibly got a lantern, and Dunstan was tired of feeling his way. He was still nearly three quarters of a mile from home, and the lane was becoming unpleasantly slippery, for the mist was passing into rain. He turned up the bank, not without some fear lest he might miss the right way, since he was not certain whether the light were in front or on the side of the cottage. But he felt the ground before him cautiously with his whip-handle, and at last arrived safely at the door. He knocked loudly, rather enjoying the idea that the old fellow would be frightened at the sudden noise. He heard no movement in reply: all was silence in the cottage. Was the weaver gone to bed, then? If so, why had he left a light? That was a strange forgetfulness in a miser. Dunstan knocked still more loudly, and, without pausing for a reply, pushed his fingers through the latch-hole, intending to shake the door and pull the latch-string up and down, not doubting that the door was fastened. But, to his surprise, at this double motion the door opened, and he found himself in front of a bright fire, which lit up every corner of the cottage—the bed, the loom, the three chairs, and the table—and showed him that Marner was not there."[23]

"The country, all white, lit up by the fire, shone like a cloth of silver tinted with red.

"A bell, far off, began to toll.

"The old 'Sauvage' remained standing before her ruined dwelling, armed with her gun, her son's gun, for fear lest one of those men might escape.

"When she saw that it was ended, she threw her weapon into the brasier. A loud report rang back.

"People were coming, the peasants, the Prussians.

"They found the woman seated on the trunk of a tree, calm and satisfied.

"A German officer, who spoke French like a son of France, demanded of her:—

"'Where are your soldiers?'

"She extended her thin arm towards the red heap of fire which was gradually going out, and she answered with a strong voice:—

"'There!'

"They crowded round her. The Prussian asked:—

"'How did it take fire?'

"She said:—

"'It was I who set it on fire.'"[24]

Topic Sentence.

Paragraphs are developments of a definite topic; and this topic is generally announced at the beginning of the paragraph. In isolated paragraphs, paragraphs that are indeed compositions in miniature, the topic-sentence is the first sentence. The reader is then advised of the subject of the discussion; and as sentence after sentence passes him, he can relate it to the topic, and the thought is a cumulative whole. If the subject be not announced, the individual sentences must be held in mind until the reader catches the drift of the discussion, or the author at last presents the topic.

Below are four paragraphs, from different forms of discourse, all having the topic-sentence at the beginning.

"But success or defeat was a minor matter to them, who had only thought for the safety of those they loved. Amelia, at the news of the victory, became still more agitated even than before. She was for going that moment to the army. She besought her brother with tears to conduct her thither. Her doubts and terrors reached their paroxysm; and the poor girl, who for many hours had been plunged into stupor, raved and ran hither and thither in hysteric insanity,—a piteous sight. No man writhing in pain in the hard-fought field fifteen miles off, where lay, after their struggles, so many of the brave—no man suffered more keenly than this poor harmless victim of the war. Jos could not bear the sight of her pain. He left his sister in the charge of her stouter female companion and descended once more to the threshold of the hotel, where everybody still lingered, and talked, and waited for more news."[25]

"Yet the fact remains that the honey-bee is essentially a wild creature, and never has been and cannot be thoroughly domesticated. Its proper home is the woods, and thither every new swarm counts on going; and thither many do go in spite of the care and watchfulness of the bee-keeper. If the woods in any given locality are deficient in trees with suitable cavities, the bees resort to all kinds of makeshifts; they go into chimneys, into barns and outhouses, under stones, into rocks, and so forth. Several chimneys in my locality with disused flues are taken possession of by colonies of bees nearly every season. One day, while bee-hunting, I developed a line that went toward a farmhouse where I had reason to believe no bees were kept. I followed it up and questioned the farmer about his bees. He said he kept no bees, but that a swarm had taken possession of his chimney, and another had gone under the clapboards in the gable end of his house. He had taken a large lot of honey out of both places the year before. Another farmer told me that one day his family had seen a number of bees examining a knot-hole in the side of his house; the next day as they were sitting down to dinner their attention was attracted by a loud humming noise, when they discovered a swarm of bees settling upon the side of the house and pouring into the knot-hole. In subsequent years other swarms came to the same place."[26]

"It is important, therefore, to hold fast to this: that poetry is at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life,—to the question: How to live. Morals are often treated in a narrow and false fashion; they are bound up with systems of thought and belief which have had their day; they have fallen into the hands of pedants and professional dealers; they grow tiresome to some of us. We find attraction, at times, even in a poetry of revolt against them; in a poetry which might take for its motto Omar Khayyam's words: 'Let us make up in the tavern for the time which we have wasted in the mosque.' Or we find attractions in a poetry indifferent to them; in a poetry where the contents may be what they will, but where the form is studied and exquisite. We delude ourselves in either case; and the best cure for our delusion is to let our minds rest upon that great and inexhaustible word life, until we learn to enter into its meaning. A poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against life; a poetry of indifference toward moral ideas is a poetry of indifference toward life."[27]

"The advantages arising from a system of copyright are obvious. It is desirable that we should have a supply of good books: we cannot have such a supply unless men of letters are liberally remunerated; and the least objectionable way of remunerating them is by means of copyright. You cannot depend for literary instruction and amusement on the leisure of men occupied in the pursuits of active life. Such men may occasionally produce compositions of great merit. But you must not look to such men for works which require deep meditation and long research. Works of that kind you can expect only from persons who make literature the business of their lives. Of these persons few will be found among the rich and the noble. The rich and the noble are not impelled to intellectual exertion by necessity. They may be impelled to intellectual exertion by the desire of distinguishing themselves, or by the desire of benefiting the community. But it is generally within these walls that they seek to signalize themselves and to serve their fellow-creatures. Both their ambition and their public spirit, in a country like this, naturally take a political turn. It is then on men whose profession is literature, and whose private means are not ample, that you must rely for a supply of valuable books. Such men must be remunerated for their literary labor. And there are only two ways in which they can be remunerated. One of those ways is patronage; the other is copyright."[28]

Frequently the topic-sentence is delayed until after the connection between what was said in the preceding paragraph and what will be said has been made. To establish this relation requires sometimes but a word or a short phrase, and sometimes sentences. In these cases the topic-sentence follows the transition, and it may come as late as the middle of the paragraph.

"The crows we have always with us, but it is not every day or every season that one sees an eagle. Hence I must preserve the memory of one I saw the last day I went bee-hunting. As I was laboring up the side of a mountain at the head of a valley, the noble bird sprang from the top of a dry tree above me and came sailing directly over my head. I saw him bend his eye down upon me, and I could hear the low hum of his plumage, as if the web of every quill in his great wings vibrated in his strong, level flight. I watched him as long as my eye could hold him. When he was fairly clear of the mountain he began that sweeping spiral movement in which he climbs the sky. Up and up he went without once breaking his majestic poise till he appeared to sight some far-off alien geography, when he bent his course thitherward, and gradually vanished in the blue depths. The eagle is a bird of large ideas, he embraces long distances; the continent is his home. I never look upon one without emotion; I follow him with my eye as long as I can. I think of Canada, of the Great Lakes, of the Rocky Mountains, of the wild and sounding sea-coast. The waters are his, and the woods and the inaccessible cliffs. He pierces behind the veil of the storm, and his joy is height and depth and vast spaces."[29]

"Now these insinuations and questions shall be answered in their proper places; here I will but say that I scorn and detest lying, and quibbling, and double-tongued practice, and slyness, and cunning, and smoothness, and cant, and pretence, quite as much as any Protestants hate them; and I pray to be kept from the snare of them. But all this is just now by the bye; my present subject is my Accuser; what I insist upon here is this unmanly attempt of his, in his concluding pages, to cut the ground from under my feet;—to poison by anticipation the public mind against me, John Henry Newman, and to infuse into the imaginations of my readers suspicion and mistrust of everything that I may say in reply to him. This I call poisoning the wells." ("Apologia.")

In exposition and argument, and sometimes in the other forms of discourse, the topic-sentence may be at the end of the paragraph. This is for emphasis in narration and description. In exposition and argument it is better to lead up to an unwelcome truth than to announce it at once.

"Thus the matter of life, so far as we know it (and we have no right to speculate on any other), breaks up, in consequence of that continual death which is the condition of its manifesting vitality, into carbonic acid, water, and nitrogenous compounds which certainly possess no properties but those of ordinary matter. And out of these same forms of ordinary matter, and from none which are simpler, the vegetable world builds up all the protoplasm which keeps the animal world a-going. Plants are the accumulators of the power which animals distribute and disperse."[30]

No Topic-Sentence.

Sometimes no topic-sentence appears in the paragraph. In such a case it is easily discovered; or at times it is too fragile to be compressed into any definite shape—a feeling, or a sentiment too delicate, too volatile for expression. A paragraph with no topic-sentence is most common in narration and description.

"The tide of color has ebbed from the upper sky. In the west the sea of sunken fire draws back; and the stars leap forth, and tremble, and retire before the advancing moon, who slips the silver train of cloud from her shoulders, and, with her foot upon the pine-tops, surveys heaven." ("Richard Feverel," by George Meredith.)

The Plan.

Whether the topic form a part of the paragraph or not, it should be distinctly before the writer, and he should write upon the topic. Nothing contributes so much to the success of paragraphs as a definite treatment of one single topic. The paragraph is the development, the growth of this topic, as the plant is the development of its seed. Moreover, the development is according to a definite plan. The different steps are not usually laid out, as was done in the outline of a theme. Genung, in the "Practical Elements of Rhetoric," presents what he calls a typical form for a paragraph. It shows that a paragraph which is fully developed is in reality a miniature theme. It is as follows:—

The Subject proposed.

I. Whatever is needed to explain the subject. Repetition. Obverse. Definition. II. Whatever is needed to establish the subject. Exemplification or detail. Illustration. Proof. III. Whatever is needed to apply the subject. Result or consequence. Enforcement. Summary or recapitulation.

Kinds of Paragraphs.

This typical form of a paragraph embodies all that paragraphs may do, and it is the logical arrangement. However, it is rare, perhaps it never occurs, that a paragraph is found having all these elements developed. The purpose determines which part of a paragraph should receive the amplification. If it be narrative or descriptive, there is no definition or proof; but the development by details will predominate. In an argument, definition and proof will form the large part of the paragraphs. Again, the position in the theme determines what kind of a paragraph should be used. In exposition the first paragraphs would be devoted to stating the proposition, and would therefore be largely given up to definition and repetition; the body would be especially paragraphs of detail and illustration; while the closing paragraph would be taken up with results and a summary. As one of the elements of a paragraph has been especially developed, paragraphs have been named paragraphs of repetition,[31] of the obverse, of details, of instances or examples, and of comparisons. Such a division is somewhat mechanical; but for purposes of study and for conscious practice in construction it has value.

Details.

The paragraph of details is by far the most common. It is found in all kinds of discourse. It originates from the fact that persons generally give the general truth first and follow this statement with the details or particulars. Whether the storyteller begins by saying, "Now I'll tell you just how they happened to be there;" or the traveler writes, "From the Place de la Concorde one has about him magnificent views," or "There were many unfortunate circumstances about the Dreyfus affair;" in each case he will follow the general statement of the opening sentence with sentences going into particulars or details.

"All was now bustle and hubbub in the late quiet schoolroom. The scholars were hurried through their lessons without stopping at trifles; those who were nimble skipped over half with impunity, and those who were tardy had a smart application now and then in the rear, to quicken their speed or help them over a tall word. Books were flung aside without being put away on the shelves, inkstands were overturned, benches thrown down, and the whole school was turned loose an hour before the usual time, bursting forth like a legion of young imps, yelping and racketing about the green in joy at their early emancipation."[32]

"It was toward evening that Ichabod arrived at the castle of the Heer Van Tassel, which he found thronged with the pride and flower of the adjacent country. Old farmers, a spare leathern-faced race, in homespun coats and breeches, blue stocking, huge shoes, and magnificent pewter buckles. Their brisk, withered little dames, in close crimped caps, long-waisted short-gowns, homespun petticoats, with scissors and pincushions, and gay calico pockets hanging on the outside. Buxom lasses, almost as antiquated as their mothers, excepting where a straw hat, a fine ribbon, or perhaps a white frock gave symptoms of city innovation. The sons, in short square-skirted coats, with rows of stupendous brass buttons, and their hair generally queued in the fashion of the times, especially if they could procure an eelskin for the purpose, it being esteemed throughout the country as a potent nourisher and strengthener of the hair."[32]

"The enemies of the Parliament, indeed, rarely choose to take issue in the great points of the question. They content themselves with exposing some of the crimes and follies to which public commotions necessarily give birth. They bewail the unmerited fate of Strafford. They execrate the lawless violence of the army. They laugh at the scriptural names of the preachers. Major-generals fleecing their districts; soldiers reveling on the spoils of a ruined peasantry; upstarts, enriched by the public plunder, taking possession of the hospitable firesides and hereditary trees of the old gentry; boys smashing the beautiful windows of cathedrals; Quakers riding naked through the market-place; Fifth-monarchy men shouting for King Jesus; agitators lecturing from the tops of tubs on the fate of Agag,—all these, they tell us, were the offspring of the great Rebellion."[33]

In narration and in a short paragraph of description this paragraph of details is frequently without a topic-sentence. The circumstances that make up a transaction are grouped, but there is no need of writing, "I will now detail this." In the following, since the paragraph is plainly about the preparation for the fight, it is unnecessary to say so. Such a patent statement would hinder the movement of the story.

"Alan drew a dirk, which he held in his left hand in case they should run in under his sword. I, on my part, clambered up into the berth with an armful of pistols and something of a heavy heart, and set open the window where I was to watch. It was a small part of the deck that I could overlook, but enough for our purpose. The sea had gone down, and the wind was steady and kept the sails quiet; so that there was a great stillness on the ship, in which I made sure I heard the sound of muttering voices. A little after, and there came a clash of steel upon the deck, by which I knew they were dealing out the cutlasses, and one had been let fall; and after that silence again."[34]

Comparisons.

The paragraph of comparisons tells what a thing is like and what a thing is not like. It is much used in description and exposition. It is often the clearest way to describe an object or to explain a proposition. One thing may be likened to a number of things, drawing from each a quality that more definitely pictures it; or it may be compared with but one, and the likeness may be followed out to the limit of its value. In the same manner it is often of value to tell what a thing or a proposition does not resemble, to contrast it with one or more ideas, and by this means exclude what might otherwise be confusing. Note that after the negative comparison the paragraph closes with what it is like, or what it is.

From Macaulay's long comparison of the writings of Milton and Dante, one paragraph is enough to illustrate the use of contrast.

"Now let us compare with the exact details of Dante the dim intimations of Milton. We will cite a few examples. The English poet has never thought of taking the measure of Satan. He gives us merely a vague idea of vast bulk. In one passage the fiend lies stretched out, huge in length, floating many a rood, equal in size to the earth-born enemies of Jove, or to the sea monster which the mariner mistakes for an island. When he addresses himself to battle against the guardian angels, he stands like Teneriffe or Atlas; his stature reaches the sky. Contrast with these descriptions the lines in which Dante has described the gigantic spectre of Nimrod: 'His face seemed to me as long and as broad as the ball of St. Peter's at Rome, and his other limbs were in proportion; so that the bank, which concealed him from the waist downwards, nevertheless showed so much of him that three tall Germans would in vain have attempted to reach to his hair.'" ("Essay on Milton.")

The following indicates the use of similarity.

"It is the character of such revolutions that we always see the worst of them at first. Till men have been some time free, they know not how to use their freedom. The natives of wine countries are generally sober. In climates where wine is a rarity intemperance abounds. A newly liberated people may be compared to a northern army encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres. It is said that, when soldiers in such a situation first find themselves able to indulge without restraint in such a rare and expensive luxury, nothing is to be seen but intoxication. Soon, however, plenty teaches discretion, and, after wine has been for a few months their daily fare, they become more temperate than they had ever been in their own country. In the same manner, the final and permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy. Its immediate effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, skepticism on points the most clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious. It is just at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. They pull down the scaffolding from the half-finished edifice; they point to the flying dust, the falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful irregularity of the whole appearance, and then ask in scorn where the promised splendor and comfort is to be found. If such miserable sophisms were to prevail, there would never be a good house or a good government in the world." ("Essay on Milton," by Lord Macaulay.)

Repetition.

A third method of developing a paragraph from a topic-sentence is by repetition. Simply to repeat in other words would be useless redundancy; but so to repeat that with each repetition the thought broadens or deepens is valuable in proposing a subject or explaining it. No person has attained greater skill in repetition than Matthew Arnold, and much of his clearness comes from his repetition, often of the very same phrases.

"Wordsworth has been in his grave for some thirty years, and certainly his lovers and admirers cannot flatter themselves that this great and steady light of glory as yet shines over him. He is not fully recognized at home; he is not recognized at all abroad. Yet I firmly believe that the poetical performance of Wordsworth is, after that of Shakespeare and Milton, of which all the world now recognizes the worth, undoubtedly the most considerable in our language from the Elizabethan age to the present time. Chaucer is anterior; and on other grounds, too, he cannot well be brought into the comparison. But taking the roll of our chief poetical names, besides Shakespeare and Milton, from the age of Elizabeth downwards, and going through it,—Spenser, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Goldsmith, Cowper, Burns, Coleridge, Scott, Campbell, Moore, Byron, Shelley, Keats (I mention those only who are dead),—I think it certain that Wordsworth's name deserves to stand, and will finally stand, above them all. Several of the poets named have gifts and excellencies which Wordsworth has not. But taking the performance of each as a whole, I say that Wordsworth seems to me to have left a body of poetical work superior in power, in interest, in the qualities which give enduring freshness, to that which any one of the others has left." ("Essay on Wordsworth," by Matthew Arnold.)

"Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind, if anything which gives so much pleasure ought to be called unsoundness. By poetry we mean not all writing in verse, nor even all good writing in verse. Our definition excludes many metrical compositions which, on other grounds, deserve the highest praise. By poetry, we mean the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination, the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colors. Thus the greatest of the poets has described it, in lines universally admired for the vigor and felicity of their diction, and still more valuable on account of the just notion which they convey of the art in which he excelled:—

'As imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.'

These are the fruits of the 'fine frenzy' which he ascribes to the poet,—a fine frenzy, doubtless, but still a frenzy. Truth, indeed, is essential to poetry, but it is the truth of madness. The reasonings are just, but the premises are false. After the first suppositions have been made, everything ought to be consistent; but those first suppositions require a degree of credulity which almost amounts to a partial and temporary derangement of the intellect. Hence, of all people, children are the most imaginative. They abandon themselves without reserve to every illusion. Every image which is strongly presented to their mental eye produces in them the effect of reality. No man, whatever his sensibility may be, is ever affected by Hamlet or Lear as a little girl is affected by the story of poor Red Riding Hood. She knows it is all false, that wolves cannot speak, that there are no wolves in England. Yet in spite of her knowledge she believes; she weeps; she trembles; she dares not go into a dark room lest she should feel the teeth of the monster at her throat. Such is the despotism of the imagination over uncultivated minds." ("Essay on Milton," by Macaulay.)

Obverse.

A fourth method of building up a paragraph from a topic-sentence consists in telling what it is not; that is, giving the obverse. This is very effective in argument, and is employed in exposition and description. The obverse usually follows a positive statement, and again is followed by the affirmative; that is, first what it is, then what it is not, and last, what it is again. In the following description by Ruskin, the method appears and reappears. Notice the "nots" and "buts," indicating the change from the negative to the positive statement. It would be a sacrilege to omit the last paragraph, though it does not illustrate this manner of development.

"For all other rivers there is a surface, and an underneath, and a vaguely displeasing idea of the bottom. But the Rhone flows like one lambent jewel; its surface is nowhere, its ethereal self is everywhere, the iridescent rush and translucent strength of it blue to the shore, and radiant to the depth.

"Fifteen feet thick, not of flowing, but flying water; not water, neither—melted glacier, rather, one should call it; the force of the ice is with it, and the wreathing of the clouds, the gladness of the sky, and the continuance of Time.

"Waves of clear sea are, indeed, lovely to watch, but they are always coming or gone, never in any taken shape to be seen for a second. But here was one mighty wave that was always itself, and every fluted swirl of it, constant as the wreathing of a shell. No wasting away of the fallen foam, no pause for gathering of power, no helpless ebb of discouraged recoil; but alike through bright day and lulling night, the never-pausing plunge, and never-fading flash, and never-hushing whisper, and, while the sun was up, the ever-answering glow of unearthly aquamarine, ultramarine, violet-blue, gentian-blue, peacock-blue, river-of-paradise blue, glass of a painted window melted in the sun, and the witch of the Alps flinging the spun tresses of it forever from her snow.

"The innocent way, too, in which the river used to stop to look into every little corner. Great torrents always seem angry, and great rivers are often too sullen; but there is no anger, no disdain in the Rhone. It seemed as if the mountain stream was in mere bliss at recovering itself again out of the lake-sleep, and raced because it rejoiced in racing, fain yet to return and stay. There were pieces of wave that danced all day, as if Perdita were looking on to learn; there were little streams that skipped like lambs and leaped like chamois; there were pools that shook the sunshine all through them, and were rippled in layers of overlaid ripples, like crystal sand; there were currents that twisted the light into golden braids, and inlaid the threads with turquoise enamel; there were strips of stream that had certainly above the lake been mill-stream, and were looking busily for mills to turn again; and there were shoots of stream that had once shot fearfully into the air, and now sprang up again, laughing, that they had only fallen a foot or two;—and in the midst of all the gay glittering and eddied lingering, the noble bearing by of the midmost depth, so mighty, yet so terrorless and harmless, with its swallows skimming in spite of petrels, and the dear old decrepit town as safe in the embracing sweep of it as if it were set in a brooch of sapphires."[35]

This extract from Burke's speech is a good example of the same method.

"I put this consideration of the present and the growing numbers in the front of our deliberation, because, Sir, this consideration will make it evident to a blunter discernment than yours, that no partial, narrow, contracted, pinched, occasional system will be at all suitable to such an object. It will show you that it is not to be considered as one of those minima which are out of the eye and consideration of the law; not a paltry excrescence of the state; not a mean dependent, who may be neglected with little damage and provoked with little danger. It will prove that some degree of care and caution is required in the handling such an object; it will show that you ought not, in reason, to trifle with so large a mass of the interests and feelings of the human race. You could at no time do so without guilt; and be assured you will not be able to do it long with impunity."[36]

Examples.

A fifth method of expanding a topic is by means of illustrations and examples. It is used largely in establishing or enforcing a proposition. The author selects one example, or perhaps more than one, to illustrate his proposition. Note the words that may introduce specific instances: for example, for instance, to illustrate, a case in point, and so forth.

In the first of the following quotations, Cardinal Newman is showing that simply to acquire is not true mental enlargement. The paragraph is made up of a series of instances. The second paragraph is by Macaulay.

"The case is the same still more strikingly when the persons in question are beyond dispute men of inferior powers and deficient education. Perhaps they have been much in foreign countries, and they receive, in a passive, otiose, unfruitful way, the various facts which are forced upon them there. Seafaring men, for example, range from one end of the earth to the other; but the multiplicity of external objects which they have encountered forms no symmetrical and consistent picture upon their imagination; they see the tapestry of human life, as it were, on the wrong side, and it tells no story. They sleep, and they rise up, and they find themselves, now in Europe, now in Asia; they see visions of great cities and wild regions; they are in the marts of commerce, or amid the islands of the South; they gaze on Pompey's Pillar, or on the Andes; and nothing which meets them carries them forward or backward, to any idea beyond itself. Nothing has a drift or relation; nothing has a history or a promise. Everything stands by itself and comes and goes in its turn, like the shifting scenes of a show, which leave the spectator where he was. Perhaps you are near such a man on a particular occasion, and expect him to be shocked or perplexed at something which occurs; but one thing is much the same to him as another; or, if he is perplexed, it is as not knowing what to say, whether it is right to admire, or to ridicule, or to disapprove, while conscious that some expression of opinion is expected from him; for in fact he has no standard of judgment at all, and no landmarks to guide him to a conclusion. Such is mere acquisition, and, I repeat, no one would dream of calling it philosophy." ("Idea of a University," by Cardinal Newman.)

"I will give another instance. One of the most instructive, interesting, and delightful books in our language is Boswell's 'Life of Johnson.' Now it is well known that Boswell's eldest son considered this book, considered the whole relation of Boswell to Johnson, as a blot in the escutcheon of the family. He thought, not perhaps altogether without reason, that his father had exhibited himself in a ludicrous and degrading light. And thus he became so sore and irritable that at last he could not bear to hear the 'Life of Johnson' mentioned. Suppose that the law had been what my honorable and learned friend wishes to make it. Suppose that the copyright of Boswell's 'Life of Johnson' had belonged, as it well might, during sixty years, to Boswell's eldest son. What would have been the consequence? An unadulterated copy of the finest biographical work in the world would have been as scarce as the first edition of Camden's 'Britannia.'" (Speech, "Copyright," by Macaulay.)

Combines Two or More Forms.

As was said at the beginning, a paragraph is seldom made exclusively of one form. One part of the typical paragraph is usually developed more than any other and gives to the paragraph its character and its name. By far the most common variety of paragraph is that which combines two or more of the other forms. It is not necessary to cite examples; they are everywhere. Though combination is the commonest method of development, it should be guarded. It is a poor paragraph that combines the forms indiscriminately. It should follow some plan; and the best plan is the one already given in the typical paragraph.

All paragraphs, whatever be the special method of development, are governed by the three principles which have guided in the structure of whole compositions. Whether the purpose be to prove or to narrate, to enforce a conclusion or to illustrate, if a paragraph is to produce its greatest effect, it should have unity, it should be well massed, and it should be coherent.

It is not necessary now to define unity in a paragraph; the need is rather to notice the offenses against it that frequently occur. They are manifestly two: too much may be included, and not all may be included. The accompanying circumstance of the one, not necessarily the cause, however, is often a very long paragraph, and of the other a short paragraph.

Unity.

Violations of the unity of a paragraph most frequently result from including more than belongs there. The theme has been selected; it is narrow and concise. When one begins to write, many things crowd in pell-mell. Impressions, which come and go, we hardly know how or why, are the only products of most minds. Impressions, not shaped and logical thoughts, make up the mixed confusion frequently called a theme. The writer puts down enough of these impressions to make a paragraph, and then goes on to do it again, fancying that so he is really paragraphing. Even should he keep within the limits of his theme, he cannot in this way paragraph. As everything upon a subject does not belong in a theme, so everything in a theme may not be introduced indiscriminately into any paragraph.

The other danger lies in the short paragraph. It does not allow a writer room to say all he has to say upon the topic, so it runs over into the next paragraph. All of the thought-paragraph should appear in one division on the page. This error is not so common as the former. Examples of each are to be found on pages 152-157.

Need of Outline.

The remedy for this confusion clearly is hard thinking; and a great assistance is the outline. Before a word is written, think through the theme; get clearly the purpose of each paragraph in the development of the whole. Then write just what the paragraph was intended to include, and no more. More will be suggested because the parts of a whole theme are all closely related, but that more belongs somewhere else. Make a sharp outline, and follow it.

Mass.

A paragraph should be so arranged that the parts which arrest the eye will be important.[37] When a person glances down a page, his eye rests upon the beginning and the end of each paragraph. A reader going rapidly through an article to get what he wants of it does not read religiously every word; he knows that he will be directed to the contents of each paragraph by the first and last sentences. If a writer considers his readers, if he desires to arrange his paragraph so that it will be most effective, he will have at these points such sentences as will accurately indicate its contents and the trend of the discussion; and he will form these sentences so well that they will deserve the attention which is given them by reason of their position in the paragraph.

What begins and what ends a Paragraph?

What are the words that deserve the distinction of opening and closing a paragraph? As in the theme, so in a paragraph, the first thing is to announce the subject of discussion. When the subject is simply announced without giving any indication as to the drift of the discussion, the conclusion of the discussion is generally stated in the last sentence. Burke says, "The first thing we have to consider with regard to the nature of the object is the number of people in the colonies." He concludes the paragraph with, "Whilst we are discussing any given magnitude, they are grown to it. Whilst we spend our time in deliberating on the mode of governing two millions, we shall find we have millions more to manage. Your children do not grow faster from infancy to manhood than they spread from families to communities, and from villages to nations." In other cases the opening sentence states the conclusion at which the paragraph will arrive. Then the closing sentence may be a repetition of the opening or topic sentence; or it may be one of the points used to exemplify or establish the proposition which opens the paragraph. Again, in a short paragraph the topic need not be announced at the beginning; in this case it should be given in the concluding sentence. Or, should the topic be given in the opening sentence of a short paragraph, it is unnecessary to repeat it at the end. In any case, whether the paragraph opens with a simple announcement of the topic to be discussed, or with the conclusion which the paragraph aims to explain, establish, or illustrate, or whether it closes with the conclusion of the whole matter, or with one of the main points in the development, the sentences at the beginning and the end of a paragraph should be strong sentences worthy of their distinguished position.

In the first paragraph below, there is a proposition in the first sentence and its repetition in the last. In the two following, though they close with no general statement, the specific assertions used to substantiate and illustrate the first sentences are strong and carry in themselves the truth of the topic-sentence.

"The eloquence of Mr. Adams resembled his general character, and formed, indeed, a part of it. It was bold, manly, and energetic; and such the crisis required. When public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech farther than as it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshaled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire to it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men when their own lives and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country hang on the decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then patriotism is eloquent; then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object—this, this is eloquence: or rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence; it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action."[38]

"The prejudiced man travels, and then everything he sees in Catholic countries only serves to make him more thankful that his notions are so true; and the more he sees of Popery, the more abominable he feels it to be. If there is any sin, any evil in a foreign population, though it be found among Protestants also, still Popery is clearly the cause of it. If great cities are the schools of vice, it is owing to Popery. If Sunday is profaned, if there is a carnival, it is the fault of the Catholic Church. Then, there are no private houses, as in England; families live in staircases; see what it is to belong to a Popish country. Why do the Roman laborers wheel their barrows so slow in the Forum? why do the Lazzaroni of Naples lie so listlessly on the beach? why, but because they are under the malaria of a false religion. Rage, as is well known, is in the Roman like a falling sickness, almost as if his will had no part in it and he had no responsibility; see what it is to be a Papist. Bloodletting is as frequent and as much a matter of course in the South as hair-cutting in England; it is a trick borrowed from the convents, when they wish to tame down refractory spirits."[39]

"Excuse me, Sir, if turning from such thoughts I resume this comparative view once more. You have seen it on a large scale; look at it on a small one. I will point out to your attention a particular instance of it in the single province of Pennsylvania. In the year 1704 that province called for L11,459 in value of your commodities, native and foreign. This was the whole. What did it demand in 1772? Why, nearly fifty times as much; for in that year the export to Pennsylvania was L507,909, nearly equal to the export to all the colonies together in the first period."[40]

The following illustrates the weakness of closing with a specific instance when it does not rise to the level of the remainder of a paragraph. The last sentence would better be omitted.

"We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. The expression in general means nothing; but, applied to the writings of Milton, it is most appropriate. His poetry acts like an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power. There would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced than the past is present and the distant near. New forms of beauty start at once into existence, and all the burial-places of memory give up their dead. Change the structure of the sentence, substitute one synonym for another, and the whole effect is destroyed. The spell loses its power; and he who should then hope to conjure with it would find himself as much mistaken as Cassim in the Arabian tale, when he stood crying, 'Open Wheat,' 'Open Barley,' to the door which obeyed no sound but 'Open Sesame.' In the miserable failure of Dryden in his attempt to translate into his own diction some parts of the 'Paradise Lost' is a remarkable instance of this." ("Essay on Milton," by Macaulay.)

Length of opening and closing Sentences.

By examination, one finds that the first sentence of a paragraph of exposition and of argument is usually a terse statement of the proposition; and that after the proposition has been established there follows a longer sentence gathering up all the points of the discussion into a full, rounded period which forms a suitable climax and conclusion of the paragraph. Of Macaulay's "Milton" one is quite inside the truth when he says that of those paragraphs containing an opening topic-sentence and its restatement as a conclusion, the closing sentence is the longer in the ratio of two to one. In Burke's "Conciliation," the ratio rises as high as four to one. There are, however, exceptions to the rule. Paragraphs sometimes close with a shorter statement of the proposition, a sort of aphorism or epigram. As this kind of sentence is fascinating, some books have said that paragraphs should close so; that it is like cracking a whip, and gives a snap to the paragraph not gained in any other way. Even if readers enjoyed having paragraphs close in this cracking manner, it must be borne in mind that not all conclusions are capable of such a statement, and, what is worse, that the tendency to seek for epigrams leads to untruth and a degenerated form of witticism. Such forced sentences are only half truths, or they are a bit of cheap repartee. Such a close is effective, if the whole truth can be so expressed; but to seek for such sentences is dangerous. The best rule is the one already stated; it applies to the long sentence and the short sentence alike. It is that a paragraph should close with words that deserve distinction.

Proportion.

The body of a paragraph should have the matter so proportioned that the more important points shall receive the longer treatment. In a paragraph of proof, details, or comparison, that point in the proof, that particular, that part of the comparison, which for the specific purpose has most significance, should have proportionately fuller treatment. It is the same principle already noticed in exposition. Indicate the relative importance of topics in a paragraph by the relative number of words used in their treatment.

For mass in a paragraph, then, keep in mind that the last sentence should contain matter and form worthy of the position it occupies; that the position of next importance is at the beginning; and that the relative importance of the matters in the body of a paragraph is pretty correctly indicated by the relative length of treatment.

Coherence and Clearness.

Coherence, the third principle of structure, is the most important; and it is the most difficult to apply. For one can make a beginning and an end, he can select his materials so that there is unity, but to make all the parts stick together, to arrange the sentences so that one grows naturally from the preceding and leads into the next, requires nice adjustment of parts, and rewriting many times. How essential coherence in a paragraph is, simply to make the thought easy to grasp, may be seen by taking a paragraph to pieces and mixing up its sentences, and at the same time removing all words that bind its parts together. The following can hardly be understood at all, but in its original condition it is so clear that it cannot be misunderstood. If the sentences be arranged in the following order, the original paragraph will appear: 1, 5, 3, 9, 8, 6, 2, 4, 7, 10.

1. "The first question which obviously suggests itself is how these wonderful moral effects are to be wrought under the instrumentality of the physical sciences. 2. To know is one thing, to do is another; the two things are altogether distinct. 3. Does Sir Robert Peel mean to say, that whatever be the occult reasons for the result, so it is; you have but to drench the popular mind with physics, and moral and religious advancement follows on the whole, in spite of individual failures? 4. A man knows he should get up in the morning,—he lies abed; he knows he should not lose his temper, yet he cannot keep it. 5. Can the process be analyzed and drawn out, or does it act like a dose or a charm which comes into general use empirically? 6. It is natural and becoming to seek for some clear idea of the meaning of so dark an oracle. 7. A laboring man knows he should not go to the ale-house, and his wife knows she should not filch when she goes out charing, but, nevertheless, in these cases, the consciousness of a duty is not all one with the performance of it. 8. Or rather, does he mean, that, from the nature of the case, he who is imbued with science and literature, unless adverse influences interfere, cannot but be a better man? 9. Yet when has the experiment been tried on so large a scale as to justify such anticipations? 10. There are, then, large families of instances, to say the least, in which men may become wiser, without becoming better; what, then, is the meaning of this great maxim in the mouth of its promulgators?"

Coherence, so necessary to the easy understanding of a paragraph, is gained in three ways: by the order in which the sentences are arranged; by the use of parallel constructions for parallel ideas; and by the use of connectives.

Two Arrangements of Sentences in a Paragraph.

Material which has been selected with regard to the principle of unity is all informed with one idea. Yet though one thought runs through it all and unites it, the parts do not stand in an equally close relation to the conclusion, nor is each part equally related to every other part. Had they been, the last paragraph quoted would have been as well in one order as another. Rather the sentences seem to fall into groups of more closely related matters; or at times one sentence seems to follow as the direct consequence of the preceding sentence. With respect to the way in which the sentences contribute to the topic of the paragraph, whether the topic be announced first or last, sentences may be said to contribute directly to the proposition or indirectly. If directly, the paragraph is a collection of sentences, each having a common purpose, each having a similar relation to the topic, arranged, as it were, side by side, and advancing as one body to the conclusion. This may be termed an individual arrangement of sentences, since as individuals they each contribute to the topic. The conclusion derives its force from the combined mass of all. If indirectly, the paragraph is a series of sentences, each growing out of the one preceding it, each receiving a push from the sentence before, and the last having the combined force of all. This may be styled a serial arrangement of sentences, since in such a case each contributes to the topic only as one in a chain. The former overcomes by its mass; the latter strikes by reason of its velocity. The one advances in rank; the other advances in single file.

An illustration of each will help to an understanding of this. In the following paragraph from Macaulay's essay on Milton, each of the details mentioned points directly to "those days" when the race became a "byword and a shaking of the head to the nations." Their aggregate mass enforces the topic of the paragraph. They are all one body equally informed with the common principle which is the topic. Notice that one sentence is not the source of the next, but that all the sentences stand in a similar relation to the conclusion. This arrangement is common in description. In the second paragraph, from Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," each detail contributes to the appearance of Ichabod, not through some other sentence, but directly.

"Then came those days, never to be recalled without a blush, the days of servitude without loyalty and sensuality without love; of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices; the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds; the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The king cringed to his rival that he might trample on his people; sank into a viceroy of France, and pocketed with complacent infamy her degrading insults and her more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots and the jests of buffoons regulated the policy of the state. The government had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough to persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean. In every high place, worship was paid to Charles and James, Belial and Moloch; and England propitiated those obscene and cruel idols with the blood of her best and bravest children. Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the race, accursed of God and man, was a second time driven forth to wander on the face of the earth, and to be a byword and a shaking of the head to the nations."

"Ichabod was a suitable figure for such a steed. He rode with short stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of the saddle; his sharp elbows stuck out like grasshoppers'; he carried his whip perpendicularly in his hand, like a sceptre, and as his horse jogged on, the motion of his arms was not unlike the flapping of a pair of wings. A small wool hat rested on the top of his nose, for so his scanty strip of forehead might be called, and the skirts of his black coat fluttered out almost to the horse's tail. Such was the appearance of Ichabod and his steed as they shambled out of the gate of Hans Van Ripper, and it was altogether such an apparition as is seldom to be met with in broad daylight."

The following paragraph in the essay on Milton contains an example of the second method of arrangement. Each sentence is the result of the one before it. The sentences advance in single file. Notice that each sentence does not contribute directly to the conclusion, but that it acts through the succeeding sentence. The phrases from which a succeeding sentence springs are in small capitals; and the phrases which refer back are in italics.

"Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made on the public character of Milton apply to him only as one of A LARGE BODY. WE SHALL PROCEED to notice some of the peculiarities which distinguished him from his contemporaries. And for that purpose it is necessary to take a short survey of THE PARTIES into which the political world was at that time divided. We must premise that our observations are intended to apply only to THOSE WHO ADHERED, from a sincere preference, to one or to the other side. In days of public commotion, every faction, like an Oriental army, is attended by a crowd of camp-followers, a useless and heartless RABBLE, who prowl round its line of march in the hope of picking up something under its protection, but desert it in the day of battle, and often join to exterminate it after defeat. England, at the time of which we are treating, abounded with fickle and selfish politicians, who transferred their support to every government as it rose; who kissed the hand of the king in 1640, and spat in his face in 1649; who shouted with equal glee when Cromwell was inaugurated in Westminster Hall, and when he was dug up to be hanged at Tyburn; who dined on calves' heads or broiled rumps, and cut down oak branches or stuck them up, as circumstances altered, without the slightest shame or repugnance. These we leave out of account. We take our estimate of parties from those who really deserve to be called partisans."

(For other examples of the same arrangement see the next quotation, and also a paragraph quoted on page 222.)

Paragraphs are most frequently found to combine the two methods. In the following, notice that the second sentence grows out of the first, the third from the second, and so the serial arrangement is maintained until the eighth is reached. Sentences nine, ten, eleven, and twelve give body to sentence eight. Then begins again the regular succession. Sentences sixteen to twenty are the outgrowth of the phrase "on his account."

"1. The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. 2. Not content with acknowledging in general terms an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. 3. To know Him, to serve Him, to enjoy Him, was with them the great end of existence. 4. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage which other sects substituted for the pure worship of the soul. 5. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on the intolerable brightness, and to commune with Him face to face. 6. Hence originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. 7. The difference between the greatest and the meanest of mankind seemed to vanish when compared with the boundless interval which separated the whole race from Him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. 8. They recognized no title to superiority but His favor; and, confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. 9. If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God. 10. If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they were recorded in the Book of Life. 11. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them. 12. Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems, crowns of glory which should never fade away. 13. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt; for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. 14. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged, on whose slightest action the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest; who had been destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away. 15. Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes had been ordained on his account. 16. For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. 17. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed His will by the pen of the Evangelist and the harp of the prophet. 18. He had been wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. 19. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. 20. It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had risen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God."

This division has been made because by its aid an approach can be made toward rules for arrangement. In the paragraph quoted on page 183, the different sentences are equally related to the topic. Is there, then, no reason why one should be first rather than another? Notice the topics of the sentences and the order becomes a necessity. King, state policy, government, liberty, religion,—it is an ascending scale. On page 96 is a paragraph on the charmed names used by Milton. "One," "another," "a third," "a fourth,"—for all one can see as to the relation of each to the topic, "a fourth" might as well have been "one" as fourth. But upon reading the paragraph it is evident that Macaulay thought the last more important than the first. So in the paragraph just quoted about the Puritans, when the arrangement of the first eight sentences changes in sentences nine through eleven, and again in sentences sixteen to twenty, the order is a climax. Moreover, those topics are associated which are more closely related in thought. King is more closely related to government than to religion, and religion is more intimately associated with the idea of liberty than with king. The order, then, is the natural order of association. From these examples we derive the first principle of arrangement. In a paragraph where several sentences contribute individually to the topic, they must be arranged in the order in which the thoughts are associated and follow each other; and, when possible, they should take the order of a climax.

Definite References.

In the paragraph made up of sentences in a series, each linked to the sentence before and after, the difficulty is in transmitting the force of one sentence to the next one undiminished. This is done by binding the sentences so closely together that one cannot slip on the other. In the paragraph about the Puritans, of the second sentence the "Great Being" goes back to "superior beings" of the first; and "Him" in the next springs from "Great Being." "To know Him, to serve Him, to enjoy Him,"—what is it but the "pure worship" of the fourth? while "ceremonious homage" of the fourth is the "occasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring veil" of the fifth. One sentence grows out of some phrase of the preceding sentence; the sentences are firmly locked together by the repetition, a little modified, of the thought of a preceding phrase. There is no slipping. To get this result there must be no question of the thought-sequence in the sentences. Each sentence must be a consequence of a preceding sentence. And there must be attention to the choice and position of the words from which the following sentence is to spring. Such words cannot be indefinite, mushy words; they must be definite, firm words. Moreover, they must not be buried out of sight by a mass of unimportant matters; they must be so placed that they are unhindered, free to push forward the thought toward its ultimate conclusion. This often requires inversion in the sentence. That phrase which is the source of the next sentence must be thrown up into a prominent position; and it is usually pressed toward the end of the sentence, nearer to the sentence which is its consequence. In a paragraph quoted on page 222, where this same subject is taken up in connection with sentences, there is an excellent illustration of this. "Slow and obscure," "inadequate ideas," "small circle," and the numerous phrases which repeat the thought, though not the words, are firm words binding the sentences together indissolubly.

Use of Pronouns.

Not all sentences permit such clear reference as this. Still it must be said that where the thought is logical and clear, the reference is never missed: the binding words are important words and they occupy prominent positions. There is, however, a whole group of words whose function is to make the references sure. They are pronouns. Pronouns refer back, and they point forward. Their careful use is the commonest method of making sure of references, and so of binding sentences together. The ones in common use are this, that, the former, the latter; the relatives who, which, and that; and the personal pronouns he, she, it. To these may be added some adverbs: here, there, hence, whence, now, then, when, and while. The binding force of these words is manifest in every paragraph of composition.

The following paragraph, from Burke's speech on "Conciliation with the Colonies," illustrates the use of pronouns as words referring back, and binding the whole into one inseparable unit.

"As to the wealth which the colonies have drawn from the sea by their fisheries, you had all that matter fully opened at your bar. You surely thought those acquisitions of value, for they seemed even to excite your envy; and yet the spirit by which that enterprising employment has been exercised ought rather, in my opinion, to have raised your esteem and admiration. And pray, Sir, what in the world is equal to it? Pass by the other parts, and look at the manner in which the people of New England have of late carried on the whale fishery. Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits, whilst we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen Serpent of the south. Falkland Island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries; no climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people; a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. When I contemplate these things; when I know that the colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form by the constraints of watchful and suspicious government, but that, through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. My rigor relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty."

Of Conjunctions.

Another group of words which give coherence to a paragraph is conjunctions. They indicate the relations between sentences, and they point the direction of the new sentence. The common relations between sentences indicated by conjunctions are coordinative, subordinative, adversative, concessive, and illative. Each young writer has usually but one word, at the most two words, in his vocabulary to express each of these relations. He knows and, but, if, although, and therefore. Each person should learn from a grammar the whole list, for no class of words indicates clear thinking so unmistakably as conjunctions.

Two words of advice should be given regarding the use of conjunctions. If the thought all bends one way, if this direction is perfectly clear, there is no need of conjunctions. It is when the course of the discussion is tortuous, when the road is not direct, when the reader may lose the way without these guides, that conjunctions should be used. On the other hand, conjunctions are an annoyance when not needed. Just as guideposts along a road where there is no chance to leave the direct path are useless, and their recurrence is a cause of aggravation, so it is with unnecessary conjunctions. They attract attention to themselves, and so draw it from the thought. The first caution is, Do not use conjunctions unless needed.

In the following, the repetition of and is unnecessary and annoying.

"Six shillings a week does not keep body and soul together very unitedly. They want to get away from each other when there is only such a very slight bond as that between them; and one day, I suppose, the pain and the dull monotony of it all had stood before her eyes plainer than usual, and the mocking spectre had frightened her. She had made one last appeal to friends, but, against the chill wall of their respectability, the voice of the erring outcast fell unheeded; and then she had gone to see her child—had held it in her arms and kissed it, in a weary, dull sort of way, and without betraying any particular emotion of any kind, and had left it, after putting into its hand a penny box of chocolate she had bought it, and afterwards, with her last few shillings, had taken a ticket and come down to Goring.

"It seemed that the bitterest thoughts of her life must have centred about the wooded reaches and the bright green meadows around Goring; but women strangely hug the knife that stabs them, and, perhaps, amidst the gall, there may have mingled also sunny memories of sweetest hours, spent upon those shadowed deeps over which the great trees bend their branches down so low.

"She had wandered about the woods by the river's brink all day, and then, when evening fell and the gray twilight spread its dusky robe upon the waters, she stretched out her arms to the silent river that had known her sorrow and her joy. And the old river had taken her into its gentle arms, and had laid her weary head upon its bosom, and had hushed away the pain."

The other word is: When possible put the conjunction that connects two sentences into the body of the sentence, rather than at its beginning. In this way its binding power is increased. This principle should limit the use of and and but at the beginning of a sentence. Rarely is and needed in such a place. If the thought goes straight forward—and it must do so if and correctly expresses the relation—there is usually no gain in its use. At times when the reader might be led to expect some change of direction from some phrase in the preceding sentence, then it would be wise to set him right by the use of and. Moreover, there are times when coordinate thoughts are so important, and the expression of the coordination is so important, that a sentence beginning with and is the only adequate means of expressing it. However, be very sure that there is need for every and that you use. The same caution may be given about but. But indicates an abrupt turn in the thought. Is such a contrast in the thought? If so, is there no other word to express the thought? Some persons go so far as to say that these words should never begin a sentence. This is too pedantic and not true. When coordinative and adversative relations are to be expressed, however, it is certainly more elegant if some variety can be obtained, and the union is closer if the conjunction be placed in the body of the sentence. This requires the use of other words besides and and but. Also, in like manner, besides, too, nevertheless, however, after all, for all that, should be as familiar as the two overworked words and and but. Look for ways to bind sentences in the middle rather than at the end. It is more elegant and it is much safer.

Parallel Constructions.

A third principle of arrangement is the use of parallel constructions for parallel thoughts. By parallel structure is meant that the principal elements of the sentences shall be arranged in the same order. If subordinate clauses precede principal clauses in one sentence, they shall in the other; if they follow in one, they shall follow in the other. If an active voice be used in one, it shall be used in the other; if the predicate go before the subject in one, it shall in the other. The use of parallel structure frequently demands repetition of forms and even of identical words and phrases. It is very effective in giving clearness to a paragraph and in securing coherence of its parts.

In the first of the two illustrations below, read one sentence this way and observe the ruin that is wrought. "The North American colonies made such a struggle against the mother country." In the second paragraph, change two of the sentences to the passive voice. The effect is evident loss in clearness and strength.

"All history is full of revolutions, produced by causes similar to those which are now operating in England. A portion of the community which had been of no account, expands and becomes strong. It demands a place in the system, suited, not to its former weakness, but to its present power. If this is granted, all is well. If this is refused, then comes the struggle between the young energy of one class and the ancient privileges of another. Such was the struggle between the Plebeians and Patricians of Rome. Such was the struggle of the Italian allies for admission to the full rights of Roman citizens. Such was the struggle of our North American colonies against the mother country. Such was the struggle which the Third Estate of France maintained against the aristocracy of birth. Such was the struggle which the Roman Catholics of Ireland maintained against the aristocracy of creed. Such is the struggle which the free people of color in Jamaica are now maintaining against the aristocracy of skin. Such, finally, is the struggle which the middle classes in England are maintaining against an aristocracy of mere locality, against an aristocracy, the principle of which is to invest a hundred drunken pot-wallopers in one place, or the owner of a ruined hovel in another, with powers which are withheld from cities renowned to the furthest ends of the earth for the marvels of their wealth and of their industry."[41]

"Man is a being of genius, passion, intellect, conscience, power. He exercises these various gifts in various ways, in great deeds, in great thoughts, in heroic acts, in hateful crimes. He founds states, he fights battles, he builds cities, he ploughs the forest, he subdues the elements, he rules his kind. He creates vast ideas, and influences many generations. He takes a thousand shapes, and undergoes a thousand fortunes. Literature records them all to the life.... He pours out his fervid soul in poetry; he sways to and fro, he soars, he dives, in his restless speculations; his lips drop eloquence; he touches the canvas, and it glows with beauty; he sweeps the strings, and they thrill with an ecstatic meaning. He looks back into himself, and he reads his own thoughts, and notes them down; he looks out into the universe, and tells over and celebrates the elements and principles of which it is the product."[42]

(The principles of Mass and Coherence in paragraphs are closely allied with these same principles regarding sentences. Some further discussion of these important matters, as well as more illustrations, will be found in the next chapter.)