in the Nicene Creed, we have the confession made: "I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; who, with the Father and Son together, is worshipped and glorified; whose kingdom shall have no end."

The ambiguity here is the more astonishing, when we remember that one design of the council in making this creed was to prove the personality, divinity, and co-equality of the Holy Spirit, and the boundless scope of his unending kingdom.

Analogous to this is the question put by Our Lord to Simon Peter, in the words: "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these ?" Here the sense is extremely doubtful, for it may mean to ask, whether Simon loved Christ better than he did his fellow disciples, or whether he loved his Lord better than they did. The inflection, which marks the case in the original Greek, removes the ambiguity. An example of this is also found in Wolsey's repentant speech :

"Had I but served my God with half the zeal

I served my king, he would not, in mine age,
Have left me naked to mine enemies."

No one doubts that the reference of the pronoun he is to my God;" but there is another meaning, and it is that the king had such a regard for others who served God properly, that if Wolsey had done so, the king would have protected him in his afflictions.

IV. But the perspicuity of a sentence or a paragraph is also dependent upon its unity. This implies a clear connection between the principal governing word and the rest of the sentence. Take the follow

ing as a violation :

“When we were about to go, they put into my hands a bundle of books, and when I undid them, they proved to be exactly what I wanted."

V. What remains to be said concerning the structure of a sentence is but little. It should not be too long and crowded: the parts of it should be distinct and clearly consecutive, and those subjects or thoughts which are in any degree disconnected from each other, and incongruous, should be kept apart; in all such cases, let a long and crowded sentence be cut up into shorter and more congruous ones, and the perspicuity is increased at once. It should also be observed, that what is purely parenthetical, comes in only occasionally with pleasure to the hearer; a parenthetical style offends by its disjointed character, and should be carefully avoided. And finally, a sentence should be fairly and completely finished; and when brought to what may be deemed the proper close, the sense of the sentence is injured, and the taste of the reader displeased, by some weak afterthought which is lugged in to spoil a well arranged close.

Some writers have thought necessary, after dwell

ing upon the necessity of precision, to give a kind of counter-warning to their pupils against such a cutting away of words and phrases, as to make their diction barren and dry. It must be observed that this is not only an unnecessary caution, but an evil one; for precision has no quarrel with elegance and energy, but is compatible with proper ornaments, and only guards against the improper use of words and phrases in the expression of thought.

And here it should be said, that different kinds of discourse, that is, designed for different purposes, and requiring different styles, might seem so to treat the laws of precision as to make that a violation in one instance, which in another would not be so. Thus an abstract statement of a scientific problem would require the greatest conciseness, and would admit of no repetition; while a discourse to little children or uneducated people, would abound in repetitions and recurrences; would require several ways or modes of expressing the same truth, and the trial of various words to express the same thought, until the one which would convey it to the hearer should be happily found. All this circumlocution would, in such a case, be an attempt to be precise. It is true, in this latter case, the general laws of precision are violated; but even in their violation, they are kept ever in sight, and the whole discourse being an experimental attempt to convey instruction, the result only must be sub

jected to criticism, and not the mode of reaching it. A rhetorical standard is designed only for finished compositions, and it gives laws for the invention of thought, the procurement of language, as to its signification, its structure, and its harmony, in order to produce finished compositions. A remarkable instance of this experimental and yet beautiful style is to be found in the exhortation of the English liturgy; in which, since it was designed as well for the ignorant as the educated, many words taken from the Norman-French are first given, and then, as it were, translated, by the Saxon word immediately following, thus: acknowledge and confess; sins and wickedness; dissemble and cloak; humble and lowly; goodness and mercy; assemble and meet together, &c.

In the three methods indicated, we attain then to what we have called the first quality of a good style, perspicuity. We must use pure English, make a proper choice of words, and be precise in using them and forming them into sentences, according to their significations, and we shall be perspicuous in conveying our thoughts to the hearer or reader.

The next quality of a good style is Energy.

(95.) Energy.

By Energy is meant that characteristic of a writer or speaker which interests and fixes the attention

of his audience, and gives a forcible presentation of his subject. In its purely technical sense, it has been adopted by modern writers from the 'Evepyea of Aristotle; but it has been differently named by some writers vivacity, and as such, its name perhaps more nearly indicates its meaning. For as a vivacious person is one who so impresses our attention, and keeps up our interest by his constant stream of living thought in conversation, so vivacity of style is but the rhetorical expression of such thoughts, in the best manner, to impress them upon us.

But there is in the word energy an expression of strength, which is the true secret of such an influence as is exerted in style, and which is not as well expressed by the word vivacity; hence we have retained the Greek term.

The question naturally arises, how is this energy of style to be attained? to what is it due? At first sight it seems a natural gift rather than a rhetorical acquirement. And here we would seem to go over much of the same ground as that already assumed in treating of perspicuity as a quality of style; for as does perspicuity, so also does energy depend upon the choice of proper words, upon their arrangement, and upon their number; but with the essential difference of purpose, that while in the one case we design only to express our meaning clearly, in the other