opening, or what may be called the incomplete or hypothetical part, from the closing or winding up of the sentence, - where the sense is perfected.

EXAMPLES.

If the world is not the work of chance

it must have had an intelligent Maker.

Although you see not many possessed of a good tasteyet the generality of mankind are capable of it.

Nations, like men, fail in nothing which they boldly undertake

when sustained by virtuous purpose and firm resolution.

RULE 1.

The middle pause precedes and marks the commencement of the climax of the sense of a sentence.

And now, applying all the preceding rules for pause, let the student read aloud the three extracts, which he has already read without the rhetorical pauses; and he cannot fail to perceive the advantage he will gain in ease and effect.

They would be marked, as to rhetorical pauses, as follows:

1. Nothing is more prejudicial to the great interests of a nation

than unsettled and varying policy.

2. You do not expect from the manufacturer the same dispatch in executing an order that you do from the

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shopkeeper and warehouseman.

3. There is no doubt that the perception of beauty be

ese in

he folspoken s they

otless accent. We derive the the Greeks, who, it is supposed,

out, as will be ides of the voice from grave to

that it is believed by some that the

o could be marked, almost as minutely or the direction of the voice. But the custom, now grown to be so constantly upon a syllable, that I prefer to adopt the correct, but equally intelligible term, inflection, slides of the voice; and to use the term accent popularly received sense.

comes more exquisite by being studied and refined upon' as an object of art.

RULE 2.

The middle pause also should be used after the last member of a series, before the verb or phrase which is common to all the members.

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To be courteous to one's equals respectful to one's superiors mild and condescending to one's inferiors- these are sound points of conduct which distinguish the gentlefrom the pretender to good breeding.

man

RULE 3.

The middle pause is also used to mark a parenthesis, or any parenthetical interruption of the sense; unless it be very slight; in which latter case the short pause is sufficient.

EXAMPLES.

1. Men of superior genius

while they see the rest of mankind painfully struggling to comprehend obvious truths

2. Genius the pride of man'

as man is of the creation

has been possessed but by few.

The judicious use of the short pause and the middle pause, serves also to class and divide mem

bers of sentences in logical and clear division, according as they are more or less immediately connected with each other in thought and construction; hence follows, as a—

GENERAL RULE.

Clauses of sentences having immediate reference to each other, can be divided only by the short pause; while they must be separated from other clauses with which they are less connected, by the middle pause.

EXAMPLE.

These are the men, to whom,

arrayed in all the terrors of government, Iwould say, you shall not degrade us into brutes.

If, in this sentence, we make a short pause only after to whom, the next clause of the sentence, arrayed in all the terrors of government, would appear to refer to the men to whom ; whereas, being separated, as it is, from those words, by the middle pause, it is assigned to the pronoun I, to which it really belongs.

The middle pause is also frequently used in place of the grammatical period or full stop, between two sentences, which are closely allied to each other in relation to the sense which they bear out, -as will be presently shown.

3. THE REST, -, or FULL PAUSE,

Marks the perfection of the sense, that is, the climax of its force; as, the close of a proposition.

The full-stop, which is used in grammatical punctuation to mark the close of a sentence or period, is not a sufficiently distinct guide; for it frequently closes a sentence which is intimately allied

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