swings at midnight or at morn to announce a fire or a prince's birth, and we lie listening for the return, after a stated interval, of the mighty chime. LXIX. Symplocé is the repetition of one word at the beginning and of another word at the end of two successive clauses. You will understand what is meant by an example: . "Spring clothes with leaves the trees; Spring leads back the birds of song to the trees." LXX. Anadiplosis is the use of the same word at the end of one clause and at the beginning of another, as: "He retained his virtues amid all his misfortunes; misfortunes which no prudence could foresee or prevent." P. L., vii., 25, 26; Isa. lxv., 18. LXXI. Epadiplosis, or Epanadiplosis, the use of the same word both at the beginning and end of a sentence, as if we were to venture this line: Morn glads the East; the buds are wet with morn. LXXII. Complection we encounter when several clauses or members of a sentence both begin with the same word and end with the same, as in Cicero: "Who proposed this law? Rullus. Who prevented the greater part of the people from giving their votes? Rullus. Who presided over the assemblies? Rullus." LXXIII. Epanalepsis is the repetition that occurs when a clause or parenthesis intervenes, as in an example afforded in Professor Day's book on Rhetoric: "The persecutions undergone by the Apostles furnished both a trial to their faith and a confirmation to ours; a trial to them," etc. Or study this from Charles de la Rue's great discourse, "The Dying Sinner." It is with men grown gray in sin that he expostulates: "You would be immortal, that you might render your libertinism immortal. And can you expect a happy immortality, you who would have placed your happiness in the immortality of your sin." LXXIV. Epanodos, or Regression, is the repetition of the same word or words in an inverted order, as thus: "Woe to them who call evil, good; and good, evil.” LXXV. Polyptolon is the repetition of the same word in different cases or numbers or persons, as thus: 66 Anguish tries the soul many a time of chief and king; and brighter often are the homes of shepherds than of kings." Or Henry Kingsley's encouraging sentence: "When a man has learned how to learn, he can learn any thing." LXXVI. Epizeuxis, or Traduction, is the repetition of a word for the sake of emphasis, as thus: "You call him a man, who, if he had been a man, would not so cruelly have sought to slay a man." LXXVII. Paregmenon is the use, close together, of several words of similar origin, as by Cicero: "He who disapproves the good, approves the wicked." Let the student linger on this figure in its varieties; to do so will bring into closest contact with your mind many of the most rhetorical passages in language—not the falsest, but the truest passages. LXXVIII. Summation comes next, noble examples of which occur in Scripture. Take that sublimely affecting one in the first chapter of Job. The recurring words— "And I only am escaped alone to tell thee❞— have a far deeper effect than any variation of expression could have had: returning on the ear and heart like death peals knelled forth at regular intervals of time from a cathedral tower, at mirk midnight, over some great disaster, that has paled the cheek of thousands, and has made a mighty nation a widow, faint at soul. Job i., 13–19. If the repetition of these words of doom tell not, with a strange force on your soul, your case is hopeless; your mind is proof against grandeur and gloom. The fact, too, that the Bible figures are so little met in some sermons of the day is a most disgraceful fact. Who ever heard a passage in a sermon fashioned on that grand original in Job? The modern pulpit may make three great reforms: First, a chapter of the Bible to begin worship with; one in the forenoon, one in the afternoon, with explanations which will be very short. Secondly, the most eager attention given that the Bible be read grandly. Thirdly, Christ's mode of oratory imitated, in the use of parables and of illustrations from homely objects. Even Henry Ward Beecher himself, while excelling every body in homely illustration—has he ever, once in his life, used a parable? In the name of wonder, why not? And why this neglect of Jesus and his eloquence, O all ye modern preachers? And why the Bible so often left unexplained, your hearers pining so for brief, syllabic explanations? And why this neglect of a sublime reading of the Bible, full of grand intonations, full of impassioned action? Is it that ye lie under the delusion that a sermon from man can possibly surpass a revelation from Jehovah? The Bible is little read at home—a shame if not much read from the pulpit. This figure, repetition, reached its dread apotheosis in a place we name with awe-in Gethsemane; in the hour when Hell gathered its clouds around Him, and the Man of Sorrows went aside three times to pray, in His mysterious agony repeating the same words. Lingers, then, still, the despicable silliness with any one that figures are hollow? artificial? shallow? false? O Gethsemane, rebuke us, and make our thinking more manly! Sub limely beyond any stroke of art have figures led us. Amos i., 3-15; ii., 1-6. LXXIX. Choral Chant, in poetry, how delightful its effect! Far beyond art; it is very nature itself, as in Homer; as much so as breeze on Ben Lomond, or gale on the wildest Atlantic. It brings forward a feeling in which all are invited to join; the sentiment coming back on us welcome as an old friend; the impetus gathering impetus at each return of the oscillation. The bard does not laboriously, artificially strain after a new mode of diction each time; his not doing so is in keeping with our idea of that simplicity which should mark the outgushing of a heart which a great emotion fills like a sea, to the exclusion of all thought of the smaller rules and dandyisms of writing. Let us to the ballads of the old time. Of any nation of the florid South, such as Spain; or of the stern North, such as Sweden or Scotland; with their noble rudeness, their simplicity, rapid and careless of adornments. A flash of lightning is little studious of ornament; just as little is a genuine old ballad. In the "Heir of Linne," when the halter is placed before him, as if by his dead father's hand, it goes on thus: "Never a word spake the heir of Linne, Never a word he spake but three." Or hasten to read-a priceless escape from the smooth commonplaces of the day-that masterpiece, “Sir Patrick Spens:" 66 They hadna sail'd a league, a league, A league but barely three, When the lift grew dark, and the wind blew loud, And gurly grew the sea." What a depth of woe in the choral chant, "Woe is me, Alhama," of the old Mooro-Spanish ballad, at the close of each verse: it had so strong a spell that the Moors of Grenada were forbidden to sing it on pain of death. Alhama was a town and fortress of the Moors, in a romantic situation between craggy mountains; it was called the key of Grenada. After a gallant defense, it was sacked by the Spaniards; and the Moors saw in its fall the death of their magnificent monarchy. We quote from Lockhart's translation; be sure to read his Spanish ballads: "The Moorish king rides up and down From Elvira's gates to those Woe is me, Alhama!" Scotland and Spain, Sweden and Denmark, are the great ballad countries of Europe. The Danish, which has of late years come most deservedly to be reckoned one of the chief literatures of Europe, possesses above 1300 ballads, composed for the most part between A.D. 1200 and 1500, the authors unknown. Of the Danish writers recently dead, the three greatest immortals are Ewald, Baggesen, and Oehlenschläger; while Grundtvig, Ingemann, Heiberg, Winther, and Paludan - Müller are their still later great authors. From Ewald, we quote one stanza from his "King Christian," the national song of the Danes. Mark its repetitions, at measured intervals, sounding, as one has said, "like blow after regular blow upon the anvil;" an anvil not without grand music in its tone: "King Christian stood beside the mast Till sunk each hostile prow and mast 'Flee, flee,' they cry, 'while yet we may; We have for many years admired "The Indian Death |