for their strength? our opprobrium for their glory? and the slough of slavery, which we are not able to work off, to serve them for their freedom?

EXERCISE 73.

In the following selection combine in a single declarative sentence the three exclamations at the close of the first paragraph, and re-write the first three sentences of the second paragraph, breaking up the balance and doing away with the exclamations:

The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other malefactors against whom overwhelming evidence is produced, generally decline all controversy about the facts, and content themselves with calling testimony to character. He had so many private virtues! And had James the Second no private virtues? Was Oliver Cromwell, his bitterest enemies themselves being judges, destitute of private virtues? And what, after all, are the virtues ascribed to Charles? A religious zeal, not more sincere than that of his son, and fully as weak and narrow-minded, and a few of the ordinary household decencies which half the tombstones in England claim for those who lie beneath them. A good father! A good husband! Ample apologies indeed for fifteen years of persecution, tyranny, and falsehood!

We charge him with having broken his coronation oath; and we are told that he kept his marriage vow! We accuse him of having given up his people to the merciless inflictions of the most hot-headed and hard-hearted of prelates; and the defence is, that he took his little son on his knee and kissed him! We censure him for having violated the articles of the Petition of Right, after having, for good and valuable consideration, promised to observe them; and we are informed that he was accustomed to hear prayers at six o'clock in the morning! It is to such considerations as these, together with his Vandyke dress, his handsome face, and his peaked beard, that he owes, we verily believe, most of his popularity with the present generation.

For ourselves, we own that we do not understand the common phrase, a good man, but a bad king. We can as easily conceive

a good man and an unnatural father, or a good man and a treacherous friend. We cannot, in estimating the character of an individual, leave out of consideration his conduct in the most important of all human relations; and if in that relation we find him to have been selfish, cruel, and deceitful, we shall take the liberty to call him a bad man, in spite of all his temperance at table, and all his regularity at chapel.-MACAULAY.

EXERCISE 74.

What sameness of structure do you notice in the beginnings of the sentences of the following paragraphs? Revise, re-combine, and re-write to introduce variety of sentence-beginnings.

England showed no relenting in her treatment of the Americans. The King gave no reply to the address of Congress. The Houses of Lords and of Commons refused even to allow that address to be read in their hearing. The King announced his firm purpose to reduce the refractory colonists to obedience. Parliament gave loyal assurances of support to the blinded monarch. All trade with the colonies was forbidden. All American ships and cargoes might be seized by those who were strong enough to do so. The alternative presented to the American choice was without disguise - the Americans had to fight for their liberty, or forego it. The people of England had, in those days, no control over the government of their country. All this was managed for them by a few great families. Their allotted part was to toil hard, pay their taxes, and be silent. If they had been permitted to speak, their voice would have vindicated the men who asserted their right of self-government—a right which Englishmen themselves were not to enjoy for many a long year.

John Stuart Blackie has been for the greater part of the century an engaging figure in scholarship and literature. Born in the year 1809, and educated at Aberdeen and Edinburgh, he spent many years in Germany and Italy, a devotee of what was then a new science, comparative philology. A profuse writer throughout his entire life, his place is in the overlapping field in which pedagogics

and poetry commingle. One of a group in which Wolf and Max Müller are foremost of the Germans, Blackie, like them an etymologist, pursuing investigations to which the chief emphasis was given by the Grimm brothers, has been, far more than any of his co-workers in the science of language, an appreciator of the spirit of literature.

It is quite natural that the proposition to pay members of Parliament should be regarded by Americans as a sensible one. It is our custom to pay our Senators and Congressmen, and we instinctively assume that any system in vogue here ought to be in vogue everywhere. But it is interesting to observe that the British Government have dropped their bill embodying this proposition. The fact is that the old method has worked so well in England that until it can be shown to have resulted in serious injustice, there will be no general disposition to change it. The theory is that legislators should give their services to the nation, and that if they are paid, undesirable candidates, who care only for the money, will be elected. It is possible that such a theory may be false, but it is likely that its supporters would have little difficulty in collecting statistics enough in this country to indicate that paying legislators does not always conduce to getting the ablest men into office.

EXERCISE 75.

Write about 300 words on one of the topics in Exercises 56, 64, and 68, not already used. After writing, notice how many types of sentences you have employed. Revise your work for variety of sentence-structure.

LESSON 27.

Choice of Expression.

The English language has a much larger stock of words than any other language ever used by man. Often a given idea will be represented quite accurately in English by either of two words, sometimes by any one of three. Thus we

speak of a certain class of our population as the poor, the needy, the indigent, meaning the same thing no matter which one of the three words we use; we speak of a laboring man's pay, wages, earnings; of the meaning, sense, signification of a passage of scripture; of a fitting, proper, appropriate exercise; something hinders, delays, retards us; we become tired, weary, fatigued. One needs a stock of equivalent words of this kind for the sake of variety.

Other sets of words in English represent the same idea, but with different degrees of intensity. Thus empty, vain, futile hopes; sameness, uniformity, monotony; an unwise, inconsiderate, silly, foolish, absurd, ridiculous statement; to like, admire, love; wealth, riches, opulence; to discountenance, deprecate, deplore, lament, bewail an act; vexed, provoked, indignant, angry; it is not impossible, it is possible, it is not unlikely, it is likely, it is not improbable, it is probable, it is certain. One needs to learn to distinguish degrees of meaning in words so as not to over-state or under-state one's self. When a familiar word does not quite satisfy us, does not adequately or exactly express our meaning, we may be sure that there is another more fitting; and here a book of synonyms, or the dictionary will help us.

Other sets of words represent the same idea in different applications. Thus while the words forgive, pardon, condone, excuse, acquit, absolve, remit, overlook, pass over, represent the same idea, each has its particular application, as will be seen by consulting the dictionary. So with house, residence, habitation, mansion; wages, salary, fee, stipend; fright, scare, panic; dread, dismay, consternation; guess, think, suppose; meeting, assembly, audience, congregation; choose, prefer, select; hanged, hung; allude, refer; healthy, healthful, wholesome; less, fewer; two, a couple, a pair; company, gathering, crew, gang, band, party; avow, acknowledge, confess; only, alone.

One may enlarge one's stock of words by looking up

the new words one reads, by trying to think of equivalent expressions for them, and by recalling and using them as they may be needed in one's own writing and speaking. We should try to make use of all of our language resources; but it should be with a knowledge of the meanings, applications, and implications of the words we use.

Some words have formed close associations with other words. Thus, take steps, contract habits, pursue a course, turn to account, bear malice, pass over in silence, win prizes. This is especially true of words used in connection with prepositions: agree with a person, agree to a proposition, differ from, comply with, confide in a friend, confide a secret to a friend, call on, dissent from, free from, adapted to a thing, adapted for a purpose, die of a disease, die by one's own hand, regard for a person, in regard to this, reconcile to. Some words call imperatively for others: as-so, either — or, neither — nor, hardly — when, the same that I saw, the same as before, such -as, I do not know that I will, different from, other than.

Sometimes the choice lies between an idiomatic and a bookish, or between a simple and a pretentious expression; here the idiomatic or simple expression is preferable. Get used to, by all odds, get rid of, hard up, get out of the way of, get up, go to bed, make money, these expressions are not to be avoided.

Again the choice may lie between a slang expression which rises to the lips only too readily, and a standard expression which requires some effort to recall. Here the choice should fall upon the standard expression; the effort is well spent in calling it to mind. Besides being, in many cases, vulgar in meaning or in implication, slang begets general carelessness in the use of language. It encourages laziness in the user by saving him the trouble of finding exact words for his meaning. It prevents him from increasing his stock of good words.