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months after the poison has been received into the system. 18. To two tunes I have made up my mind never to listen. 19. Days, weeks, and months, pass by; the rocks shall waste and man shall turn to dust. 20. In an analogous case, this might be different. 21. Should liberty continue to be abused, as it has been for some time past, (and, though demagogues may not admit it, yet sensible and observing men will not deny that it has been) the people will seek relief in despotism or in emigration. 22. We should carefully examine into, and candidly pass judgment on, our faults. 23. In a few years, the hand of industry may change the face of a country, so that one who was familiar with it may be unable to recognize it as that which he once knew; but many generations must pass before any change can be wrought in the sentiments or manners of a people cut off from intercourse with the rest of the world, and thereby confined to the sphere of their own narrow experience (§ 380). 24. Confident as you are now in your assertions, and positive as you are in your opinions, the time, be assured, approaches, when things and men will appear in a different light to you. 25. Some chroniclers, by an injudicious use of familiar phrases, express themselves sillily. 26. The scene is laid on an inland lake.

LESSON LXIV.

UNITY.

385. THE last essential property of a good style is UNITY; which consists in the restriction of a sentence to one leading proposition, modified only by such accessories as are materially and closely connected with it. The very nature of a sentence implies that it must contain but one proposition. It may, indeed, consist of parts; but these must be so bound together as to convey to the mind the impression of one fact, and one alone.

§ 386. The first requirement of Unity is, that during the course of the sentence the scene and the subject be changed as little as possible. The reader must not be hurried by

§ 385. What is the last essential property of a good style? In what does unity consist? What does the nature of a sentence imply? If it consists of parts, what must be their character?

§ 386. What is the first requirement of unity? What is the effect of sudden transitions in a sentence from place to place or from person to person? Illus

sudden transitions from place to place, or from person to person. One leading subject at a time is enough for the mind to contemplate; when more are introduced, the attention is distracted, the Unity destroyed, and the impression weakened. This, it will be seen, is the effect in the following sentence, which contains no less than four subjects,— friends, we, I, who [that is, passengers]. Observe how a slight change in the construction gets rid of two of the subjects and thus insures the Unity of the sentence :—

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My friends turned back after we reached the vessel, on board of which I was received with kindness by the passengers, who vied with each other in showing me attention."

Corrected." My friends having turned back after we reached the vessel, the passengers received me on board with kindness, and vied with each other in showing me attention."

§ 387. A second rule is, do not crowd into one sentence things that have no connection.

This rule is violated in the following passage:-" Archbishop Tillotson died in this year. He was exceedingly beloved both by King William and Queen Mary, who nominated Dr. Tennison, Bishop of Lincoln, to succeed him." Who, from the beginning of this sentence, would expect such a conclusion? When we are told that he was loved by the king and queen, we naturally look for some proof of this affection, or at least something connected with the main proposition; whereas we are suddenly informed of Dr. Tennison's nomination in his place. To correct such an error, we must remove the discordant idea, and embody it, if it is essential that it be presented, in a distinct sentence:-" He was exceedingly beloved by King William and Queen Mary. Dr. Tennison, Bishop of Lincoln, was nominated to succeed him."

The following sentence, from a translation of Plutarch, is still worse. Speaking of the Greeks, under Alexander, the author says:

"Their march was through an uncultivated country, whose savage inhabitants fared hardly, having no other riches than a breed of lean sheep, whose flesh was rank and unsavory, by reason of their continual feeding upon sea-fish."

Here the scene is changed again and again. The march of the

trate this with a sentence containing four subjects, and show how the fault may be corrected.

§ 387. What is the second rule for the preservation of unity? Repeat a passage in which it is violated. Show wherein the error lies, and correct it. Give the substance of the passage quoted from a translation of Plutarch. What is ob

Greeks, the description of the inhabitants through whose country they travelled, the account of their sheep, and the reason why these animals made unsavory food, form a medley which can not fail to be distasteful in the highest degree to an intelligent reader.

A violation of this rule is fatal to Unity even in periods of no great length, as is apparent from the examples just given; in sentences unduly protracted, however, there is a still greater liability to err in this particular. The involved style of Clarendon furnishes numerous examples. Nor does he stand alone; many of the old writers are, in this respect, equally faulty. From Shaftesbury we shall quote a sentence in point. He is describing the effect of the sun in the frozen regions; beginning with this orb as his prominent subject, he soon proceeds to certain monsters and their exploits; whence, by an unexpected and unaccountable transition, he suddenly brings man into view, and admonishes him at some length as to his religious duties. The only way to correct such an involved period as this, is to break it up into several smaller sentences:

"It breaks the icy fetters of the main, where vast sea-monsters pierce through floating islands, with arms which can withstand the crystal rock; whilst others, who of themselves seem great as islands, are by their bulk alone armed against all but man; whose superiority over creatures of such stupendous size and force, should make him mindful of his privilege of reason, and force him humbly to adore the great composer of these wondrous frames, and the author of his own superior wisdom."

It may be contended that, in passages like the above, punctuation will bring out the meaning by showing the relation between the various parts; and that, therefore, if commas, semicolons, and colons, are properly used, a violation of Unity may be tolerated. It is true that punctuation does much to remedy even faults as gross as those in the last paragraph; but it must be remembered that the points it employs do not make divisions of thought, but merely serve to mark those already existing, and are therefore proper only when they correspond with the latter. Let those who think that a proper distribution of points will

jectionable in it? In what sentences is a want of unity most likely to occur? Whose long and intricate periods furnish examples? From whom is a sentence in point quoted? Give its substance. What mistaken view do some take with respect to the correction of sentences deficient in unity, by means of punctuation? Show why this view is mistaken.

make up for the want of Unity, try the experiment in the last example. The ideas it contains are so foreign to each other that we must have at least three distinct sentences to express them properly; yet it is evident that, as the members now stand, periods between them are inadmissible, on account of the closeness of their connection.

§ 388. In the third place, a regard for Unity requires that we avoid long parentheses. We have already alluded to their effect as prejudicial to Clearness, Strength, and Harmony. In the old writers they are of frequent occurrence, and constitute so palpable a fault that in later times it has been thought the safest course to reject parentheses of every kind. Passages in which they occur, must be divided into as many sentences as there are leading propositions.

EXAMPLE. The quicksilver mines of Idria, in Austria, (which were discovered in 1797, by a peasant, who, catching some water from a spring, found the tub so heavy that he could not move it, and the bottom covered with a shining substance which turned out to be mercury) yield, every year, over three hundred thousand pounds of that valuable metal.

Corrected. The quicksilver mines of Idria, in Austria, were discovered by a peasant in 1797. Catching some water from a spring, he found the tub so heavy that he could not move it, and the bottom covered with a shining substance which turned out to be mercury. Of this valuable metal, the mines in question yield, every year, over three hundred thousand pounds.

EXERCISE.

Correct the following sentences so that their Unity may be preserved, altering the punctuation as may be required by the changes made:—

1. The usual acceptation takes profit and pleasure for two different things, and not only calls the followers or votaries of them by the several names of busy and idle men, but distinguishes the faculties of the mind that are conversant about them; calling the operations of the first, wisdom; and of the other, wit;-which is a Saxon word, used to express what the Spaniards and Italians call ingenio, and the French, esprit, both from the Latin: though I think wit more particularly signifies that of poetry, as may occur in remarks on the Runic language.-SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 2. To this succeeded that licentiousness which entered with the Restoration, and from infecting our religion and morals fell to corrupt our language; which last was not likely to be much improved by those who at that time made up the court of King Charles the Second; either such as had followed him in his banishment, or who had been al

388. What is the third rule? What is the effect of long parentheses?

together conversant in the dialect of these fanatic times; or young men who had been educated in the same country; so that the court, which used to be the standard of correctness and propriety of speech, was then, and I think has ever since continued, the worst school in England for that accomplishment; and so will remain, till better care be taken in the education of our nobility, that they may set out in the world with some foundation of literature, in order to qualify them for patterns of politeness.-SWIFT. 3. We left Italy with a fine wind, which continued three days; when a violent storm drove us to the coast of Sardinia, which is free from all kinds of poisonous and deadly herbs, except one; which resembles parsley, and which, they say, causes those who eat it to die of laughing. 4. At Coleridge's table we were introduced to Count Frioli, a foreigner of engaging manners and fine conversational powers, who was killed the following day by a steamboat explosion. 5. The lion is a noble animal, and has been known to live fifty years in a state of confinement. 6. Haydn (who was the son of a poor wheelwright, and is best known to us by a noble oratorio called "The Creation", which he is said to have composed after a season of solemn prayer for divine assistance) wrote fine pieces of music when he was no more than ten years old. 7. The famous poisoned valley of Java (which, as Mr. Loudon, a recent traveller in that region, informs us, is twenty miles in length and is filled with skeletons of men and birds; and into which it is said that the neighboring tribes are in the habit of driving criminals, as a convenient mode of executing capital punishment) has proved to be the crater of an extinct volcano, in which carbonic acid is generated in great quantities, as in the Grotto del Cane at Naples. 8. The Chinese women are for the most part industrious; and use, as embellishments of their beauty, paint, false hair, oils, and pork fat. 9. London, which is a very dirty city, has a population of more than three millions. 10. We next took the cars, which were filled to overflowing, and brought us to a landing, where a boat was in waiting that looked as if it were a century old; but which, while we were examining its worm-eaten sides, put off at a rate which soon showed us that its sailing qualities were by no means contemptible, and taught us the practical lesson that it is unsafe to judge of the merits of a thing by its external appearance.

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§ 389. As we have now considered the various kinds of style, and the essential properties which should be preserved in them all, it may not be out of place to add a few practical suggestions respecting the best mode of forming a char

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