tions of a tower on the top of Priam's palace, and its sudden and violent fall; Ennius's imitation of a trumpet blast; and the imitation by Aristophanes of the croaking of frogs,—will recur to the classic reader as other examples of the felicitous use of this figure by the Greek and Roman writers.

Paronomasia and alliteration owe their subtle beauty to the fact that in using them the writer has reference to words considered as sounds. Though an excess of either is offensive, yet, charily used, it adds a surprising force to expression. How much is the grandeur of the effect enhanced by the repetition of the s in the following lines from Macbeth!

"That shall, to all our days and nights to come,
Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom."

Dr. Johnson, in speaking of imitative harmony, observes that the desire of discovering frequent adaptations of the sound to the sense "has produced many wild conceits and imaginary beauties." This is only saying that the poet, like the painter, may exaggerate the importance of his accessories, while he gives too little heed to his main theme. But this is no argument against the legitimate use of any subtle or peculiar beauty in either the pictorial or the metrical art. There are many cases where it is impossible to use language which is specific, vivid, and appropriate, without employing imitative words. For the choice of these words no rules can be given; only an instinctive and exquisite taste can enable one to decide when they may be consciously used, and when they should be shunned. But he who can use onomatopoeia with skill and judgment,-who can call into play, on proper occasions, that swift and subtle law of association whereby

a reproduction of the sounds at once recalls to the mind the images or circumstances with which they are connected, has mastered one of the greatest secrets of the writer's art. It was a saying of Shenstone, which experience confirms, that harmony and melody of style have greater weight than is generally imagined in our judgments upon writing and writers; and, as a proof of this, he says that the lines of poetry, the periods of prose, and even the texts of Scripture we most frequently recollect and quote, are those which are preeminently musical. The following magical lines, which owe their interest to the cadence hardly less than to their imagery, illustrate Shenstone's remark:

YOUTH AND AGE.

"Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree;

Oh, the joys that came down shower-like,
Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty,
Ere I was old!

Ere I was old! Ah, woful Ere!
Which tells me, Youth's no longer here!
O Youth! for years so many and sweet,
"Tis known that thou and I were one;
I'll think it but a fond conceit -

It cannot be that Thou art gone!
The vesper bell hath not yet tolled,
And thou wert aye a masker bold!
What strange disguise hast now put on,
To make believe that thou art gone?
I see these locks in silvery slips,
This drooping gait, this altered size:
But spring-tide blossoms on thy lips,

And tears take sunshine from thine eyes.
Life is but thought; so think I will,
That Youth and I are house-mates still."

CHAPTER XI.

THE FALLACIES IN WORDS.

Gardons-nous de l'équivoque !-PAUL LOUIS COURIER.

Words are grown so false, I am loathe to prove reason with them.SHAKESPEARE.

The mixture of those things by speech, which by nature are divided, is the mother of all error.-HOOKER.

One vague inflection spoils the whole with doubt;

One trivial letter ruins all, left out;

A knot can choke a felon into clay;

A knot will save him, spelt without the k;

The smallest word has some unguarded spot,

And danger lurks in i without a dot.-O. W. HOLMES.

N some of the great American rivers, where lumber

ON

ing operations are carried on, the logs, in floating down, often get jammed up here and there, and it becomes necessary to find the timber which is a kind of keystone and stops all the rest. Once detach this, and away dash the giant trunks, thundering headlong, helter-skelter, down the rapids. It is just this office which he who defines his terms accurately performs for the dead-locked questions of the day. Half the controversies of the world are disputes about words. How often do we see two persons engage in what Cowper calls "a duel in the form of a debate,"― tilting furiously at each other for hours,— slashing with syllogisms, stabbing with enthymemes, hooking with dilemmas, and riddling with sorites, with no apparent prospect of ever ending the fray, till suddenly it occurs to one of them to define precisely what he means