let the student read aloud the two 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. The people of the United States have justly supposed that the policy of protecting their industry against foreign legislation and foreign industry was fully settled, not by a single act, but by repeated and deliberate acts of government performed at distant and frequent intervals. RULE 2. 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 glance themselves like lightning through the most remote consequences. 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 members 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. Branches of sentences having immediate reference to each other, can be divided only by the short pause; while they must be separated from other branches with which they are less connected, by the middle pause. ཝཱ EXAMPLE. These are the men, to whom,~ arrayed in all the terrors of government, I would say, you shall not degrade us into brutes. If, in this sentence, we make a short pause only after to whom, the next branch 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, by the connection of the sense, with the next, and perhaps with several succeeding periods. In such cases, the punctum or full-stop which marks the grammatical close of a sentence, should be rejected in reading; the middle pause should be used in its stead; and the rest or full pause should not be introduced till the actual winding up of all the sentences which have a close relation to each other in continuing or carrying out the sense to its climax or perfect close. Take the following sentences, with their grammatical punctuation as an EXAMPLE. Logicians may reason about abstractions, but the great mass of mankind can never feel an interest in them. They must have images. Now here the second short sentence is intimately connected with, and in its relation to the sense, forms part of the first; in fact, it completes and closes the proposition which the first sentence opened and began. Yet it is divided from that first sentence, (with which, in its relation to the sense, it is so intimately connected) by the grammatical full-stop or period; and yet, the close of the whole proposition contained in these two sentences admits, in grammatical punctuation, of no greater division from what may follow, in support and illustration of that proposition, than the same period or full-stop, which has been already used to separate the two parts of the whole proposition. This is illogical. The two sentences should thus be relatively marked and read with rhetorical pause: Logicians may reason about abstractions, but the great mass of mankind can never feel an interest in them They must have images. For further illustration, I give the following sentences, mark ed both grammatically and rhetorically, by which it will be seen that the period or full-stop is frequently used when the middle pause is sufficient, and indeed absolutely necessary, to keep up the connection of the sense; and that, at the full close of the relation between the sentences so divided by the middle pause, and not till then,-the full pause should have place. EXAMPLES. Soon after Christianity achieved its triumph, the principles that had assisted it began to corrupt. It became a new paganism. Patron saints assumed the offices of household gods. St. George took the place of Mars. St. Elmo consoled the mariner for the loss of Castor and Pollux.~ The Virgin Mother and Cecilia succeeded to Venus and the Muses. The fascination of sex and loveliness was again joined" to that of celestial dignity; and the homage of chivalry was blinded with that of religion. Now all these sentences are intimately allied to each other; they form parts of the same proposition, and serve only to complete and carry it out. They cannot therefore logically admit of a greater separation by pause than that which I have marked above: their final close alone can be marked with the full pause. 4. LONG PAUSE | (bar-rest) Marks the close of a subject, or of an important division of it. It precedes The change from one division of a discourse to another; A return from a digression, or from excited declamation to calm statement and logical discussion. This pause affords an opportunity to correct the tone or pitch of voice, which may have reached a high range in the excitement of earnest argument or intense feeling. In this latter regard the long pause is of great use and assistance to the reader and the orator. Its application must be illustrated and acquired by practical exercise. The system of Rhetorical Pause deserves the student's best attention; for its proper application will contribute greatly to the clearness, flow, and effect of his discourse, as well as to his own ease and delivery. Let him now read aloud the following marked EXERCISE ON PAUSE. SENSE TASTE AND GENIUS. USHER. The human genius with the best assistance breaks forth but slowly and the greatest men have but gradually acquired a just taste and chaste simple conceptions of beauty- At an immature age the sense of beauty is weak and confused and requires an excess of coloring to catch the attentionIt then prefers extravagance and rantˇ to justness a gross false wit to the engaging light of nature and the shewyˇ richˇ and glaring to the fine and amiable- This is the childhood of taste but as the human genius strengthens and grows to maturity if it be assisted by a happy education" the sense of universal beauty awakes it begins to be disgusted with the false and mis-shapen deceptions that pleased before and rests with delight" on ele |