which fancy whispers must be a bleeding corpse; on the floor you see a slipper, an upset candlestick, and a knife perhaps; and these hints tell the story of blood more significantly and more powerfully than the most elaborate detail, because the imagination of man is more powerful than art itself. So with Hood's description of the Haunted House:

"Over all there hung a cloud of fear,

A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper to the ear,
The place is haunted!"

Thoreau, describing an interview he had at Concord with John Brown, notices as one of the latter's marked peculiarities, that he did not overstate anything, but spoke within bounds. 'He referred to what his family had suffered in Kansas, without ever giving the least vent to his pent-up fire. It was a volcano with an ordinary chimneyflue." In one of the published letters of the late Rev. F. W. Robertson, there are some admirable comments on a letter, full of strongly-expressed religious sentiments, pious resolutions, etc., which he had received from a fashionable lady. The letter, he says, "is in earnest so far as it goes; only that fatal facility of strong words expresses feeling which will seek for itself no other expression. She believes or means what she says, but the very vehemence of the expression injures her, for really it expresses the penitence of a St. Peter, and would not be below the mark if it were meant to describe the bitter tears with which he bewailed his crime; but when such language is used for trifles, there remains nothing stronger for the awful crises of human life. It is like Draco's code,-death for larceny, and there remains for parricide or treason only death."

Let us, then, be as chary of our superlatives as of our Sunday suit. Hardly a greater mistake can be made in regard to expression, than to suppose that a uniform intensity of style is a proof of mental power. So far is this from being true, that it may safely be said that such intensity not only implies a want of truthfulness and simplicity, but even of earnestness and real force. Intensity is not a characteristic of nature, in spirit or in matter. The surface of the earth is not made up of mountains and valleys, but, for the most part, of gentle undulations. The ocean is not always in a rage, but, if not calm, its waves rise and fall with gentle fluctuation. Hurricanes and tempests are the extraordinary, not the usual, conditions of our atmosphere. Not only the strongest thinkers, but the most powerful orators, have been distinguished rather for moderation than for exaggeration in expression. The great secret of Daniel Webster's strength as a speaker lay in the fact that he made it a practice to understate rather than to overstate his confidence in the force of his own arguments, and in the logical necessity of his conclusions. The sober and solid tramp of his style reflected the movements of an intellect that palpably respected the relations and dimensions of things, and to which exaggeration would have been an immorality. Holding that violence of language is evidence of feebleness of thought and lack of reasoning power, he kept his auditor constantly in advance of him, by suggestion rather than by strong asseveration, and by calmly stating the facts that ought to move the hearer, instead of by tearing passion to tatters, the man being always felt to be greater than the man's feelings. Such has been the method of all great rhetoricians of ancient and modern times.

The most effective speakers are not those who tell all they think or feel, but those who, by maintaining an austere conscientiousness of phrase, leave on their hearers the impression of reserved power. On the other hand, if we do the work of a pistol with a twenty-four pounder, or kill cock robins with Paixhans,—and, when anything more formidable is to be destroyed, touch off the fusee of a volcano,- we shall find, when we come to the real tug of war, that our instruments of offense are weak, worn out and worthless. Great bastions of military strength must lie at rest in times of peace, that they may be able to execute their destructive agencies in times of war; and so let it be with the superlatives of our tongue. Never call on the "tenth legion," or "the old guard," except on occasions corresponding to the dignity and weight of those tremendous forces. Say plain things in a plain way, and then, when you have occasion to send a sharp arrow at your enemy, you will not find your quiver empty of shafts which you wasted before they were wanted.

"You should not speak to think, nor think to speak;
But words and thoughts should of themselves outwell
From inner fullness: chest and heart should swell
To give them birth. Better be dumb a week
Than idly prattle; better in leisure sleek
Lie fallow-minded, than a brain compel

To wasting plenty that hath yielded well,

Or strive to crop a soil too thin and bleak.

One true thought, from the deepest heart up-springing,

May from within a whole life fertilize;

One true word, like the lightning sudden gleaming.

May rend the night of a whole world of lies.

Much speech, much thought, may often be but seeming,

But in one truth might boundless ever lies."

CHAPTER VII.

SAXON WORDS, OR ROMANIC?

Spartam nactus es; hanc exorna,- should be our motto regarding both our country and our country's tongue.- HARE.

When you doubt between words, use the plainest, the commonest, the most idiomatic. Eschew fine words as you would rouge; love simple ones as you would native roses on your cheek.-IB.

Were I mistress of fifty languages, I would think in the deep German, converse in the gay French, write in the copious English, sing in the majestic Spanish, deliver in the noble Greek, and make love in the soft Italian.- MADAME DE STAEL.

Words have their proper places, just like men;

We listen to, not venture to reprove,

Large language swelling under gilded domes,
Byzantine, Syrian, Persepolitan.- LANDOR.

T is a question of deep interest to all public speakers

IT

and writers, and one which has provoked not a little discussion of late years, whether the Saxon or the Romanic part of our language should be preferred by those who would employ "the Queen's English" with potency and effect. Of late it has been the fashion to cry up the native element at the expense of the foreign; and among the champions of the former we may name Dr. Whewell, of Cambridge, and a modern Rector of the University of Glasgow, whom De Quincey censures for an erroneous direction to the students to that effect. We may also add Lord Stanley, one of the most brilliant and polished speakers in the British Parliament, who, in an address some years ago to the students of the same University, after expressing his surprise that so few persons, comparatively, in Great Brit

ain, have acquainted themselves with the origin, the history and the gradual development of that mother tongue which is already spoken over half the world, which is destined to yet further geographical extension, and which embodies many of the noblest thoughts that have ever issued from the brain of man,― adds: "Depend upon it, it is the plain Saxon phrase, not the term borrowed from Greek or Roman literature, that, whether in speech or writing, goes straightest and strongest to men's heads and hearts." On the other hand "the Opium-Eater," commenting on a remark of Coleridge that Wordsworth's "Excursion" bristles beyond most poems with polysyllabic words of Greek or Latin origin, asserts that so must it ever be in meditative poetry upon solemn, philosophic themes. The gamut of ideas needs a corresponding gamut of expressions; the scale of the thinking, which ranges through every key, exacts for the artist an unlimited command over the entire scale of the instrument he employs.

It has been computed, he adds, that the Italian opera has not above six hundred words in its whole vocabulary: so narrow is the range of its emotions, and so little are those emotions disposed to expand themselves into any variety of thinking. The same remark applies to that class of simple, household, homely passion, which belongs to the early ballad poetry. "Pass from these narrow fields of the intellect, where the relations of the objects are so few and simple, and the whole prospect so bounded, to the immeasurable and sea-like arena upon which Shakspeare careers,co-infinite with life itself,- yes, and with something more than life. Here is the other pole, the opposite extreme. And what is the choice of diction? What is the lexis? Is it Saxon exclusively, or is it Saxon by preference? So far

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